Study: Diverse State Schools Suffer More

[DuctapeFatwa]

Schools with diverse student bodies face higher hurdles in clearing Bush administration rules on education standards than schools with homogeneous populations, according to a new study.

The University of California, Berkeley study probed why some California schools that were found to be successful by state standards were marked as failing under federal rules.

It found that schools with many subgroups of students — such as ethnic groups, learning disabled and English learners — were at a disadvantage under the federal No Child Left Behind act because they received failing marks if just one of the groupings did not meet federal benchmarks. "When you pair up schools with equal achievement overall, the one that is serving more diverse students is more likely to be sanctioned by Washington," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and policy at UC Berkeley and one of the study's authors.


More than 3,000 schools — nearly half of California's schools — failed to make "adequate yearly progress" toward the federal goal of having 100 percent of students proficient in math and English by 2014, targets set in the education act signed by President Bush (news - web sites) in January 2002.

If a school receiving money from the federal Title I program fails to meet its goals for two straight years, students can transfer to another school that is making progress. Title I schools serve a high percentage of low-income students and get extra federal money.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=16&u=/ap/20031225/ap_on_re_us/diverse_schools_1

[mbperrin]

1. Can't have all that race-mixing and other "feeble"

types out in colleges, now, can we?

[w4rma]

2. Sneaky. (n/t)

[toopers]

3. If the standards were not so low,

this might bother me. But only 16% of the students need to be proficient at math and English. Give me a break. Those schools deserve to be shut down, and the kids should be allowed to go to schools where teachers are better at teaching.

[mbperrin]

5. If these tests were any good, they wouldn't worry me.

Ask for some reliability and validity data on these tests - there are none. They are money-making exercises and have been condemned by many organizations, including the American Psychological Association.

These phony tests need to be eliminated and the engineers (not educators) writing them need to be fired.

[Cheswick2.0]

6. you mean like private schools where teachers don't even need a degree?

yada yada

[toopers]

7. They may not have degrees . . .

but the education one receives, on average, from these private institution far exceeds the education that of the public schools.

However, that was not my point. If the government school that is in my district is not doing a good job of teaching my child then I should be able to send my child to a government school that is doing a good job teaching. the right to an education is protected by the Bill of Rights, not bad teachers!

[jamesinca]

8. The problem is the system, not usually the teacher

it has been found if you take the teachers out of the low income areas and move them to the higher income areas, they turn out a good product and vice versa. A high income area teacher going into a low income area school turns out a poor pruduct suddenly. Private schools do what they do because of a few things 1) the parents pay for the education of the child so they are very interested in their childs education 2) the child can be throw out of the private school, a luxury the public school does not have. Schools are terribly underfunded. I know throwing money at a problem like this does not make it go away, but it will help. I would like to see $87 billion invested back into education in this country. Imagine a desk for every child, up to date text books, mowed green laws and a fresh coat of paint. Programs to teach English, bring the parents into the fold etc.. It is an entire social program that needs to be brought up to par. There are so many parts to this that just going after the teachers is ridculous. Here is a situation that I came across during my student teaching: A student stabbed his friend in the leg with a pencil in an argument over a girl they both liked. The student returned to school the next day and was arrested by police. When he was asked why he came back to the school when he was going to be arrested there he said because it was the only place he could eat breakfast that day. A second incident: I sent a student to the school nurse on a monday because his arm was the size of a coffee can. He said he fell out of a tree on previous saturday but was afraid to tell his parents about it because he would get in trouble. His arm was broke in two places. Why should this child care about 3+4 when he is not going to eat, or have a place to sleep that night.

There is a very big social dynamic going on here and a lot of social programs that need to be fixed in order to get the U.S. education back on track. Blaming the teachers is not the answer. Making some B.S. test is not the answer. Forcing the teachers to do more babysitting at school is not the answer, but they are all parts of it. Look at the Fresno county office of Education, led by some pig bastard republican named Pete Mehas. The county of Fresno usually has double digit unemployment, the county schools are just about 20-30% pass rate on the standardized test. Parts of the Fresno Unified and the Clovis Unified school districts are in Fresno county and are always above state and national averages. These particualar schools are also in the most wealthiest parts of town. Anything outside of the Dr. and lawyer neighborhood is failing in this county. Those schools that do better tend to be of the same ethnic/racial makeup. The county of Fresno has everybody from Albania to Vietnam living here and speaking their native language. It is almost impossible to get all these people taught one language so they can function in this country. 13% unemployment at almost a constant rate around here does not help. Teachers can't function with the tools they are given and they are not given anything because of the 13% unemployment rate.

Social programs are gutted to make way for tax breaks etc... If little Johnny did not have to worry about getting beat by his drunk daddy when he got home he could focus on what 3+4 was. If the federal government had things in place to reduce or stop the child abuse, little Johnny could focus on 3+4. To blame the home life situation on the teacher is absurd. The argument can be made that it is the state and federal governments fault for the failing education system, not the teacher. Mostly the argument can be made that it is the failing social programs that have been gutted over time that are failing the education system. When you cut a social program you are messing with Maslows' heirarchy of needs. If you want to blame anybody, blame the program gutters, not the teachers.

[soup]

9. Good post. Well said. Thank you. n/t

[jburton]

4. What a surprise!!!

The Bush* testing methods are based on norms of white, upper middle class suburban kids.