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65% of Public School 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading; 67% Not Proficient in Math

Bullseye said:
And there's essentially no correlation between cost-per-pupil and student success.
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To a degree, but some demographics are more impacted by variations of funding than other subgroups are.

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Fiddytree said:
I Edited your post to respond to two thoughts

Eh....I wouldn't go that far, in either direction. Associations, while having their own agendas and whatnot, are able to devote time to thinking about a problem in-depth.
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Do they? Or are they spending inordinate amounts of time and money on tangential political matters?

fiddytree said:
Individual teachers, while perhaps not so married to an association's agenda (even then, they may very well be), are not able to necessarily see that system-wide perspective (they are, after all "in the trenches"), or even look at it from the lens of different stakeholders. I mean, we can have a teacher perspective that brings out the good points about the importance of family structures and what it's like to actually teach, the limits of their time, but may present that perspective in a way that does a disservice to the plight of families or even the kids themselves.

The most generous answer is the truest one: look at it from multiple perspectives.

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Teachers get to see what works, and what doesn't. They make a tremendous effort to use the methods that are imposed on them, and are the first to realize "method d'jour" is a farcs. Several of my teacher friends were less than enthused by Common Core or the continual barrage of tests students face.
 
Bullseye said:
Do they? Or are they spending inordinate amounts of time and money on tangential political matters?
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Both

Teachers get to see what works, and what doesn't. They make a tremendous effort to use the methods that are imposed on them, and are the first to realize "method d'jour" is a farcs. Several of my teacher friends were less than enthused by Common Core or the continual barrage of tests students face.
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In the aggregate they see a lot, they do a lot, but they are still one facet to an incredibly complex system and don't have limitless perception of what will or won't work for entire swaths of the population.



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Fiddytree said:
Both



In the aggregate they see a lot, they do a lot, but they are still one facet to an incredibly complex system and don't have limitless perception of what will or won't work for entire swaths of the population.

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And the current system does?
 
Phys251 said:
WOW. While you're at it, maybe you should stop trusting pilots on how to fly airplanes. Or police officers on how to enforce the law. (You probably support Blue Lives Matter, don't you?)

Seriously, take your teacher-bashing elsewhere.
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I support lots of things. Including all lives matter.

It's a public forum. I'll state my opinion. I think there's way more to the education system problems than what teachers think.
 
Phys251 said:
Sounds really dire. Maybe we should listen to the teachers to get their perspective on the matter!
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No, listening to “the teachers” (which really means the Teachers Union, which doesn’t exist for the benefit of children, no really then president of the NEA Bob Chanin actually said that in 2009) is what got us in this mess in the first place. The teachers unions refuse to agree to merit pay, will not support standardized testing (because it makes it easy to see which teachers are dead wood) do not support charter schools, want tenure for their members, which encourages poor performing educators staying in classrooms for years based solely on seniority, they cover up crimes committed by their members, such as Mark Berndt at Mira Monte elementary, a study actually found a child is over 100 times more likely to be victimized sexually by a public school teacher then a Catholic priest, even though the latter has been subject to many times as much media scrutiny. I think we need to do some Union busting first
 
Renae said:
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/articl...ders-not-proficient-reading-67-not-proficient

And we're told the answer is more money... ffs people open your eyes the Public ed system is a disaster
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I wish I had a political solution to this, but I don't.

However, I can offer the practical parental solution - make that "imperative":

If you are a parent of kids entering school in a marginal school district, you have only two choices;

1] Send your kids to a quality private school.
2] Move your family to a better school district.

I might also add that if the schools are marginal, the neighborhood may also be too. It's a sad fact of life in America, that often the best neighborhoods have the best schools, along with the converse also being true. I wish it wasn't that way, but it is. And no matter how much you may try convince yourself otherwise, your kids' neighborhood & school-mate peers will have a huge impact on their lives.

I personally did (option #2). And along with my choice of a life partner, it was literally the best choice I ever made. Bar none. I'd never send my child to a marginal school.
 
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EMNofSeattle said:
No, listening to “the teachers” (which really means the Teachers Union, which doesn’t exist for the benefit of children, no really then president of the NEA Bob Chanin actually said that in 2009) is what got us in this mess in the first place.
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Stopped reading right there. Unless you've actually taught in the classroom, you really have no clue what you're talking about. (Having a close friend or partner doesn't count--I mean actual, literal, K-12 classroom teaching experience.)
 
Kal'Stang said:
It might help if we stopped crowding 20-30 children into a single classroom expecting one person to teach them all.
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That would be really nice, but that would require more funding to hire more teachers and the Republicans will fight tooth and nail to prevent adding money to education.

Chomsky said:
I personally did (option #2). And along with my choice of a life partner, it was literally the best choice I ever made. Bar none. I'd never send my child to a marginal school.
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My parents moved specifically to an district with the best rated schools in the area. It's sad that the quality varies so much people have to rearrange their entire lives based on that.
 
EMNofSeattle said:
No, listening to “the teachers” (which really means the Teachers Union, which doesn’t exist for the benefit of children, no really then president of the NEA Bob Chanin actually said that in 2009) is what got us in this mess in the first place. The teachers unions refuse to agree to merit pay, will not support standardized testing (because it makes it easy to see which teachers are dead wood) do not support charter schools, want tenure for their members, which encourages poor performing educators staying in classrooms for years based solely on seniority, they cover up crimes committed by their members, such as Mark Berndt at Mira Monte elementary, a study actually found a child is over 100 times more likely to be victimized sexually by a public school teacher then a Catholic priest, even though the latter has been subject to many times as much media scrutiny. I think we need to do some Union busting first
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Better yet don't send your children to a public school, especially if you actually would like them to have a rigorous education.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
That would be really nice, but that would require more funding to hire more teachers and the Republicans will fight tooth and nail to prevent adding money to education.
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And then there's the matter of student loan forgiveness programs being defunded or "renegotiated" (a kind word I am using) at the federal level.

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Phys251 said:
Stopped reading right there. Unless you've actually taught in the classroom, you really have no clue what you're talking about. (Having a close friend or partner doesn't count--I mean actual, literal, K-12 classroom teaching experience.)
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Oh ok, we should just sit back and accept that 8th graders are illiterate and give your cola and 100% employer paid pension. In fact, thanks for the wonderful work that has brought us these envy of the world social stats
 
EMNofSeattle said:
Oh ok, we should just sit back and accept that 8th graders are illiterate and give your cola and 100% employer paid pension. In fact, thanks for the wonderful work that has brought us these envy of the world social stats
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/Hasn't given much thought to education--will make up for it with mountains of hyperbole

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What you comparing public education to that you consider it a disaster, Renae? What's your background experience in analyzing such things? Yuck yuck, let me guess.

The reality is that public education is one of the biggest achievements in human achievement on earth.
It's also an enormous, complex, and costly endeavor, and there is no easy solution. I attacked public teachers unions for years on this forum, beating haymarket over the head day after day...but years later with having read so much on education, having had kids in private and public, etc., I have since told him I really had no clue before, and that I was humbled by the scope and complexity, and that public is not a bad word, etc. He was gracious towards my admission.

Gates Foundation tried to dive in to "fix" public education with all their know-how and money (largest philanthropic organization in human history). The way they describe those early attempts were that they basically bounced off the system. Even with all their money and expertise, they were a drop in the bucket compared to the national scale and complexity of public education in the United States. They were humbled, and explored new ways to approach it, which they continue to do today. Common Core was one such effort, but many people opposed that too. Face it, for tribal-arguments like Renae's post, public education is just a means to divide/attack for political ignorance, it has nothing to do with actual problems or actual solutions, which would require real work.

Much of low performance comes form poor areas. There is nothing you can do except lift those areas out of poverty, which costs money. Else, you live with the lower standards. Your choice. Claiming that poor urban areas that perform poorly means "the public education system is a disaster", is just all kinds of ignorant, stupid, nonsense.

Even just pumping money into those areas may not improve it much, it's all very dependent on the specific circumstances, community, etc.
 
EMNofSeattle said:
Oh ok, we should just sit back and accept that 8th graders are illiterate and give your cola and 100% employer paid pension. In fact, thanks for the wonderful work that has brought us these envy of the world social stats
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I'm not interested in your uninformed opinion. Learn how education actually works, not how you feel that it works.
 
Renae said:
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/articl...ders-not-proficient-reading-67-not-proficient

And we're told the answer is more money... ffs people open your eyes the Public ed system is a disaster
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To me the more important question is which states in the U.S. did the best and worst. America is a big place afterall.

Massachusetts Students Score among World Leaders on PISA Reading, Science and Math Tests- Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

Turns out the state of Massachusetts is actually doing incredibly well. If it was its own country it would be ranked in the top 5 in reading, math, and science. So it turns out there are at least some states who must be doing a very job. Massachusetts is usually near the top of the nation in SAT and ACT scores, but there are other states that are close. Let's look at them, and see what they have in common shall we.

Top 15 states for SAT scores adjusted for participation.

Massachusetts 1130
Connecticut 1126
Minnesota 1107
New Jersey 1104
Illinois 1101
New Hampshire 1101
North Dakota 1099
Virginia 1099
South Dakota 1099
Iowa 1098
Wisconsin 1096
Vermont 1093
Colorado 1090
Missouri 1089
Michigan 1086


Top 15 states for ACT scores adjusted for participation

Minnesota 23.04
Connecticut 22.93
Massachusetts 22.72
New Hampshire 22.63
Ohio 22.47
Montana 22.42
Vermont 22.32
Colorado 22.31
New York 22.27
Nebraska 22.2
Wisconsin 22.04
Kansas 22.02
Utah 21.97
South Dakota 21.93
Illinois 21.87


Notice a trend? In the first list, only 3 out of the top 15 states voted for Mitt Romney over President Obama in the 2012 election. In the second list, only 5 out of the top 15 voted for Mitt Romney over Obama

Now let's look at who is bringing up the rear.

Bottom 15 states for SAT scores adjusted for participation:
Rhode Island 1042
Montana 1039
Alaska 1037
Mississippi 1035
Arkansas 1034
Utah 1027
Texas 1026
Nevada 1017
New Mexico 1016
Delaware 1015
District of Columbia 1012
Louisiana 1011
Maine 1008
Alabama 998
West Virginia 963

This list worked out a little bit better for the Red states, but they're still looking bad. 9 out of 15 worst states voted Romney, and only 6 supported Obama including the District of Columbia which is essentially just one massive inner city.

Bottom 15 States for ACT scores adjusted for participation:
Rhode Island 20.99
Oregon 20.88
Texas 20.78
Nevada 20.76
Hawaii 20.73
Oklahoma 20.72
Delaware 20.69
West Virginia 20.69
Alaska 20.63
Maine 20.56
District of Columbia 20.41
Louisiana 20.37
Arizona 20.12
Mississippi 20.04
New Mexico 20.04

The best list of them all for Red States. This time 8 states including DC voted Obama and 7 states went for Romney so basically 50/50. However, 3 out of the bottom 5 were Red states, and 6 out of the bottom 10 were red states. So even in the best case scenario for conservative states they're still at best tied with more liberal states, and this doesn't factor in the reality that large cities(which are predominately in blue states struggle).

So if states like Massachusetts and Minnesota are incredibly competitive with the rest of the countries in the world, but the Average for America overall ranks us down in the 30s among countries that must mean these states at the bottom are really dragging us all down a lot. States like West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arizona, New Mexico, and DC would be ranked down in the 50s or 60s if they were their own individual countries. That's horrible.
 
EMNofSeattle said:
Oh ok, we should just sit back and accept that 8th graders are illiterate and give your cola and 100% employer paid pension. In fact, thanks for the wonderful work that has brought us these envy of the world social stats
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What would you have them do? Educational success is dependent on things all the way back to having a healthy mother w/prenatal care, and by age 5 when they hit a school system, a good portion of their success may already be determined. And beyond that, how are you going to get a top notch teacher in a dirt poor area that has kids that don't care? You aren't.
I use to attack unions with similar arguments, it's just not helpful though. In some other countries, teachers are paid far more but are also treated far better by the population, and thus, it helps boost the overall eacher quality and their training, etc. But not here, we have half the population who ****s on the system that humbly educated these rabble rousers out of ignorance.
 
MrWonka said:
The cost of living is much higher in the U.S. than in most countries so this doesn't tell us anything about how we're paying our teachers relative to other professions.
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I didn't say anything at all about teacher pay.
 
Like when you look at South Korea, a top performer in most education rankings internationally.
average spending.
Both public and private schools.

But as a culture they have a "militant drive for success".
Higher education is an overwhelmingly serious issue in South Korea society, where it is viewed as one of the fundamental cornerstones of South Korean life. Education is regarded with a high priority for South Korean families as success in education is necessary for improving one's socioeconomic position in South Korean society.[15][16] Academic success is often a source of pride for families and within South Korean society at large. South Koreans view education as the main propeller of social mobility for themselves and their family as a gateway to the South Korean middle class. Graduating from a top university is the ultimate marker of prestige, high socioeconomic status, promising marriage prospects, and a respectable career path.[17] An average South Korean child's life revolves around education as pressure to succeed academically is deeply ingrained in South Korean children from an early age. Those who lack a formal university education often face social prejudice.[18]
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Compare that to the U.S., the land of plenty. We have so much wealth in the U.S., why does a rural southerner who lives in the boonies, feel an overwhelming need to be well educated? They have country living, fishing, hunting, cousins to screw (ha, kidding kind of), what's not to love? In fact, they vote *against* what they claim are the elites/intellectuals, etc. In this particular case I'm not judging that except to say that it's a life choice, and may run contrary to scoring really high on competitive education statistics. Also, I'm from the deep south and like the boonies for recreation, just saying.

Fact is, our culture is all over the place in the U.S., and many sub-groups in the U.S. simply do not value education the way other cultures or sub-cultures do. In many cases, because we simply don't have to.
 
Chomsky said:
I wish I had a political solution to this, but I don't.

However, I can offer the practical parental solution - make that "imperative":

If you are a parent of kids entering school in a marginal school district, you have only two choices;

1] Send your kids to a quality private school.
2] Move your family to a better school district.
or
3] Homeschool.
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It's that third one that has me convinced that we need to get rid of the teacher's union, or at least, refuse to agree to tenure.

I live in an area where there's a lot of homeschooling and I'm constantly amazed at how high the homeschooled students score on standardized testing and how they often take top spots in national science, math and geography bees. What's even more amazing is that many of them do not have college-educated parents.

The teacher's union has long tried to stop homeschooling, and it's easy to see why. Homeschooled kids typically out-perform public school kids -- without a certified teacher.

The reason - to me - is obvious. In order for a student to thrive, the person educating them must care about the outcome, and the student must have access to personal instruction when needed. Public schools assign too many students per teacher. Some places are alleviating the shortage of teacher-per-students by encouraging community volunteers in the classroom. And, the volunteers need not be certified in order to effectively teach the kids.

But, we really must get rid of tenure. It doesn't do anyone any good to have a embittered teacher stick around just because she's been there 20 years. Make it easy to get rid of tenured teachers that are no longer beneficial in the classroom.
 
Phys251 said:
Stopped reading right there. Unless you've actually taught in the classroom, you really have no clue what you're talking about. (Having a close friend or partner doesn't count--I mean actual, literal, K-12 classroom teaching experience.)
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In every post in this thread, you've been alluding to the idea that you have special knowledge -- I'm sure you're just waiting to be asked what the solution is.

So, out with it, already -- how do we fix these broken schools?
 
OlNate said:
Soo...are you arguing that the answer is more money or not? Unsure of your stance...looks like the results are pretty rough, though...
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It's not more money, it's using the money to it's best. What we need is a public/private system that allows parents a choice in both where they send their kids and when they send their money. We need a public system that covers people and places that private schools can't or won't cover.
With private schools, results matter and it's the parents who are the ones setting the standards for their children's education and not a bunch of bureaucrats and union hacks. With private schools, you get schools that can focus on teaching the skills that the parents deem valuable. If you want your kid learning music and art, you send them to "Mrs. McGulliver's School of Artistic Excellence". If you want you kids to learn software development skills, you send them to "The Whitehall School of Technology". Spending more money isn't the answer, spending the money correctly is.
 
HowardBThiname said:
In every post in this thread, you've been alluding to the idea that you have special knowledge -- I'm sure you're just waiting to be asked what the solution is.[/qu

So, out with it, already -- how do we fix these broken schools?
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I'm not going to play this game with you, Howard. If you're going to start off by impugning my motives, at least do it right.
 
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