Education Reform

[sophia jane]

For one of my classes, I'll be writing a paper on the No Child Left Behind act, and I've just written a critique of two articles on the school voucher issue. So...I have education reform on the brain.
I'm curious about others' opinions on elementary/secondary education, vouchers, testing, etc. What's the educational system like in other countries? Teachers, I'd love to hear your opinions on vouchers on NCLB. (I read a thing today that claimed teachers unions were the most powerful special interest group in the nation and that they practically run the Democratic party- if that were true, wouldn't teachers make more money???)
Anyway, just want to hear different perspectives and opinions and experiences.

 

[cloudy]

Sophia, there's some real concerns in Indian schools about the act. I'll see if I can find some articles for you.

 

[hugo_sam]

SJ
I can only speak from personal experiece or semi-experience (My son).
The concept for the NCLB seems noble and reasonable. But as I understand it, it is either unfunded or grossly underfunded. However, it only seems symtomatic of the entire trend of education now.
We touched on this in the thread that got into religious educaton.
Schools are using the NCLB as an excuse for what they have been doing for at least the last 10 years or better.
Everything is so geared to the standardized test that virtually all social education had been gutted from the school. Virtually no Social Studies, History, Geography, English comprehension and certainly almost all 'art' of any type has been gutted and discarded.
Kids learn basic science, math and English. That is it. And it seems they do not even learn that very well. No Social learning of any type beyond the 'playground'.
I do not know if this is universal or just bad luck but it was certainly true of my sons schools in two different school systems. We never had the money for a private education as is common. The kids go to school for more days, and for longer hour days. End result: Much poorer than we(my age/peer) group with little to no social training. They of course are computer literate where we were not, but they were not available when I was in school

 

[cloudy]

Are Alaska Native Children Being Left Behind

Reservation Schools Struggle

Bush Administration Blasted on Indian Education

(if you do a search on "no child left behind" at www.indianz.com, there are countless articles)

 

[sophia jane]

Sophia, there's some real concerns in Indian schools about the act. I'll see if I can find some articles for you.

That'd be great. I ran across one today in my initial search for info, but it wasn't usable for my paper. There's a real discrepancy in the data about minorities. Kinda entertaining the things that both sides claim.

 

[sophia jane]

Are Alaska Native Children Being Left Behind

Reservation Schools Struggle

Bush Administration Blasted on Indian Education

(if you do a search on "no child left behind" at www.indianz.com, there are countless articles)

That's excellent, Cloudy. Thanks!

 

[cloudy]

That's excellent, Cloudy. Thanks!

You're very welcome.

If it gets the word out, you're helping me, as well.

 

[Winemaster]

no child left behind....

Well, I for one...think it's a great saying and in meaning...but there are children who do not learn responsibility for thier actions because of this act. they get "socially, or politically promoted"......working in the system has helped me see that it only hurts the system.....a child could refuse to do work....and make the educators look bad. We are educators and the reason we are in this field is because we want to teach. If children don't or can't learn we have different systems for them....if a child refuses - ODD....then how can we do anything. the act has caused problems....but it's intentions are good.

 

[Winemaster]

on the montana schools....

Well, in NY we have Regent Exams. If they give the exam one year and the results are poor....the exam is much more "student friendly" the following year. The state does not want to be uncooperative...they do what they can to help....

 

[Guest]

For one of my classes, I'll be reading a paper on the No Child Left Behind act, and I've just written a critique of two articles on the school voucher issue. So...I have education reform on the brain.
I'm curious about others' opinions on elementary/secondary education, vouchers, testing, etc. What's the educational system like in other countries? Teachers, I'd love to hear your opinions on vouchers on NCLB. (I read a thing today that claimed teachers unions were the most powerful special interest group in the nation and that they practically run the Democratic party- if that were true, wouldn't teachers make more money???)
Anyway, just want to hear different perspectives and opinions and experiences.

It's a great idea. Of course reading and math scores should be higher. Damn it, ALL scores should be higher. But this? It's underfunded, and strangely enough they didn't allow many educators in on the planning.

No child left untested.

My children are weary. And they are bright and are able to test well.

At the middle school level all the borderline and below students (in reading and math) have extra classes during the school day in reading and math. And they also have tutoring after school four nights a week.

Therefore, these kids have no electives. No computers, home ec, foreign languages, art or music. And many of them, even though they manage a passing grade, are not able to do sports because of the after school tutoring.

Are they miserable? You bet. Do they need to have basic skills in reading and math? Of course. But there must be some type of middle ground.

My daughter's school fought for a special grant to be able to afford all of these extra classes for these kids. This type of extra help is not available under the current NCLB funding.

And do you know what happened? With all of this extra work, they still did not reach the Adequate Yearly Progress required by the No Child Act. Part of that problem is that the scores were fairly high last year so they have a huge jump in order to make the progress required.

All special ed scores are included, all English as a Second Language Students scores are included - everyone. It doesn't matter how hard everyone works, you see. It has to be ALL children.

And that's impossible.

 

[carsonshepherd]

It's a great idea. Of course reading and math scores should be higher. Damn it, ALL scores should be higher. But this? It's underfunded, and strangely enough they didn't allow many educators in on the planning.

No child left untested.

My children are weary. And they are bright and are able to test well.

At the middle school level all the borderline and below students (in reading and math) have extra classes during the school day in reading and math. And they also have tutoring after school four nights a week.

Therefore, these kids have no electives. No computers, home ec, foreign languages, art or music. And many of them, even though they manage a passing grade, are not able to do sports because of the after school tutoring.

Are they miserable? You bet. Do they need to have basic skills in reading and math? Of course. But there must be some type of middle ground.

My daughter's school fought for a special grant to be able to afford all of these extra classes for these kids. This type of extra help is not available under the current NCLB funding.

And do you know what happened? With all of this extra work, they still did not reach the Adequate Yearly Progress required by the No Child Act. Part of that problem is that the scores were fairly high last year so they have a huge jump in order to make the progress required.

All special ed scores are included, all English as a Second Language Students scores are included - everyone. It doesn't matter how hard everyone works, you see. It has to be ALL children.

And that's impossible.

Just think how frustrating it is for the people who have to try to teach these kids. The pressure is so unbelievable most of them burn out after just a few years. Average shelf life for new teachers right now is around 4 years. Teaching used to be something you could do for a lifetime, but bright young teachers are giving up before they can really make a difference.

Teachers can't teach kids anymore. They are forced to teach them how to take tests. That's all they have time for.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I'd like to see vouchers more widely implemented. I understand the arguments against them; there is a danger that they will deprive failing schools of cash that they need if they are to turn themselves around. However, I think it unjust to force the students of those schools - often those living in the poorest areas and with the fewest other resources - to continue to sacrifice any hopes of an education and a better life on the grounds that the school might eventually improve. I was disappointed in the recent ruling that Florida's program (which allowed students in persistently failing schools to use vouchers) was ruled unconstitutional under "equal protection" laws. While I recognize that it would be better for everyone to have vouchers and not just some, I fail to see how forcing some students to attend schools that have failed to meet basic standards year after year while others attend excellent ones somehow achieves "equal protection."

I have also seen individual schools and even school districts that, to be brutally honest, needed to be razed and begun again - administrations so dysfunctional, incompetent and downright illegal habits so entrenched that only dismantling almost everything in the system could put an end to it. I don't feel that there are many schools like that, and I do feel that there are also many problems in parenting and student discipline that no politician will touch because it's much too explosive an issue. It's easier to blame the schools. But there are schools that fail, and some of them fail so badly that they really need to be deserted by their students to fail on their own without destroying other peoples' lives with them.

I think the chief issue, to me, is how the vouchers are used. I don't personally have a problem with them being used for specialized schools, whether academic magnet, arts, sport, faith-based, or what have you, if those schools meet state-mandated standards and are regulated and inspected. I have heard of cases, especially one in Washington, D. C., where privately run schools seemed to be teaching to a poor standard or to be instructing students in things that the state really ought not to support (as, in the D. C. case, a racist attitude). I think it's important to weed those out. But if the state is paying for education to a particular standard and the institution is achieving that standard, on the whole I tend to think that additional activities are fine so long as they are not things that the state has a reason to actively discourage.

I do also think it's important that there be no "top-ups" in any voucher system. That is, schools should either take just the voucher or nothing. Otherwise, schools can tack a fee onto the voucher and enact an immediate segregation of the less wealthy students. I think Florida had the right idea there, and they had the right idea in tying the voucher value to student need; students with special needs could receive, if I recall correctly, three or four times the funding of other students if they required expensive services. That's a good idea that helps ensure that there are programs for everyone.

As for testing and "No Child Left Behind" - in a nutshell, these are my objections:

(1) Standardized testing is a poor judge of learning in a country that does not have a standardized curriculum. I've seen the most recent high school test in our area, and it still includes sections of quotation identification. Yes, they are well-known authors - but even Shakespeare isn't going to be easy for me if I read "Romeo and Juliet," "Othello," and "MacBeth," and they're asking me to identify a quotation from "Julius Caeser" - with, might I add, Ben Johnson and Christopher Marlowe as two of the other possible answers. It's not like they were asking them to choose between William Shakespeare and Edward Albee.

(2) Standardized testing tends to be biased toward factual recall rather than analysis. Because nearly all standardized tests currently rely in part or in whole on multiple-choice questions, students can't explain, debate, analyse, or argue. They can be asked - and have been - to estimate the length of the Amazon River, but it's more difficult to ask them to explain why anyone should care. They can guess whether the quotation is from Shakespeare or Marlowe, but even if they get it right, it's difficult to engage them in a discussion about the differences between and significance of each.

(3) "No Child Left Behind" makes no allowance for student disadvantage. It assumes that 85% of children in each and every school are capable of being brought to grade level achievement, and of being brought there with little additional help or funding. That may be true in some areas; in others, it's not. If we take, for instance, the school district where my mother used to teach, we'd be looking at a district where better than 50% of the families were in the lowest 20% of economic class and where the school drew from an orphanage, two military bases, several public housing projects, a home for battered and abused women and children, and a large migrant working population for whom English was rarely a first language. Those schools drew from a population of students who had many substantial barriers to success, and they are now threatened with having their funding cut if they don't somehow erase all of the problems those students face.

(4) "No Child Left Behind" places the entire responsibility for a child's achievement to date on that school that s/he attends that year. That school will be judged by the test results, despite the fact that in some cases, many of the students just joined the district that year, or never attended regularly, or will move on through three more school districts before they finish high school. Particularly in a district like the one in which my mother taught, with several very mobile populations, schools will be punished for failures that are not even theirs.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Just think how frustrating it is for the people who have to try to teach these kids. The pressure is so unbelievable most of them burn out after just a few years. Average shelf life for new teachers right now is around 4 years. Teaching used to be something you could do for a lifetime, but bright young teachers are giving up before they can really make a difference.

Teachers can't teach kids anymore. They are forced to teach them how to take tests. That's all they have time for.

And we can see the results of the President's much-vaunted testing in his home state. He made a great show a few years back about how much test scores had risen in the schools there after his plans were implemented when he was governor. He was a good deal more quiet when literally dozens of teachers and administrators in the Dallas school districts were sacked for collaborating in wide-scale assistance of student cheating and false reporting of school statistics.

They should be ashamed. But the President should be ashamed for holding a gun to their heads and demanding that they do the impossible. It is extremely disappointing that teachers would so wholly abandon their ethics and duties - but it is not, perhaps, entirely unpredictable given their options.

 

[carsonshepherd]

And we can see the results of the President's much-vaunted testing in his home state. He made a great show a few years back about how much test scores had risen in the schools there after his plans were implemented when he was governor. He was a good deal more quiet when literally dozens of teachers and administrators in the Dallas school districts were sacked for collaborating in wide-scale assistance of student cheating and false reporting of school statistics.

They should be ashamed. But the President should be ashamed for holding a gun to their heads and demanding that they do the impossible. It is extremely disappointing that teachers would so wholly abandon their ethics and duties - but it is not, perhaps, entirely unpredictable given their options.

This is absolutely true. Some of them obtain copies of the tests and teach the tests. That's not education and they know it, but sometimes their jobs depend on it...

 

[carsonshepherd]

Oh, and about English as second language kids? Even if they're bright in math, their verbal skills are not like a native English speaker's and that would make word problems almost impossible. And these tests are supposed to be fair?

 

[Guest]

Oh, and about English as second language kids? Even if they're bright in math, their verbal skills are not like a native English speaker's and that would make word problems almost impossible. And these tests are supposed to be fair?

Exactly.

If a child is not a strong reader of English - they're screwed.

 

[cantdog]

They don't care about fair. Anything's fair, by one definition of the word, if it is the same for all.

My chief concern about education is that there be some. That it be public education and that it work. That it be funded, integrated, feature small class sizes and teachers paid money.

Currently they ain't paid money, they get shit. Even though they know things the kids don't and also know how to communicate those things, they have minimal say in the way they run their own classrooms. Everyone has an agenda about that.

Half the people on school boards ran on an anti-school platform; they got there to kill the budget so they could save a penny on taxes. Ask their opinion about anything, and they will kill it to save money.

Nobody wants to pay for proper schools, and they shunt minorities into hellhole schools by themselves. Currently also, a lot of kids don't seem to come out the other end with skills. Not surprising when you don't want to pay for any schools.

"Skills" for me include foreign languages, history, geography, and civics-- how can these people expect to build a wordwide empire when nobody knows how to be a citizen, or where Iran is?

And who has the money? Right. And what do they want to do with it? Support churches. Hence the voucher programs. The tests are not even done for the child's use or benefit, but to discredit as many public schools as possible so that they can excuse the notion of funding religion.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Exactly.

If a child is not a strong reader of English - they're screwed.

It takes seven years for a child to fully acquire his own first language. Second languages are ideally started before age four... Kids who only speak English at school have no chance to do well on these biased tests.

 

[rgraham666]

The problem is the paradigm we use for our education system.

It's a production line. Raw materials come in one end and finished products come out the other. The goal is to turn out human resources suitable for employment, not human beings suitable for citizenship.

Thus the emphasis on testing. Tests 'prove' that the manufacturing process is working. And why the people who make the decisions are so obsessed with 'efficiency'. 'Efficient' is better, supposedly. Effective is what I would prefer.

In the words of Robert Townsend, "This attempt to manufacture human beings works about as well as Dr. Frankenstein's."

He also pointed out that a better paradigm would be gardening. Set up the right environment, keep the pupils well cared for and you'll be surprised at what they can accomplish.

Unfortunately that will cost money we are not generally willing to spend.

Another factor, in my mind, is that many people in positions of responsibilty don't believe that the people at large can or should be educated. They think most people are too stupid to be educated. And they recognise that a well educated populace would be much harder to control.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I disagree that the voucher program is wholly about funding churches or pet conservative projects. In fact, the primary beneficiaries of vouchers in Florida were lower-income city-dwellers - traditionally people who would vote Democratic. I see vouchers as one of the few areas in which Republicans have been able to make the idea of free choice and supply and demand work to the benefit of those who lack money and power. It allows groups of people who traditionally have little say about anything to have a great deal more control over one of the most important aspects of their lives: the type of education their children will get. It's true that many voucher programs would allow the vouchers to be used at private religious schools. I do think it's important that such schools should be required to meet state and federal standards for the material covered and the level of achievement required. But beyond that, I really can't see that it makes a difference. If they are supplying the product the government is paying for - education - at a standard the government requires, I don't see that it matters what else they choose to throw in for free. So long as the government allows all religious schools meeting the standards to use vouchers, there's no issue there of the government establishing or favoring any particular religion.

On funding, I do agree. No one wants to pay for educational funding. I might also add that no one wants to admit that parental behavior has an important role in student success. That's an extremely unpoplar approach with the taxpayers, and therefore cannot be touched. Therefore, we have gotten what we've paid for: a system that often fails, and a government whose only option left is to beat the people left in the system mercilessly, because there's no money and no help to be given to them.

 

[cantdog]

True, Rob. And yet, undeniably, education is the future of the culture.

The best tonic for a school system is parental involvement-- and the community at large feeling like they have a stake in it.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Interesting points, Rob. I will say this; when one asks someone else to pay for something, one must to some extent accept their goals. If the government is to supply free education, then they are likely to devise a form of it that achieves what they want to achieve.

A good environment for growth is indeed key. However, I'm not convinced that the school alone can or should be the one creating that. Students spend more of their lives out of it than in it.

 

[cantdog]

It is so important that education be primarily public, Shang. So terribly important. All private or parochial education has an agenda of its own. We are trying, here, to achieve a republic.

We want a republic which is engaged with the globe at large. We want citizens who know what that means. We want people with a clue about where we sit, historically. We want people who know what's going on now, who know how it works, who can deal with complexity. Going through the motions is not acceptable, and neither is relying on parochial institutions to do this. Education is central to any hope we may cherish for our society. Central. Beats farm subsidies, beats Lockheed, beats oil companies, beats all that shit. If we aren't raising competent children, we are pissing the future away.

 

[carsonshepherd]

True, Rob. And yet, undeniably, education is the future of the culture.

The best tonic for a school system is parental involvement-- and the community at large feeling like they have a stake in it.

But children who do not and will never have parental involvement, because of abuse or abandonment or poverty or whatever, are the ones that suffer. And the fact of the matter is... dare I say it... a lot of this is racial. I see it every day. (SOME) white folks don't want to fund the education of little black and Mexican kids. It's not pretty, but it is what it is.

 

[Xelebes]

Why the hell is the US federal government dabbling in Education like this? Heck, the Canadian federal government doesn't touch it. It's provincial jurisdiction. The only thing the Federal government touches is the public universities. I'm left scratching my head here.