Back to School #1: Thought-provoking articles about K-12 education issues
1. Last year, the New York Times Magazine ran two particularly searing articles about K-12 education issues. Segregated schooling increasing in the South. "The Resegregation of Jefferson County."
2. The s***show of charter school oversight and creation in the State of Michigan, courtesy of Betsy DeVos, now US Secretary of Education. The article is astounding. Way worse than DC, where the public charter school board is independent of public oversight and schools are not required to consider demand before being created.
-- "Michigan Gambled on Charter Schools. Its Children Lost."
I am sure glad I am not in Michigan now, although I'm sure that the traditional school districts that were already high quality remain so.
3. Singapore and education best practices. The Economist has an editorial about the success of schooling there. A lot comes down to investment in teachers and teaching, including relatively high salaries. There are larger class sizes than is typical in the US, but as the article says, is it better for a small class to be taught by a poorly qualified teacher, or for a student to be in a larger class taught by an excellent teacher.
-- "What other countries can learn from Singapore's schools"
-- "It has the world's best schools, but Singapore wants wants better"
The article also has some important things to say about the adoption of best practices.
4. NYT Magazine back to school issue. Sunday's NYT Magazine's article section focused on the schools, including:
-- "Can Good Teaching Be Taught"
-- "Teaching in the Age of School Shootings"
-- "What Teachers Are Doing to Pay Their Bills"
-- "Arizona Lawmakers Cut Education Budgets. Then Teachers Got Angry"
5. Teacher diversity and student achievement. Yesterday's NYT has an article, "Does Your Teacher's Identity Affect Your Learning?," discussing findings that non-white children do better in classes taught by people of the same ethnicity and race.
-- "Is Education a Fundamental Right?"
Labels: law and the legal process, provision of public services, public education/K-12
posted by Richard Layman @ 1:08 PM&Permanent Link
9 Comments:
"schools are not required to consider demand before being created"
Whose demand? Who determines this? I immediately think of "Certificates of Need" which are used to keep competitors of existing hospitals out of areas.
Remember DC was closing schools, such as Cooke (or Cook) on the unit block P St NW when charters were growing. Do you remember the strong anti-Charter school rhetoric of those days? In that environment, charters would be denied opening because the powers that be would deny that there was demand for those types of schools. Thankfully charters flourished and stable middle class families with kids didn't immediately move west of the park or to MoCo or NoVA.
Now that I have a kid, I now have skin in the game. I like having options. I'm lucky that we're in the boundary for a decent elementary school. We're in walking distance of 2 superior charter schools, and 2 okay charters. As a parent, I look at schools way differently than I did as a childless person looking in from the outside.
by demand I mean the number of likely school kids and how many slots are needed to accommodate them.
After a certain point, adding schools merely shrinks the number at any one school.
There are cost-benefit considerations.
2. While I am against "charter schools" theoretically, because I think the focus should be on improving regular schools, and charter schools dissipate the community and social capital available to fix them:
a. traditional schools aren't easy to fix and tend to be very resistant to community involvement.
b. charter schools do provide an alternative in that setting.
c. I can't criticize any parent aiming to "do right by" their child, choosing a charter school.
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I did not know you had a child. GREAT NEWS! CONGRATULATIONS!
... we don't have kids, but we are very much in the lives of the two kids next door. My joke is that "we have all the benefits of having children with none of the responsibilities."
FWIW, yes, the certificate of need process is a good model. So is the "urban decay" evaluation framework concerning development used in California.
That being said, DCPS is a quagmire. I can't see how the Post is still so strongly in favor of the current model and method, Mayoral control, etc.
I was flabbergasted how all the campaign literature for the primary stressed candidate involvement in making the schools better given all the terrible stuff that was coming out in the press about problems (Ballou, Ellington, generally abysmal scores, etc.).
Yes, we became parents through the miracle of adoption. Babies, so cute and yet, so gross. And so friggin expensive (daycare).
From my observation, the demand from stable middle class families east of the park was small. It was almost certain that when such a family's kid/kids got close to school aged the city could not count on them to send their kids to DCPS. The mid century white flight was first abandonment of DCPS, later followed by black flight. The city can create demand by providing good schools, not lame a$$ excuses that was the rage in the 80s and 90s. But there was little demand because the product of a good public school education wasn't on the table for east of the park families.
You need to look at the incentives and forces that keep DCPS schools on a downward spiral. Here we'd disagree on what those forces and incentives are because of how we see the world. Ellington's problems are related to the bigger problem of out of state (MARYLAND) families using DC schools. Ballou shares with other predominately AfAm high schools the age old problem of the good intention of moving kids to the next grade so they can stay with their age group, leading to the Hell of illiteracy and a worthless diploma. There is also the incentive to get the graduation numbers up, get the drop out numbers down, so the easiest way to do that is mess with the quality of the numbers.
Neighborhood DCPS schools can be improved, but it takes a critical mass of special people (parents, kids, teachers, admins) to make it happen.
Yes, "charter schools dissipate the community and social capital available to fix them". However, the State/govt does not own a community's social capital, and charters have kept some of that social capital in the city. Look at the kinds of families who spend time, heart and treasure on their charters. Would these families have stuck around in the 1990s or 2000s? Could their neighborhood school demand or even expect the same level of energy and care in those decades? I say no.
It has taken a long while for DCPS to crawl up from the depths it used to inhabit in national school rankings. Don't take for granted its current state, it could fall again. And if it does and if it takes charters with it, I would not think twice about enrolling my son in a catholic/christian school.
... I don't think we disagree at all. Thank you for adding the trenchant analysis.
WRT DCPS, yes, we aren't investing in the right stuff to address the achievement gap, and yes, the achievement gap pretty much persists despite all the "reform." That to me says the reform hasn't been working.
And yes, kids with the right demographic/family supports will succeed for the most part regardless.
... I was talking about this with a guy who lives in Petworth. His kid is 3 1/3 years old. The parents are white middle class, from the Midwest. We were talking about Roosevelt -- 1% of the students are at grade level according to test results HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? That being said their child will likely perform "fine" in being in public school.
2. Charters are probably insulated well enough, because of the family communities that build around them, mostly comprised of involved middle class people. I am most familiar with LAMB because of the kids next door.
But because of the problem they had with a teacher removed for the possibility of sexual abuse and the school's administration mishandling it, people were forced out and apparently the school is quite roiled as a result, serious administration and other problems.
So I see your point that even decent schools run the risk of failing in the face of a variety of other factors.
But it sucks for parents to be driven to private school because of failures within the public sphere. Again, choice. I am more about "optimality" but people ought to have the choice of public or private or private/religious schools. They shouldn't be making certain choices because of rampant failure on the part of the public segments.
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FWIW, I was adopted at the age of 12. I'm still "under-achieving" in certain ways as an adult as a result. I hope your child is very very young and not subject to the same psychosocial tensions that I was.
I remember graduation from college that Engler's reforms had a lot of interest in Ohio and they would reduce the funding problem between school districts.
But to misquote Mencklen, the urge to save humanity is a false face to rule it.
The current plan is to start saving for single sex catholic high school once the adoption is finalized. And this has nothing to do with test scores.
I was talking to a coworker who has kids in DC schools. She was so glad that one of her kids got off the waiting list for one school that had a particular program that she felt her kid needed to deal with a thing the kid had (sorry I don't feel comfortable with specifics).
So far my son is a curious human who thinks food should be thrown on the floor, so I don't know what educational programs he'll need in the future. But I do know as a male of color the message he may receive from his peers that doing well in school and loving school is "acting white". That phrase is Kryptonite for young black men. I heard it when I was in school. But I'm female. This did not come from the teachers, but from fellow black students. So he's going to need an environment where education is valued by the parents and most of the students.
On the odd occasion when I've spoken to Black professional middle class parents with school aged kids, or who have recently had kids in school, about school, they are sending their kids to private (church) schools or predominately white public schools. They live in the suburbs, as I don't engage in these sort of conversations with Black middle class DC residents. That may change as Jr. gets older.
I understand white parents may have other concerns. They are concerned about their kid being one of a few white kids, and being bullied for it. There might be other concerns, but that is the one I'm familiar with.
A school that is advancing functionally illiterate students is a sign that education and learning are not valued by the parties involved. Test scores are one metric, sometimes the only metric to go by.
What I want out of schools as a parent is a little different than what I want from DC schools as a resident and voter. As a voter and resident, I want schools that educate a workforce, keep kids off the streets for several hours out of a day, and provide an amenity to neighbors. Charters helped keep some parents on the block a little longer. Some parents do move, and I understand (job opportunities, more house, more yard, desire to be a 1 income family, etc), but I have observed the charters kept them a little longer. As a parent, I want something in walking distance or near my husband's commute route. I want an environment where my son can flourish academically. And I want to have a place where our values are respected. That last part is why we'll probably seek out a religious school over any public school.
Regarding your adoption.
Adoption has probably changed a lot since yours. There are greater supports for those involved in the adoption triangle these days. We had to read a ton of books about birthparents and transracial adoption and all sorts of things.
My sister in law was adopted from the age of 2 from Korea. She's currently crazy and homeless after destroying her mom's retirement fund ( I created a separate blog about it), and her being adopted had very little to do with it. I blame self-medicating and bi-polarism. Biological kids can be total f-ups too. My in-laws weren't given any support or background back in 1970whatever. They just showed up at the airport when told and here's a baby.
They weren't told about loss, about how a child will, despite the age they were adopted will experience loss at some point. Jr's birthmom wanted a closed adoption so we will need to prepare him for the loss of maybe never being able to meet or know his birthparents. Other kids will experience the loss of not being raised among people who share their genetic makeup.
Twelve is pretty old. I'm sure there is a story there I'd like to hear off-line.
thank you for sharing those experiences. I have a lot of empathy for both your sister in law and her parents.
... it took me a long time to acknowledge it but I realize that my adoptive parents did the best they could, and that they cared. And I am thankful for the stability. But they refused supports, unbeknownst to me until decades later. And I and we needed them.
Yes you can imagine that a smart guy like me at the age of 12 was pretty well formed and hard to help...
The story's maybe interesting.
... and speaking of empathy, until Suzanne started doing geneaology research, I hadn't really considered the specifics of my parents and me.
My mom was so damn young when she had me and still so very damn young when my father/her husband died. She was from a f*ed up family herself. (I don't recall ever meeting her father and I only met her mother a few times.) My father had his issues too.
I regret not having kids because it will be a shame for my mental capacity to not carry on, but my brother's made up for it... (he has his issues too). ... we were adopted together, for which I appreciate also.
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