Education: takes money

[RyanPsych]

Rich kids' schools
Are full of flair;
Poor kids' schools
Exude despair.
Cities rarely make headlines for their good news. Just the reverse. Take mine. Norwalk has garnered national TV and newspaper coverage for prosecuting a homeless mom who was stealing our precious educational services. In other words, she enrolled her out-of-town son in our school system from a phony address. She wanted to get him a better education than he was likely to acquire in Bridgeport, her own downtrodden hometown. Shame, shame.

Now it turns out that this little larceny goes on every day. Our schools have already chucked out 26 other sneaked-in kids this year, but usually without prosecuting their parents. And since Norwalk's system is no great educational shakes itself, diligent parents here sometimes also get caught trying to sneak their kids into spiffy neighboring suburbs where they can't afford to live. It happens all over the country, though it's largely not discussed in polite company.

And since we as a society firmly resist paying the freight to give every kid a fair educational start in life, we search out scapegoats when they fail. Teachers, for example - it must be their fault that so many youngsters are doing poorly. Let's measure their performance and get rid of the bad apples. Or maybe it's the parents. They ought to pay more attention to their children's educational needs and provide a better home life. We'll talk to them about that.

Few such schemes work out, but this matters little. Voters are generally content to preserve the current system of segregating folks along economic lines. That means the richer towns get better schools, as well as better pre-school opportunities, better nutrition, and better health care. All these factors give kids a better shot at a college education and affluence later on.

continue at: http://www.peoplesworld.org/equal-and-quality-education-it-s-about-the-money/

[George Wythe]

1. ...and it takes ideas.

Regrettably, anytime new ideas are presented, they are met with unconditional rejection by those who fear anything that challenges the status quo.

[Hestia]

2. Such as?

[yurbud]

8. adding private contractors and evaluating teachers based on standardized test scores

aren't helpful ideas.

[exboyfil]

3. At least in our state

Spending is decoupled from performance.

Our school district in 2007-2008 spent $7,582 per student while our neighboring school district spent $8,448. Our district's performance is significantly better than the neighboring school district even though we spent less. Our basket case large urban school district in our state spent $10,152, and its performance is far below either our district or our neighboring district. That urban district also has a neighboring district which is one of the strongest in the state and it spends $8,962 ($1,190 less than the large district). The pattern is repeated in our state in other geographic areas in which the larger school district spends around $1K more but gets poorer results than the smaller surrounding school.

Illinois looks like it has much more disparity in spending than in our state. While the large poor urban school districts of Chicago and East St. Louis receive more than the per state average, they do get about $5K less than the large suburban school districts ringing Chicago for example.

[Igel]

4. Yes,

You can only spend so much in ways that actually improve outcome unless you totally revamp the culture and expectations that the kids are embedded in.

In one school district a school proudly reached 'acceptable' status after years of being unacceptable. It improved something like 0.2 percentage points. But a demographic breakdown showed *no* change in the achievement of individual groups. Instead the entire celebration, spear-headed by black community leaders, was due to rising *Latino* enrollment in the school. Since Latinos averaged about 12% points higher than blacks, just having the proportion of Latinos increase accounted for that 0.2%.

In that school district the black, Latino, and Asian communities are relatively homogeneous, low SES across 4 high schools. The white communities are split, some low SES and some mid-high, and whites account for more than a trivial percentage of the student population in only two schools.

If you take the black, Latino, Asian, low-SES and "other" SES scores from the most racially-mixed school you can predict the graduation rates, standardized test scores, etc., in the other three to within 1 point. You can extend it for 20 miles in all directions, as well.

Neighboring districts spend more or less money. But the homogeneity of the ethnic communities is the same. And their high schools' scores and graduation rates are also predictable, to within 1 percentage point, even though one school district spends more than $2k per student more and another spends nearly $2k less per student. They have different motivational programs. They have different professional development trends. And yet <i>it doesn't matter</i>. <i>None</i> have tried the invasive methods that have worked in other not-so-good areas.

Education takes money. Below a certain funding level you get a consistent relationship: More money = more education. After that level is reached, you get sharply diminishing returns if all you're doing is sprucing up buildings, decreasing class size, buying new tech or raising salaries. The school district at that point will have done all it can easily do; the rest is up to parents and students.

[exboyfil]

6. Getting back to how we fix the situation

I am the minority on this board, but I am a strong believer in school choice. If your child is attending school with less than motivated students who are disruptive, I would argue the child would be better off learning at home assuming a better option is not available. As I indicated my children go to a very good school district, but it still has issues. I would argue that between poor teaching and disruptive students that my older daughter's 7th and 8th grade English and Social Students, and her 8th grade Earth Science were so poor as to be almost useless. Her 9th grade English and Speech were not all that could be desired, but good teachers helped to save the situation.

My approach with my younger daughter was to Homeschool in 7th and 8th English and Social Studies. I also accelerated her into 8th Science in 7th grade by doing Science correspondence over the summer after 6th grade, and she was lucky enough to be in the best class of these 8th graders. Math, because it has an Honors track, has been excellent for both children.

Streaming students has gotten lots of criticism, but to track dedicated students into disruptive classes is not a solution for them. I really don't know how you reach the disruptive students. We try lots of things for students who are failing. We have Saturday school and summer school for those students who are struggling. We have special remedial classes even a second math and reading/English class during the day to help those students improve. We have dedicated paraeducators that in some cases spend the entire day with a single student.

No such offerings are available for the exceptional students except a poorly funded Gifted and Talented program which in many ways is more trouble than it is worth. It involves a pull out schedule that removes the students from their normal academic classes, and it centers around special projects and presentations. Some sort of voodoo goes on in deciding who should be in the program. My oldest daughter was passed over in 5th grade, and I had to beat the door down to get her in in 6th grade. It turns out she is one of the best of these students - being accelerated in two subjects (Math and Science) and having a 4.0 GPA. My youngest daughter is not in the program even though she is accelerated in two subjects (Math and Science), and also has a very high GPA. My younger daughter is actually doing 9th-10th grade level English and Social Studies work with me at home as a 7th-8th grader. I really don't care that my youngest is not in the Gifted program, but it does indicate how poorly funded the program is when an obviously skilled child is kept from the program.

I actually agree with spending the dollars on the students doing less well, but it seems like casting pearls before swine in many cases. These students not only do not take their studies seriously, many are determined to disrupt the learning environment for those students which really do care.

[FrankinMO]

5. It takes money and "culture"...

First let me say that my 3 young boys spend more awake time with their teachers than I do. I work 8-5 and sometimes even later. When I see a teacher taking a second job to make ends meet, we have a problem. To me education is underfunded at best. Why do we treat education as a necessity, but fund it like a burden?

Shame on America for not putting education 1st!!!!!

As far as scapegoats, I blame the Government for not funding, and I blame parents for not doing their jobs as parents.

[Zoeisright]

7. VERY well put.

For once I'd like us to throw money at education like we have at our huge war machine. Just once. Let's just try it and see what happens. I mean, we've been cutting education for 30 years in this country. And we're surprised students are struggling? Sheesh.