How to fix our public schools?

[coyotes_geek]

You get nothing, CG. the only score I'm concerned with is to make sure the sociopathic 1%-promoting RED TEAM loses.

=

We get it boutons. As far as you're concerned, blue team / red team scorecard = important, actually improving the quality of education kids are getting = not important.

lol boutons

[DMC]

I'm not even sure how to explain it to you. Consider this though.

1) Anyone in a public social assistance type job should be doing their best to put themselves out of work.

As should anyone in a repair type job, or doctors. Doing your best to solve problems doesn't mean problems will go away. Doctors have been around for a thousand years and yet people still get ill.

2) Teaching should be a calling to want to help children. Not hold them as innocent hostages.

Since the education required to become a teacher isn't free, then you cannot expect a teacher to work for little to nothing. No one is holding children hostage (what hyperbole, can't you make a point without going to the extreme ends of the hyperbole scale?). The children are at home with their parents, and remain there until an agreement is reached. I am sure the children don't mind.

If we get back to the idea of the OP, it has nothing to do with pay, but with at udes. We allow kids to disrupt class in ways that was never allowed in the past. Discipline effectively doesn't exist any more because someone would yell child abuse. The liberal feel good idea that we cannot fail kids any more, no more "flunking" because it harms kids self esteem is unreasonable. Shame works, and is one of the best motivators around.

None of this has anything to do with illustrating how you had a point when you said that federal employees should not be able to have a union.

We need to go back to the tried and true methods of past teaching, instead of throwing more money at it.

You're pontificating. Let me try to make your point for you:

The federal government cannot be shutdown by a strike based on labor negotiations. If the federal government gives in, then taxpayers are charged more for the same services yet we don't have representation in the proceedings.

There won't be a federal workers union mainly because of conflict of interest. Judges are federal workers and they would be presiding if it ever went to court. If it reached the USSC, severe conflict of interest and even Congress cannot rule on it. Ergo it won't happen.

[rjv]

best story i read about during the chicago teacher's strike was about a teacher who was fired (at her 71,000 per year salary) because her kids' test scores were consistently poor and she was rated a bad teacher. later, a charter school hires a "brilliant" teacher at 41,000. 00 per year. the catch was it was the same teacher who had been deemed incompetent at the public school.

charters are the same system, only privatized and at the expense of teacher's wages and the inner city students.

[Capt Bringdown]

Despite an individual student's social-economic status and family background, they can achieve a good education in the US public school system. More than that, if they work hard, the sky's the limit.
This is not the case in a great many places. I wonder if those who are suggesting that we blow up our public school system have had any direct experience with school systems in the developing/3rd world.
I have - and the experience has really made me appreciate the wonderful social achievement/ins ution that is our public school system.

Here's the thing - public schools can never be "fixed." And many of the "solutions" offered here remind of the conditions I have seen in my experience of teaching in the third world for the last 10 years. I know that radical Conservative/Libertarianism is the default setting for this forum. But I wonder, is there any other 1st world country that has turned their back on public education?

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Despite an individual student's social-economic status and family background, they can achieve a good education in the US public school system. More than that, if they work hard, the sky's the limit.
This is not the case in a great many places. I wonder if those who are suggesting that we blow up our public school system have had any direct experience with school systems in the developing/3rd world.
I have - and the experience has really made me appreciate the wonderful social achievement/ins ution that is our public school system.

Here's the thing - public schools can never be "fixed." And many of the "solutions" offered here remind of the conditions I have seen in my experience of teaching in the third world for the last 10 years. I know that radical Conservative/Libertarianism is the default setting for this forum. But I wonder, is there any other 1st world country that has turned their back on public education?

This makes great rhetoric but then you see the statistics and I cannot help but feel that given all the illiterates, dropouts and other various educational underachievements that not every one of those kids was just a lazy halfwit.

I think a big part of the problem is how the funding is based on property tax and thus disproportionate. Much like health care funding coming mostly from payroll, I also believe that the system as it is now administered is inherently disproportionate and goes a long way to the disproportionate success you see in regional schools.

It's convenient to say that well they are poor neighborhoods so therefor they are full of poor students and of course the poor are all lazy and so there kids are all lazy for if they were not lazy they would have succeeded but that just sounds like horse to me.

[Capt Bringdown]

This makes great rhetoric but then you see the statistics and I cannot help but feel that given all the illiterates, dropouts and other various educational underachievements that not every one of those kids was just a lazy halfwit.
It's convenient to say that well they are poor neighborhoods so therefor they are full of poor students and of course the poor are all lazy and so there kids are all lazy for if they were not lazy they would have succeeded but that just sounds like horse to me.

That's not at all what I hoped or intended to convey in my comments. I would like to see our commitment to public education expanded and for the issue of inequality to be more directly recognized and addressed.
Regarding such problems as illiteracy, dropouts etc that you mentioned, I don't believe that it's because our students or schools suck.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

That's not at all what I hoped or intended to convey in my comments. I would like to see our commitment to public education expanded and for the issue of inequality to be more directly recognized and addressed.
Regarding such problems as illiteracy, dropouts etc that you mentioned, I don't believe that it's because our students or schools suck.

I am pretty adversarial around here so please take me with a grain of salt. I actually think that it's because both our schools and our students suck.

[Capt Bringdown]

I am pretty adversarial around here so please take me with a grain of salt. I actually think that it's because both our schools and our students suck.

No worries. My comments were intentionally broad. I mainly wanted to say that having seen how it works on another side of the world, I appreciate the US public education system & I think it's a national treasure that's worth saving. I should have mentioned that I appreciate students as well.

[boutons_deux]

NYC Mayor Strikes a Major Blow to Charter Schools, Cuts $210 Million from Their Budgets


as de Blasio settles into office, his administration has already dealt major blows to one of Bloomberg’s sacred cows. Late last week, newly appointed schools chancellor Carmen Fariñaannounced that the Department of Education would redirect $210 million from charter schools and independent nonprofits to fund de Blasio’s pre-kindergarten initiative.

The surprise announcement reflects educational priorities in upheaval. The millions in question had been earmarked by the former administration to help clear space for new and expanding charter schools in the coming five years. Instead, Fariña plans to divert the funds to priorities like de Blasio’s flagship initiative, the pre-kindergarten programs sold largely as a remedy for inequality.

The move epitomizes the shifting public perceptions that propelled de Blasio into office. In his election, voters “were in many ways repudiating the last 12 years of Bloomberg,” says NYU education professor Pedro Noguera. While campaigning, de Blasio signed onto a moratorium on school closures and declared “the city doesn’t need new charters.”
A sharpened focus on inequality from the city’s top brass heralds a sea change in New York education, the third most deeply segregated system in the country. It’s no surprise, then, that de Blasio has targeted the charter sector many see as a manifestation of his well-known “tale of two cities” rhetoric. After private donations, many charters receive more funding than public schools, while serving markedly fewer students with special needs and English language learners.

http://www.alternet.org/education/ny...ter954406&t=25

[Nbadan]

Here's the thing - public schools can never be "fixed." And many of the "solutions" offered here remind of the conditions I have seen in my experience of teaching in the third world for the last 10 years. I know that radical Conservative/Libertarianism is the default setting for this forum. But I wonder, is there any other 1st world country that has turned their back on public education?

Nope. But other countries leave the educating to educators, not politicians....

[boutons_deux]

Charter Schools are Cheating Your Kids: Report Reveals Massive Fraud, Mismanagement, Abuse

led “Charter School Vulnerabilities To Waste, Fraud and Abuse,” the report focused on 15 states representing large charter markets, out of the 42 states that have charter schools. Drawing on news reports, criminal complaints, regulatory findings, audits and other sources, it “found fraud, waste and abuse cases totaling over $100 million in losses to taxpayers,” but warned that due to inadequate oversight, “the fraud and mismanagement that has been uncovered thus far might be just the tip of the iceberg.”

While there are plenty of other troubling issues surrounding charter schools—from high rates of racial segregation, to their lackluster overall performance records, to questionableadmission and expulsion practices—this report sets all those admittedly important issues aside to focus squarely on activity that appears it could be criminal, and arguably totally out of control. It does not even mention questions raised by sky-high salaries paid to some charter CEOs, such as 16 New York City charter school CEOs who earned more than the head of the city’s public school system in 2011-12. Crime, not greed, is the focus here.

In short, the report is about as apolitical as can be imagined: it is narrowly focused on a white-collar crime wave of staggering proportions, and what can be done about it within the existing framework of widespread charter schools.

http://www.alternet.org/education/ch...tter990012&t=7

Then add in the $100Bs of taxpayer-financed fraud by corporate for-profit colleges, and then you might agree America is ed and un able, and getting more ed every day.

[Nbadan]

While there are plenty of other troubling issues surrounding charter schools—from high rates of racial segregation, to their lackluster overall performance records, to questionableadmission and expulsion practices—this report sets all those admittedly important issues aside to focus squarely on activity that appears it could be criminal, and arguably totally out of control. It does not even mention questions raised by sky-high salaries paid to some charter CEOs, such as 16 New York City charter school CEOs who earned more than the head of the city’s public school system in 2011-12. Crime, not greed, is the focus here.

big surprise...charter schools are just as much of a failure as inner city public schools...maybe now we can begin a real discussion about why American kids fail

[FuzzyLumpkins]

http://populardemocracy.org/sites/de...x3.0%29REV.pdf

That is a link to the report in bouties link.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...hool-industry/

That is a link to the story from a publication that is not quite so obviously mindlessly biased especially now that they have been bought out from the Korean Evangelicals.

[CosmicCowboy]

I am pretty adversarial around here so please take me with a grain of salt. I actually think that it's because both our schools and our students suck.

I agree with Fuzzy on this one. There are still excellent students in bad schools and suckass students in good schools, but generally the ty results of our school system are classic "garbage in, garbage out" and they have emasculated the schools where they can't control or take out the garbage that is disrupting the classsroom and making it difficult for the other students to learn.

It is especially bad in the perpetual underclass minority communities where it is not cool to care about academic excellence or even care about academics at all.

[boutons_deux]

Privatized prisons <> privatized schools.

the objective is IDENTICAL: Follow the Money to corporations sucking down taxpayer wealth, NOT about the quality of education.

Then add in the Christian bull indoctrination in Christian schools. Again, the objective of Christian Taleban is not education, but indoctrination.

[boutons_deux]

We get it boutons. As far as you're concerned, blue team / red team scorecard = important, actually improving the quality of education kids are getting = not important.

bull . The red/Christian team is all only about transferring taxpayer money to corporations, AND Christian indoctrination, NEITHER of which as education as priority.

[TeyshaBlue]

the objective is IDENTICAL: Follow the Money to corporations sucking down taxpayer wealth, NOT about the quality of education.

Then add in the Christian bull indoctrination in Christian schools. Again, the objective of Christian Taleban is not education, but indoctrination.

Point one is demonstrably untrue.
Point two is nothing more than a manifestation of your tautology.

[boutons_deux]

Point one is demonstrably untrue.
Point two is nothing more than a manifestation of your tautology.

ok, DEMONSTRATE why CORPORATIONS/CAPITALIST controlled privatized schools are NOT about making money. Same with for-profit, taxpayer-funded "colleges"

[Nbadan]

I agree with Fuzzy on this one. There are still excellent students in bad schools and suckass students in good schools, but generally the ty results of our school system are classic "garbage in, garbage out" and they have emasculated the schools where they can't control or take out the garbage that is disrupting the classsroom and making it difficult for the other students to learn.

...they who? the parents? they're the ones who 'emasculated the schools' by suing when their children have to face the consequences for their bad decisions...Parents are also supposed to be primarily responsible for teaching their kids respect for elders and authority, empathy of others, patience, ethics, morality, and how to act in social settings....in poorer districts all problems are worse because parents aren't usually around to teach their kids much..

[Nbadan]

It is especially bad in the perpetual underclass minority communities where it is not cool to care about academic excellence or even care about academics at all.

Untrue.....there are many students who care about their education in minority communities but they are always underfunded so they don't necessarily attract the best teachers and the better teachers in these districts almost always move on to better gigs..

[Nbadan]

..but I agree...fixing public schools begins by fixing the discipline issues in these schools...and for that, we need community education to help parents and in many cases, grand-parents, raise kids with the characteristics it takes to be successful ...

[Nbadan]

Cell Phone Video Shows Police Choking, Kicking 6th Graders
Source: Gawker dot com

On Tuesday, the Boynton Beach, Fla. police department released two student-shot cell phone videos that show police officers detaining two sixth graders who'd reportedly just been removed from a school bus. In one video, an officer appears to put a student in a chokehold; in another, an officer kicks a student in the back of the leg, causing the student to fall

.

Read more: http://gawker.com/cell-phone-video-s...grad-157585068

...expect these types of incidences to become much more frequent occurrences as discipline in schools transfers from teachers and principals to armed police officers on campus..

[boutons_deux]

The great charter school rip-off: Finally, the truth catches up to education “reform” phonies



Rather than a negotiation over terms, charters are being imposed on communities – either by legislative fiat or well-engineered public policy campaigns. Many charter school operators keep their practices hidden or have been found to be blatantly corrupt. And no one seems to be doing anything to ensure real accountability for these rapidly expanding school operations.

Instead of the “bargain” political leaders may have thought they struck with seemingly well-intentioned charter entrepreneurs, what has transpired instead looks more like a raw deal for millions of students, their families, and their communities. And what political leaders ought to be doing – rather than spouting unfounded pla udes, as Clinton did, about “what works” – is putting the brakes on a deal gone bad, ensuring those most affected by charter school rollouts are brought to the bargaining table, and completely renegotiating the terms for governing these schools.

Charter Schools As Takeover Operations

---

The “100 percent charter schools” education system in New Orleans that Clinton praised was never presented to the citizens of New Orleans in a negotiation. It was surrep iously engineered.

After Katrina, as NPR recently reported, “an ad hoc coalition of elected leaders and nationally known charter advocates formed,” and in “a series of quick decisions,” all school employees were fired and the vast majority of the city’s schools were handed over to a state en y called the “Recovery School District” which is governed by unelected officials. Only a “few elite schools were … allowed to maintain their selective admissions.”

In other words, any bargaining that was done was behind closed doors and at tables where most of the people who were being affected had no seat.

Further, any evidence of the improvement of the educational attainment of students in the New Orleans all-charter system is obtainable only by “jukin the stats” or, as the NPR reporter put it, through “a distortion of the curriculum and teaching practice.” As Andrea Gabor wrote for Newsweek a year ago, “the current reality of the city’s schools should be enough to give pause to even the most passionate charter supporters.”

Yet now political leaders tout this model for the rest of the country. So school districts that have not had the “benefit,” according to Arne Duncan, of a natural disaster like Katrina, are having charter schools imposed on them in blatant power plays.

School districts across the state of Pennsylvania are financially troubled due to chronic state underfunding – only 36 percent of K-12 revenue comes from the state, way below national averages – and massive budget cuts imposed by Republican Governor Tom Corbett (the state funds education less than it did in 2008).

The state cuts seemed to have been intentionally targeted to hit high-poverty school districts like York City the hardest.

After combing through state financial records, a reportfrom the state’s school employee union found, “State funding cuts to the most impoverished school districts averaged more than three times the size of the cuts for districts with the lowest average child poverty.” The unsurprising results of these cuts has been that in school districts serving low income kids, like York, instruction was cut and scores on state student assessments declined.

Now the local school board is being forced to pick a charter provider and make their district the first in the state to hand over the education of all its children to a corporation that will call all the shots and give York’s citizens very little say in how their children’s schools are run.


Charter Schools Takeover, Corruption Ensues

York teachers and parents have good reasons to be wary of charter school takeover. As a new report discloses, charter school officials in their state have defrauded at least $30 million intended for school children since 1997.

The report, “Fraud and Financial Mismanagement in Pennsylvania’s Charter Schools,” was released by three groups, the Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education, and ACTION United.

Startling examples of charter school financial malfeasance revealed by the authors –just in Pennsylvania – include an administrator who diverted $2.6 million in school funds to a church property he also operated. Another charter school chief was caught spending millions in school funds to bail out other nonprofits associated with the school. A pair of charter school operators stole more than $900,000 from the school by using fraudulent invoices, and a cyber school entrepreneur diverted $8 million of school funds for houses, a Florida condominium, and an airplane.

What’s even more alarming is that none of these crimes were detected by state agencies overseeing the schools. As the report clearly do ents, every year virtually all of the state’s charter schools are found to be financially sound. The vast majority of fraud was uncovered by whistleblowers and media coverage and not by state auditors who have a history of not effectively detecting or preventing fraud.

Pennsylvania spends over a billion dollars a year on charter schools, and the $30 million lost to fraud do ented in this study is likely the minimum possible amount.

...

http://www.salon.com/2014/10/02/the_great_charter_school_rip_off_finally_the_truth _catches_up_to_education_reform_phonies/

for-profit charter schools with the basic capitalist offering: tiest possible product for the highest possible price (and lots of fraud, theft, etc)

Do you right-wing assholes really think capitalists and corps are getting into CHARTER SCHOOL BUSINESS TO HELP THE KIDS?

[boutons_deux]

What Happens to Test Scores When Teachers Are Paid $125,000 a Year?

The Equity Project Charter School opened in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan five years ago, with a fairly simple concept: get rid of extra administrative positions and pay teachers a lot of money—a base salary of $125,000 plus benefits and potential bonuses after two years of teaching. (A New York City public school teacher with five years of experience, by comparison, makes between $64,009 and $75,796.) Even the principal would earn less than the teachers to ensure that the school would be able to rely only on public funding, other than the cost of the school facility and its technology system.

The research group Mathematica Policy Research tracked the experiment at the middle school (fifth through eighth grade), and recently released an analysis, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, of the school’s effectiveness during its first four years. The result: students gradually achieved significantly higher levels of learning, with a major leap during their fourth year, equivalent to more than one and a half grade levels for math and nearly half a year for English.

The data was drawn from standardized testing, comparing students who were demographically and academically similar in surrounding neighborhood schools:

---

TEP Students Additional Years of Learning in Math, English Language Arts, and Science
Mathematica Policy Research

---

Even though the Equity Project students fared better compared to their peers at surrounding schools, the Wall Street Journal notes that only 43% of the school’s eighth-graders passed state math exams in 2013. A pretty low number, though a considerable improvement compared with the 26% city-wide pass rate.

Another big difference with the Equity Project, aside from the outsize salaries, is that the school looks for experienced teachers—the median teaching experience was 6 years—compared with charter schools that tend to recruit young teachers with less experience.

But the Equity Project’s teachers are still relative newbies compared to surrounding public schools, which have a median teaching experience of 13 years.

The Equity Project’s inclusive strategy meant that teachers became a big part of the school and developing curricula—

there was no assistant principal for the first two years, and

teachers are very much a part of the student disciplinary process.

For example, one form of punishment for a student who speaks disrespectfully to a teacher is for that student to spend the whole day with the teacher. It also means, though, that the teachers are working more than they might at another school.

Their work includes administrative duties, classes of about 31 students in fifth through seventh grades, professional development classes, a six-week summer ins ute, and stringent performance indicators that dictate whether a teacher may return. Those include taking no more than three personal days and five sick days per year, as well as performance on student and peer surveys. The teachers were very well-compensated and received benefits, but they were not union employees, as is typical of charter schools, and they were not tenured (a topic that’s been controversial in general when it comes to teaching).

And that resulted in turnover—a lot of it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education...a-year/382340/

so the students made serious improvement, and it's still early, but the teachers had too many non-teaching chores, so too much turnover. So the adjustments needed are clear.

[Spur-Addict]

How to fix public schools? Not possible.