5 Biggest Lies About America's Public Schools -- Debunked

[proud2BlibKansan]

Just weeks into the 2012-2013 school year education issues are already playing a starring role in the national conversation about America’s future. Because it’s an election year, the presidential candidates have been busy pretending there are many substantial distinctions between them on education policy (actually, the differences are arguably minimal). Meanwhile, the striking Chicago Teachers Union helped thrust teachers unions into the national spotlight , with union-buster Democrat Mayor Rahm Emanuel reminding us that, these days, Republicans and Democrats frequently converge on both education policy and labor-unfriendliness.

Since pundits and politicians often engage in education rhetoric that obscures what’s really going on, here are five corrections to some of the more egregious claims you may have recently heard.

Lie #1: Unions are undermining the quality of education in America.

Teachers unions have gotten a bad rap in recent years, but as education professor Paul Thomas of Furman University tells AlterNet, “The anti-union message…has no basis in evidence.” In fact, Furman points out, “Union states tend to correlate with higher test scores.” As a 2010 study conducted by Albert Shanker Fellow Matthew Di Carlo found, “[T]he states in which there are no teachers covered under binding agreements score lower [on standardized assessment tests] than the states that have them… If anything, it seems that the presence of teacher contracts in a state has a positive effect on achievement” – by as much as three to five points in reading and math at varying grade levels.

more ... http://www.alternet.org/education/5-biggest-lies-about-americas-public-schools-debunked

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. What's undermining the quality of education in America....

more than anything else, the number one thing that ensures, nay, guarantees that a majority of schools are mediocre, that the bottom 20% are atrocious, and that the top 20% are world-class, is the American system of funding education by property tax in local school districts.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. I completely agree

Also TIF deals. They're one of the biggest scams out there today.

[jody]

3. Please provide a credible source that spending per student is a major factor in math/reading scores.

I ask for those two tests because that's what people seem to be fixated upon.

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. ...

One study, from North Carolina: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/sociology/pub/qol/school_funding_and_the_quality_of_education_in_nc.html

Since the correlation between spending and test scores is far from perfect, the skeptic might assert that spending money on poor schools will not guarantee better education. After all, many factors lead to educational success. Family social advantages are certainly among the most powerful, although others such as community and school environment, teacher and administrative effectiveness, and class size have been shown to be important in past research.

Can spending more money really improve school performance? For national samples, research on school spending has shown that higher per-pupil expenditures tend to raise standardized test scores for a number of reasons. More money can lead to smaller class sizes, attract better qualified teachers, and increase the quality of the overall school environment. The effects of spending on student achievement are evident even when researchers take into account family resources such as the parents> education, the family>s income, the number of parents and the like. Some research even finds that increased school spending helps student achievement even after controlling for community-level indicators of poverty and educational aspirations. Thus there is good evidence from prior research that spending money on education can improve student achievement.

In general, although spending has been shown to increase both math and reading achievement, the effects are stronger on math achievement. This is because math is taught almost entirely in schools and reading is often taught and encouraged in the home environment. When parents have low levels of education or little time to spend with their children, the quality of education available in the schools is often crucial to their intellectual development. Schools are potentially the great equalizer in our society. Schools, particularly public schools, are the arenas in which home and community disadvantages can be counterbalanced with the promise of equal opportunity for the children of our society.

What about in North Carolina? Do children in poorer school districts do worse than those in high-spending school districts, after controlling for the social resources of their families? The answer is clearly yes.

[jody]

5. Thanks for the link. I read the paper and the author did not give correlation stats for test scores

and spending per student.

Please provide a credible source for your assertion.

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. The author in fact did that

Table 1. I'm sorry you can't read.

[jody]

9. Table1's title is "Tenth-grade standardized test scores for North Carolina students at various levels

of school spending, adjusting for individual differences in family resources."

I ask again for correlation stats between test scores and spending per student.

Please read again and quote the passage that gives the correlation's that I requested.

[knitter4democracy]

7. In Michigan, where we don't do that, we still fight it.

Local bond issues fund the building upkeep, etc., so we still have massive inequalities there, but every district gets a per-pupil allotment based on two annual count days from the state.

What's killing us here is school choice. Small districts are getting smaller because parents are taking their kids and school-hopping to other, bigger districts or similar small districts with better local reputations that aren't based on data at all. For example, the district I teach in is hemorrhaging students even though we jumped from the 5th percentile to the 40th in one year with a lot of changes to our curriculum and massive work on the part of the teachers and students. We've gotten recognition from the US Dept of Ed--and we have lost over 100 students alone to a nearby district that didn't make AYP last year. If you ask the parents, they tell you the other district has higher test scores when they don't and that they offer more when they don't. So, we're all worried that, even after all this hard work, we're going to have to close the doors on a really good school.

People who are given choices don't always make the most rational choice based upon the latest data. They often base it on one small detail or on a rumor they heard. Big city schools are down to Class D status in student population but stuck with expensive Class A-sized buildings to keep up. Small districts have been closed, and then others have been taken over by the unconstitutional emergency managers appointed by the governor. It's a mess.

[MichiganVote]

6. K&R