Aces Full of Links

ARG! This is going to fuel the fire against more charter schools.

Some private school suck monkey balls, admittedly. But at the same time, I'm sending my kid to a public school that isn't going to do a damn thing for her. Meanwhile, there is a charter school we can't get into with scores throught the roof, whose educational methods are like they are designed just for her. But we'll have fewer schools like that because of lumped-in results like this one.

As a product of the public education system (in Attleboro, in the 80s, which wasn't exactly what one would call "well funded") AND as a person who's mother, three sisters, and brother in law are all current or retired public school teachers, I'm pretty offended by the anti-public-school attitude that seems to be getting worse and worse for no real reason other than that there's a well funded PR campaign against public schools.

I mean, how often do I have to hear how shitty public schools are with no data to back it up? How many times do we let people talk about how our schools are "crumbling" without saying, quite simply, "no, they're not."

Local conservatives like to rake the public schools over the coals. They're quick to go on the attack when anything bad happens in the public schools, but there's no balance for when anything goes right. It's especially hypocritical with MCAS discussions.

I have problems whit MCAS but I often hear a lot of support for the test, especially from people who want to tie teacher salaries to it. (Clearly, as a teacher you need to seek out smart students if you like raises) One week you'll hear how horrible the schools are. The next week you'll hear about how great MCAS is, with no mention of the fact that the vast majority of kids in the schools around here pass MCAS. Which would indicate that something is going somewhat right.

Somerset High recently announced that every one of its students passed MCAS. Were there lots of articles about how other schools ought to be checking out what Somerset is doing? No, because conservative folks don't want to hear answers like "if you fund the crap out of the public school, the students seem to do better."

There is a lot of support for the schools in Somerset from the citizens here. And, luckily, we've been able to stay committed to funding a good education. Of course, it's not that simple, either. There are a lot of involved parents and, unlike the city, the median income of the parents is higher. The kids are likely to have inherited traits that help make them more successful.

There are such things as bad schools and bad teachers. But teachers make a too-convenient target sometimes, and discussion rarely covers the bases of what contributes to a lousy educational system.

Here are the answers that people don't want to hear when they're worried about local student performance:

1) Performance is low because your school is under-funded.

2) Performance is low because you're not involved with your kids.

3) Performance is low because you're not giving your kids home atmosphere conducive to learning.

4) Performance is low because your kids are not geniuses.

5) Performance is low because your kids are not getting a balanced diet and enough exercise for their bodies to work right; a brain needs a healthy body.

It's a complex question. Even so, you can still cut the schools off at the knees if you're committed to under-funding them.

Excellent comment - love the list of reasons.

But I would add one more factor often ignored - and I say this as one who attended both public and private schools. The public schools need to take every one - and that means they take on a ton of social problems as well. They are the catch-all - and supposed cure-all - for everything that is wrong with our society. The pivate schools are selective and can - and do - exclude problem kids because people who are paying big bucks don't want their kids in the same classroom with a kid who is misbehaving.

Given this - and especially given class size - I am amazed the results are so good.

BTW - I used to argue this point 30 years ago in regard to UMass Dartmouth. Some folks then had an incredible way of comparing UMass Dartmouth graduates with graduates from MIT, or wherever, and use this as an indicator of poor faculty performance. My argument was - and is - that the only measure of faculty performance is to look at what goes into a school and then look at what comes out. Is there any change? Is it positive? Of course MIT has better graduates - they start with the cream of the crop in terms of students. The question is, did MIT contribute anything to those students - and how much? Look at what goes in, look at what comes out, and try to measure the change. Then you might have a stat that has some meaning - might ;-)

The study corrected for some of these factors, so it would be interesting to see exactly how they did that.

They probably grouped individuals based on pre-test scores and then compared outcomes on post-test scores, or something like that.

I accept that parenting and schooling can't do much for a child's success or school performance. I wonder what isn't being measured that is different. Quality of life, I would think. But that doesn't mean one is better than the other for everybody; one person's quality of life may be better in a public school, whereas another might be miserable there and better off in a private school. The same goes for putting your children in day-care vs. staying at home with them, I should think.

Well, we don't know how much of a child's performance is purely genetic, vs the school's performance, vs home environment, etc.

But I suspect that genetics has the largest effect, and on top of that you can make things a little better or a little worse.

James - excellent list of reasons. Teachers get blamed too often for kids who don't care and don't want to learn. At some point, there's not a fuck of a lot a teacher can do if a kid doesn't want to be there. Life isn't a movie and everything can't grind to a halt while a teacher stops the rest of the class from learning so s/he can "reach out" to the kid that doesn't want to learn or study.

I'd say that problem has a lot more to do with the kids family than with the school system. Hell, in Providence theres a ridiculously high truancy/absentee rate. How are the teachers to blame for kids who don't feel like showing up to school (or who have to stay home to take care of baby brothers or sisters while the parents are working)?

The other thing that should be added to that list of reasons why some students don't do well is that teachers have too many non-teaching duties piled on top of them. Teachers aren't babysitters, drug counselors, abuse-spotters, narcs, etc. They should be teachers.

James' aunt was an elementary school teacher in Fall River, and she said, "How can I expect this kid to do her homework when she doesn't even know where she's sleeping tonight?" She had one child who spent the night in the doorway of her apartment, because her parent never came home to let her in. There are plenty of children whose only decent meals are provided by the school.

It *is* sickening that the teachers are blamed. (And I'm not blaming the parents, either. It's just not that simple.) How wonderful it must be, to get to be the teacher of children who want to learn and whose parents have the resources to hire private tutors, never mind feed, clothe, and house the child. I was actually a little annoyed at the awards ceremony at my daughters' school (I ranted about it on my blog). I was annoyed for a number of reasons, but I think the one that really got me started was when the spectrum teacher got up and started raving about the research her students had done, and presented them with awards. The mother of the girl who got the president's gold award said to me after, "what was that all about?" (In other words, a very bright little girl, but for some reason not in spectrum.) The spectrum teacher had hand-picked students and then given them this research opportunity. (Then rewarded them in front of the class. Wasn't the research opportunity reward enough? And why them?) Whereas M's third grade teacher was silently praying that the better students wouldn't be on vacation during MCAS because she had so many kids in her class who were frequently truant and who were on IEP's -- a couple couldn't read.