Why do we have bad schools? That’s the downside to local control. Bad schools tend to exist in areas where parents don’t give a damn.
LHOD:
Your complaint that there’s a dearth of hard figures in SA’s argument is very fair.
But this isn’t:
If there’s no confusion about what he’s claiming, you don’t prove the point by offering up something he’s NOT claiming as an example. Obviously your example was hyperbole, but juxtaposed with your indignant denial of any misunderstanding on your part. . . I’d say perhaps that wasn’t the right place, rhetorically, for clever hyperbole.
It is no where near that simple. It’d be nice if it were, because there’s something comforting about the idea that if even their parents don’t care about them, no one can do anything so why bother? And I think that for *some *people, there’s a little unstated subtext that if even their parents don’t care for them, maybe they don’t deserve much–good kids would inspire more devotion.
But giving a damn is not the same as knowing how to effectively advocate for your kid. Loving your kid doesn’t teach you how to teach them their letters and numbers before they even start kindergarten, nor how to reinforce their school work–which is not the same as “helping with homework”, but rather integrating whatever skills they are learning at school into every facet of your interaction with them. Loving your kid doesn’t teach you when to challenge the authority at school and when to invoke it in your favor. Loving your kid doesn’t put you in a position to take unpaid days off work to be involved in school activities. Loving your kids doesn’t give you a vision of how the school could be better, nor the leadership skills to motivate and organize others into fulfilling that vision.
There are always parents who aren’t particularly concerned with their kids: when I’ve taught affluent populations, there were plenty of parents who were happy to let the others carry the load. You didn’t notice at first, because half the parents you saw all the time–but half you met at graduation and they were total strangers. I’ve had affluent kids who starved in the summers because their parents, wealthy professionals, ate every meal out and never thought to bring groceries home. And you get those parents among poor populations, too. The difference is the other half–the parents that are eager and willing to be involved don’t know how, don’t have the resources, and certainly can’t do enough to pull the rest of the school with them. But it’s a terrible insult to them to say “they don’t give a damn about their kids”.
Aren’t there ever. I mostly saw them on the tutoring end – the parents who cared just barely enough to try to do something but only with the attitude of “here’s some money; fix the kid.” There’s only so much we can do an hour or two a week. We can give you tools to help your child, but if you don’t use them…
Oh, it’s definitely a simplistic answer and there’s more to it, but it is probably the biggest reason for why failing schools exist and don’t get better.
They care about their kids, they just don’t feel the need to be involved in school because the school is good. There’s a reason affluent communities resist efforts to equalize funding among districts. And there’s a reason poorer communities don’t really advocate for equalized funding except for the professional activists.
So, you gove affluent parents the benefit of the doubt, but poor parents just don’t care.
Affluent parents don’t usually have much of a reason to care, but will usually get up and take action if they feel threatened, such as when anything occurs that could cause changes in their district. I’m sure you’ve witnessed a few school redistricting battles.
Meh. His overall point–that schools suck today because of a breakdown in social mores and traditional structures–is perfectly clear. His supporting evidence is absurd. And yes, he does seem to imply that black students used to dress better than they do now, and that this has something to do with the superior education they used to get.
What I wrote was hyperbolic, but the underlying point I was making fun of is ridiculous.
Well, first of all, what do you mean by “we”?
Generally speaking, “we” aren’t, however because schools are mostly funded by local budgets, supplemented by state and Federal funding, the quality of schools can vary greatly.
Looking at this list of top school districts in Connecticut (where I grew up):
…one thing that immediately stands out is that most of them are in affluent Fairfield county. People who live in these towns also tend to live there long term, if not permanently. So there are a lot of strong relationships between parents, teachers and the Board of Ed.
In contrast, the city of Hoboken NJ where I currently live has a public school system consistently ranked as horrible. This is initially surprising because it is also an affluent suburb, mere minutes from Manhattan. But what I suspect happens is that it’s in a sort of “middle” zone with respect to education. People with the means either send their kids to private schools in New York or New Jersey. Those with less means move out to the suburbs.
The other question is what makes a school “good”? I feel like in this country, we tend to only care about education as a pipeline to landing a high paying job. So it tends to become a bit of a vicious cycle. The “best” school systems are the ones that graduate the most students and send them off to the best colleges where they can graduate into the best, most lucrative jobs. So those best school systems attract more people who drive up the housing costs so only those with the best, most lucrative jobs can afford to live their.
So, this is how you are defining a Bad school? Plays? Yearbooks? Clubs? Sports?:rolleyes:
I’m glad I’m not the only one who found the emphasis of the OP a bit odd.
I think 90-95% of what we think of as a “good” school comes down to being able to pick your students. Things may be different today but 95% of my education was a teacher writing on something and lecturing. The facilities required for that are pretty basic and for the most part every school in America provides enough to meet those needs.
<spit-take>
How do you plan to get into a good college unless you are signed up for half a dozen clubs and sports teams?
I would disagree with you that public education in general was better back in the 50s. It certainly wasn’t for blacks - mostly because Jim Crow meant that the schools were grotesquely underfunded, didn’t have enough teachers/textbooks/facilities in general and all the other unfairness that segregation entailed. All the segregated schools were bad, by intent - nobody wanted them to get educated and uppity. Besides, they were only good for sharecropping and menial labor, and therefore they didn’t need to learn.
However, a couple of factors mitigated against that.
[ul][li]Black families were more likely to be intact - the explosion of fatherless households had just started to happen. The presence of a father in the home wasn’t enough to offset the other disadvantages, but it helped.[/ul][/li][ul][li]Segregation meant that all levels of black families went to the same schools, more or less. Therefore the children of what middle-class blacks there were sat side by side with the sharecroppers’ children. Thus you had at least a leavening of parents with the desire, and to some extent the resources, to raise the level of education delivered higher than it would be otherwise. [/li]
Then, segregation ended, and with it red-lining and restrictive covenants and much of the rest of Jim Crow’s offal that kept blacks in the bad schools. And the middle-class blacks got the hell out of there as fast as they could manage.
Who could blame them? But it left behind those whose parents couldn’t/wouldn’t/at least didn’t get out. And thus you lost the leavening of involved parents, and the schools fell behind. To the extent that their funding increased, which was way overdue, the schools improved. To the extent that involved parenting decreased, they became bad schools.[/ul]And here we are.
Regards,
Shodan
That…actually has some nuance to it.
I think it leaves some stuff out (the tremendous increase in incarceration rates for nonviolent drug offenses in the eighties and nineties, for example), and I remain unconvinced about the Absence of the Black Father narrative, but I suspect there’s some real truth to it.
Locally, desegregation was far from an unmitigated blessing for black students, at least according to the African American leaders I’ve heard speak on the issue. Our local high schools were desegregated by closing the school for black students and sending them all to the school for white students. The faculty were hired at the integrated school, to the extent possible, but where there was too much overlap, the black teachers were let go; and over the years, they were the first to be fired when there were layoffs, until now there are very few nonwhite teachers. The black school’s sports teams and bands were dissolved.
We went from having the black school with the highest rate of teachers with masters’ degrees in the state (for black or white schools), from having the black school with a trophy case full from the marching band and from sports teams, to having none of that. It was a devastating blow to the black middle class.
That, coupled with other factors (e.g., urban renewal of the 1970s that tore down the black commercial shopping district, desegregation laws that ironically resulted in black customers going to white-owned businesses but not the converse, etc.), really damaged my city’s black middle class.
If we’re going to fix education, we need to fix a lot of things about our society.
I’m going to have to disagree with your last line because where I live many black families also want their kids in the best schools and those schools are mostly in majority white areas. Well actually alot of Asian and Indian kids also.
Which is often conflicting for them because they wonder if they have abandoned their people.
Sorry tpo be late getting back on this thrread.
For starters, I dont know where Ruken got his figures but he got the schools wrong. Here in Overland Park their are 2 districts, Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley. Both are pretty good with Blue Valley being somewhat better. Some of the Shawnee Mission schools, especially in the north, serve working class areas and have some problems. One BIG issue comes up is with the individual control and the PTA’s. Some schools have PTA’s that do big time fundraising and therefore, have money for alot of things like field trips. Other schools have little so they often want rich schools to give them some of their PTA funds (fat chance!).
Oh a BIG ONE is when the district tries to redraw district lines. You see people want to send their kids to 2-3 high schools and NOT to another so no way will they allow the district to redraw lines to send their kid to another school or allow other kids from poor areas to come to their kids school.
And this has merit. I know of one school that had few discipline issues until the district redrew lines and the new lines allowed kids coming from a section 8 area to come in and those kids caused trouble the school never saw before.
Second, Ruken uses Kansas city KANSAS, as an example, I am writing about Kansas City MISSOURI schools and they most definitely SUCK. That district went thru hell with desegregation and riots decades ago and still cant get its act together.
However KC Kansas schools, which also serve a working and lower class community, actually do quite well and one school, Sumner Academy, actually has the best test scores in the area. BUT, Sumner is a magnet school where kids apply to and they must keep good grades and no problems or they are out. I could go on and on about the 2 districts and their parallel issues faced but different outcomes.
Both districts spend similarly per student. The numbers wiggle depending on whether you want to count bond debt and capital outlays.
I should note that the per-student estimate BV posts directly in the page I linked to earlier does not match their actual budget documents for recent fiscal years.
SM: http://budgetfinance.smsd.org/pages/default.aspx
The Kansas City Missouri school district spends about the same. They don’t summarize it nicely like the Kansas schools do so I’m basing that off of $227,535,624 of expenditures for '16-'17 and ~15k students (14,665 as of Sept 2015). So about $15k. Less if you ignore debt/capital.
There are many good points here, and many talking points. I would love to argue some, but I can’t keep that many different ideas in my head at once.
Why do we tolerate bad schools? Because most have given the responsibility of running schools to politicians, most of whom know nothing about education and everything about blame and fundraising.
American students are falling behind! We must start educating students earlier! Spend more tax money on Head Start and other programs like it! Finland’s students always score very high on International measures of achievement. They don’t have Head Start; they start formal education for children at age 7.
Head Start isn’t the solution, but that’s what politicians have decided is the cure for the problem. I had a number of Head Start students in Kindergarten, and there was little difference between them and students who had not gone to Head Start.
Many politicians have made a career agitating for improvement of a problem, but if the problem was solved, they would be out of a job.
There are too many bad teachers out there. Unions really do contribute to the problem. Schools also need to save money, so hire inexperienced teachers right out of college instead of experienced teachers, and have little if any mentoring for new teachers.
When schools get more money, it usually ends up anywhere but the classrooms. Giving schools more money, whether by increased taxes or redistribution, won’t help because it will just result in more money in the bank accounts of administrators and vendors.
The only way to really fix it is to take it down and rebuild it. Not gonna happen, because people don’t have the patience, and politicians don’t have the stomach for it.