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Some of the best paid teachers are also those who should have been fired years ago, but for tenure.
There are several studies that show how to improve performance by lowering class sizes, and how to restructure schools so that they can afford to do just that.
Considering some of the tax rates that fund some school systems, raising taxes a bit is a valid way to pay for it, and I would gladly pay an extra $30 a year to improve my kid's education....yet parents in this area voted down exactly that much of a raise in the millage recently.
I am not saying every kid should be in a class with 9 others...but I AM saying that one of the BEST ways to improve a child's education is to reduce the class size and allow teachers to award the actual grades earned by the students. Not grades based on a quota.
Considering the amount of cash we spend on stupid things in this country, asking for a better rate of pay for teachers isn't unreasoonable in my mind.
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I don;t think that class size is the only thing that needs to be addressed, and I know that it isn't a "magic bullet", but it seems to be a good place to start to me.
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quote:Some of the best paid teachers are also those who should have been fired years ago, but for tenure.
No denying that teachers' unions are powerful entities. I've experienced tenured teachers who should've been chucked out the door long ago. I've also recently witnessed the attempted removal of a non-tenured, high-quality instructor because of a personal vendetta. I guess my feelings are mixed. The unions exist for a reason, but as with any sort of power, it comes with responsibility and abuse, unfortunately.
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The way I see it - in the schools...not so much. At the board level - a huge amount.
There's no one in our building that doesn't work extremely hard and isn't needed desperately to keep things running from every one that works in our lunchroom to the assistant principals.
But....if you look at the number of people that work at the board of education you'll see tons of people with titles like "deputy assitant superintendent in charge of one of two programs".
The system where kids attend (not the one I work for) had an assistant superintendent that recently left to take a superintendent's job. They announced that he wouldn't be replaced - that his workload would be absorbed by existing employees due to the economy. I bet there are tons of positions just like that at boards of ed all over the country that could be eliminated and that money for salary and benefits could be given back to the schools so that maybe I wouldn't have to pay for copier paper out of my own pocket.
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I've been led to understand that the increase of school costs is largely due to increased entitlement to special ed services. Kind of like the 80/20 rule, where 20% of students create 80% of the cost increases.
Yes special ed kids need special services, but I think it's getting out of hand. We have a number of bus drivers in our district whose job is to drive a single student to a school that can provide the services the parents demand. Some of these schools are in a different state, and since it takes the driver more than an hour to get there, they just sit and wait for the end of the school day to bring the kid home.
In the most extreme case that I know of, a kid is airlifted to a school several hundred miles away, and given round the clock support along with room and board for each weekday, and then brought home to his parents on the weekend.
I'm sorry, but a free public education just shouldn't go that far.
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I hate to be the one to say it, but another way to get out the waste is to allow that ole "voucher system" (or something similar) that got shot down years ago. Schools that function for profit have a remarkable ability to cut down on administrative overhead. There was also an example (in Kansas I think, but it was something presented years ago in a class so I don't have a link) of private companies who have come in to run schools and managed to improve education (based on test scores and parent satisfaction) while decreasing costs.
As for ditch diggers - I think they need WAY more respect than they get. Besides, it's a perfectly valid and even respectable career choice. There are TONS of valid career choices out there that do not require a college education but could benefit from some good training (welding being the most lucrative example I can think of off the top of my head). It's just that, as a society, we've sort of rejected those people. No one wants to have to be the parent of a kid who is going to go to work driving the garbage truck after graduation, or running the pumps at the water treatment plant, or any of a variety of extremely important positions. Heck, even in my little rural town, people are starting to look down on others who do farming and ranching as an occupation instead of just a hobby!
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quote:The system where kids attend (not the one I work for) had an assistant superintendent that recently left to take a superintendent's job. They announced that he wouldn't be replaced - that his workload would be absorbed by existing employees due to the economy. I bet there are tons of positions just like that at boards of ed all over the country that could be eliminated and that money for salary and benefits could be given back to the schools so that maybe I wouldn't have to pay for copier paper out of my own pocket.
You'll probably only be able to accomplish this if you manage to simultaneously convince the state and federal governments to cut their administrative requirements. All that legislation everyone likes to pass, under the guise of "accountability", generates paperwork requirements...as I'm sure you already know.
quote:I hate to be the one to say it, but another way to get out the waste is to allow that ole "voucher system" (or something similar) that got shot down years ago. Schools that function for profit have a remarkable ability to cut down on administrative overhead. There was also an example (in Kansas I think, but it was something presented years ago in a class so I don't have a link) of private companies who have come in to run schools and managed to improve education (based on test scores and parent satisfaction) while decreasing costs.
I'll call it when I read it. I've seen enough 'waste' by private companies that I won't be swayed by this argument. I'd rather have accountability delegated to a locally elected school board than to a private company that's focused on profit. Maybe it's my cynical nature at this point, but I don't trust for-profit corporations to make proper decisions regarding the education of children.
(And I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a voucher system in Kansas. That's one of my 'get the heck out of here' triggers. There might have been private companies running schools, though.)
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The voucher system is only a preferable option out of dire necessity. As in: school systems which you cannot reasonably expect to reform themselves within a matter of decades.
Vouchers create a great short term benefit but they are an ultimately hazardous coping mechanism that vampirize districts and create a heavily tiered educational system.
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:blinks: Constitutional questions? Does the Constitution have anything to say about education?
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One of the biggest problems with our schools is that virtually everyone and his dog thinks they know more about education, what's wrong with it and how to fix it than the professionals. Mothers who read one article in readers digest, lobby principals and school boards to adopt a new curriculum. Politicians legislate that school must have a class in "X". Media pundits report one isolated anecdote so many times that people think its become the norm. Preachers tell jokes about how principals would rather have crap games in the halls than prayer groups. If there is any problem in society, some one will blame the school system for it and propose some half baked education reform to fix it.
The second biggest problem in the school system is the misguided notion that everyone can succeed academically. Certainly there are some people failing who have the ability to succeed, but there are many people who don't have the native intelligence or drive to complete a high school degree let alone a college degree. As long as we insist that everyone should be able to complete high school and get into college, the standards for doing those will remain low.
Some people seem to think that policies that prevent teachers from flunking too many students are solely a reflection of bad administration. They don't seem to recognize that it is ultimately the community attitudes that drive this kind of policy, and not the schools themselves.
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quote:The system where kids attend (not the one I work for) had an assistant superintendent that recently left to take a superintendent's job. They announced that he wouldn't be replaced - that his workload would be absorbed by existing employees due to the economy. I bet there are tons of positions just like that at boards of ed all over the country that could be eliminated and that money for salary and benefits could be given back to the schools so that maybe I wouldn't have to pay for copier paper out of my own pocket.
That is an incorrect assessment. I know of several specific instances where administrative positions have been cut and the idea that their loss had no adverse impacts is simply wrong. When administrative positions are cut it means that programs are cut or the duties are passed along to already overloaded teachers in the program.
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While there are plenty that are issues of community attitudes, There are many, many policies of that stripe which are pretty much a reflection almost entirely of the administrations. They're cover mechanisms. The vast majority of the issues my mother has presently are administrators of the school acting in self-defense. Except in the cases where you have a manipulator parent (the kind that constantly assaults teachers and counselors with demands that their children be passed and/or shown special favor) it's not much of a 'community' issue; these are an individual school or district attempting to cover their asses with an artificially inflated pass rate.
In these circumstances (these many circumstances) it is not ultimately the community attitudes that drive the policy, it's an internal compensation mechanism utilized by those in administrative posts.
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I have watched school budgets decline in real dollars for three decades. When schools are facing inadequate funding, dedicated teachers and administrators bend over backwards to cut things that have the least direct impact on the classroom and the kids. That means that teachers and administrators pay the price so that the financial troubles are least visible to people outside the school system. If budget troubles are short term, this is a good thing.
But unfortunately, in recent years communities have interpreted this as an indication that the schools were wasting money in the first place and a justification for not adequately increasing funding during good economic times. Over time, the cost of these cut backs accumulates as teachers and administrators burn out, resources get strung out, programs die out and facilities wear out. But because dedicated teachers and administrators are doing their best to keep that from happening, it happens gradually and not promptly after a budget cut back, so people don't connect the deterioration of the system with the decreasing funding.
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Inner-city schools tend to have an even more delayed degridation in response to cuts, because they tend to be able to stall the decline by chewing through and spitting out Teach for America recruits, like a grinder chews through meat.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: While there are plenty that are issues of community attitudes, There are many, many policies of that stripe which are pretty much a reflection almost entirely of the administrations. They're cover mechanisms. The vast majority of the issues my mother has presently are administrators of the school acting in self-defense. Except in the cases where you have a manipulator parent (the kind that constantly assaults teachers and counselors with demands that their children be passed and/or shown special favor) it's not much of a 'community' issue; these are an individual school or district attempting to cover their asses with an artificially inflated pass rate.
In these circumstances (these many circumstances) it is not ultimately the community attitudes that drive the policy, it's an internal compensation mechanism utilized by those in administrative posts.
Sam, I don't know what systems you are looking at or what specific administrative policies you are looking at, but I'd like to know what you think motivates administrators to make these policies. You say its coverup. What exactly are they covering up?
Over the years I have seen numerous attempts to institute a minimum competency exam for high school graduation (in several different locations), usually initiated by the state legislature of the local school board. The first one I'm familiar with was tried in the 70s when I was in high school. In every case, the first round (which was often a trial round) found that a large percentage of the kids couldn't pass an exam that was around 9th grade level. Then there was an uproar by both parents that were outraged that their kid, who had completed all the other high school graduation requirements, wouldn't be allowed to pass and by the community as a whole who were flat out unwilling to tolerate the failure rates. Ultimately what happens is the test is dropped as a requirement for High School graduation in one way or another.
I guess how you interpret that depends a great deal on what you see as the cause of the very high failure rates.
I suppose that if you believe that the failure rates are the results of poor administration, then it would be logical to conclude that the administration is covering up by reducing the requirements to pass. But in this case you are using circular logic. You use the policies that reduce the requirements for passing as evidence that the administrations policies are what are causing the low pass rates.
If on the other hand, you believe that factors in the homes and communities of kids are the most important factor in their academic performance, then you will come to very different conclusions. Why would administrators be trying to cover-up that up? It makes no sense. If the schools adopt a policy like for example, kids must turn in at least 80% of homework to pass, and 70% of the kids flunk for that reason -- where would you place the blame? Based on what you've said, you'd most likely put it on the kids and their families. But you can bet that if that were to happen (70% of kids in a school fail), that it would be front page news and people wouldn't be saying -- those kids should work harder or we parents should be making sure our kids do the homework. No way, they'd be saying the teachers overload the kids with homework, asking why kids who pass the tests shouldn't pass without homework and ultimately asking for the administrator's head on a platter. So school administrators who want to keep their jobs, don't allow that kind of policy. An individual teacher in the system is likely to chafe at such a policy because they are fairly insulated from the politics of education. But you don't get to be an administrator with out have a finger on the pulse of the community and you don't stay an administrator if you allow policies that will cause a community backlash. That may be part of a vicious cycle that drags the standards down further and further, but that doesn't make administrators the root of the problem.
In America, high school graduation has become an entitlement. We think everyone should have a high school diploma and it has become common practice that everyone will get one unless they disqualify themselves by dropping out. That is a status quo that is very hard to change. Failing to get a high school diploma is a big black mark on your record. Raising the standard for passing, means that there will be people who get that black mark on their record next year who wouldn't have gotten last year and people aren't going to accept that easily.
[ September 11, 2009, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote:In America, high school graduation has become an entitlement. We think everyone should have a high school diploma and it has become common practice that everyone will get one unless they disqualify themselves by dropping out. That is a status quo that is very hard to change.
This. This. This.
Today our school board announced that they will phase out our graduation exam. My students today were laughing and cutting up in my room telling me that no matter what happened, they knew they were graduating now.
Thanks state board of education. You just made what I'm trying to teach them even MORE irrelevant in their eyes.
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Belle, it amazes me that a graduation exam would be discontinued in this age of test, test, test and accountability and NCLB. Wow, how are they going to get away with that?
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quote:Originally posted by Sala: Belle, it amazes me that a graduation exam would be discontinued in this age of test, test, test and accountability and NCLB. Wow, how are they going to get away with that?
It shouldn't. They've been pretty much done away with in one form or another in most states. The exams are still given, but you get some sort of High School Diploma whether you pass or fail.
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In Arizona, at the school district my m-i-l teaches at, a student failed the final exam, which should have kept her from graduating. She sued, the district caved and the test became completely useless.
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quote:Sam, I don't know what systems you are looking at or what specific administrative policies you are looking at, but I'd like to know what you think motivates administrators to make these policies. You say its coverup. What exactly are they covering up?
Here is a perfect set of examples. all three of these have been chosen as examples I have witnessed as well as being very similar to many other cases as they are emblematic of problematic incentives on the administrative level (as opposed to problems on the teacher level and problems on the parental level, both of which also exist).
1. A high school's math department is failing a very high percentage of their students. The superintendent of schools is starting to take heat: if the students can't pass math classes, many more of them are going to drop out, dropout rates make schools look bad. The 'solution' is for the administrators to go to the math teachers who are failing large numbers of students and begin torquing them. Meetings are called. "The students are being failed because they don't hand in work," protests the math teacher(s). They aren't learning if they're not in class, they aren't passing if they don't hand in assignments. I have an approved curriculum, they say. I give all these students ample opportunity to hand in their work. If they're in attendance but don't have their work, they can arrange with me for an extension. But if they don't hand in their work, I can't pass them. The classes are not hard.
Yes yes, we understand all that, of course, say the administrators. But we need to get these students through anyway so our dropout rate goes down. Let's us work together to figure out a way to pass these students anyway. How about we give them partial credit for work they didn't hand in and call that a 'participation grade?' How about we give them the opportunity to do a 'work portfolio' nearing the end of the school year, where they write a paper or something about what they learned in math, or give them 'independent study' credits? Just something to excuse bumping their grade up to the point where we can just move them along without them having to repeat classes.
Math teachers are angry, are torqued more by administrators, eventually are cajoled or 'moderated' into accepting new school systems that allow the school to quietly move these students along irrespective to their ability to perform in mathematics. The dropout rate is "managed" somewhat, in a way which takes the heat off the district or the administration of the schools. In one particular school which got turned into an open enrollment 'dumping ground' as I watched, this was the method employed by the principal to forestall heat on her from the district for underperformance, for five years. It began to advance into the corrective management of math graduation requirements, by removing them. Five years! This was but one tool in her litany of defense mechanisms. She was not a good principal in terms of improving or even maintaining the quality of the school; she was a good principal in terms of being able to cover her own ass by engaging in programs that push students through and artificially manage dropout and holdback rates.
Compare this to Belle's stories. 'You are no longer allowed to give students zeroes.' 'We are no longer testing for graduation.' All pristine examples of schools or districts internally managing their problems, "solving" them by removing academic standards wherever possible.
2. The Dumping Ground system. Schools get extra funding for special needs students. I do not know what the national mean is as of this year but on average a school district was getting additional funding for about 12% of their students. While there are regulations on how this extra money can be spent, these regulations are rarely airtight; in many places these funds are either technically insufficient or too mismanaged to be able to provide for the actual educational needs for these students (sometimes both). In the too-common instances where these funds are simply mismanaged, it is because the schools are essentially acting to divert as much of the excess cash-per-head of these special needs students to 'fill out' expenditure elsewhere. One way or another, they are encouraged to minimize spending on these kids when they're having enough trouble with their overall student body to begin with; the special ed / special needs students are tacitly written off as something that is best deprioritized and 'coasted,' (see: 'lets just figure out a way not to fail them').
Sometimes it's not that blatantly crass, it's just that sufficient in-place systems and resources for these special needs kids simply do not exist and require major implementation costs to actually start, and the schools simply don't want to bother or don't think they could wrestle it through the bureaucracy. At any rate, the special ed departments in schools facing this practice often just accept this as a fact of life, something they are powerless to influence.
The end result is utterly insufficient special-needs departments in schools which do little more than babysit students and try to minimize the cost of managing them as much as possible. A favorite tactic is to pawn them off to normal classes as often as possible, since the less small-size classes they have to take in a day, the less resource-intensive these students are.
The contrast is overwhelming. Let's take the story of "sally," a very real special-needs student who travels between District A and District B when her mom moves to a new job. Sally is very autistic and requires a wheelchair to get around and is, for the most part, the kind of student which really is not capable of much academic advancement; she's more being babysat. She benefits from parapro involvement and small classes with teachers skilled at handling students with autistic spectrum disorders. In District A, which actively engaged in the proper management of special needs students, sally was provided most of this; her case management was a little bit of an overall loss for the district as a whole, but that was okay here; they had a functioning special-needs system and, present that functional capacity, they engaged upon it.
When sally was moved to District B, she was effectively transferred to a school that did not have funding problems but had still decided to coast on not establishing or maintaining an effective special-needs department; the priority was simply to pawn sally off to as many teachers of normal classes as possible (when sally is put in a standard-size class as often as possible, the school has to "waste" less on limited-size classes for her and all other special-needs students, which have to "spend" more teachers on less students).
As anyone who has recently come out of any school district that follows this sort of dumping ground strategy, schools have favorite classes to 'pawn' their special needs students off to. Sally is put in no less than three already overburdened Draw Paint 1 classes, because art classes seem like a great place to just have these students put to sit for hours on end (or in the case of moderately more functional students, perhaps to doodle and make messes). Despite the fact that these classes are already at full capacity, she is shuttled in there every morning, hustled into a corner where her bulky powered chair will only block two or three seats, and is kept away from artistic supplies (they would be dangerous to her).
The teacher of this Draw Paint 1 class is intensely frustrated by this, in addition to finding it tragic. Her position is that the student should not be in this class at all, for many reasons.
For starters this student has 'sat through' two draw paint 1 classes already, while there's tons of students lining up to get into this class because they desperately want to move up the art track.
She has her hands full already with a class of 30+ students, and it is difficult enough already for her to try to help out everyone in a class of that size.
Sally is disruptive and actually has to be occasionally kept from harming herself. She will, from time to time, start babbling loudly or thrashing in the middle of a lesson demonstration, wasting ten or more minutes as the teacher has to go track down today's wayward parapro. At times, she will start engaging in repetitive motions that will cause her to break her own skin, causing an even more urgent disruption, setting the class behind its syllabus schedule even more dramatically.
"I am not trained to," says the teacher, "nor should I be expected to have to deal with this student." She feels rightly that sally should not be placed on her as a management concern. When she is, the rest of the students suffer for it, but every year sally is hustled into a basic room with the expectation that teachers are simply going to babysit her.
Sally, a self-harming and disruptive student as a result of a tragic condition that requires very special attention, is managed incompetently; it seems to come with harm both to sally as well as the general student populace, and the true reason for this incompetence is not exposed for years until a particularly violent incident involving other special-needs students: a mentally disabled student with severe behavioral and aggression issues who should never have been kept at a standard high school at all went berserk and broke a parapro's jaw and tore off naked into the hallway in a dangerous manner before being clubbed down by multiple security guards. Suddenly this special needs student situation manifests as a paramount issue to the school board, who eventually learn that the reason for the systemic neglect was, essentially, to protect the district's 'bottom line' in spite of overspending in other areas, including a complete refurnishing of the posh district administration offices in the south of town. The schools had a decisive lack of realistically qualified special needs teachers, instead using the department as an excellent place to reassign teachers when they were not working out in regular positions but couldn't exactly be let go without a draining ordeal from the unions. Bad special needs teachers or parapros are really bad, since their students require such specialized management. In addition, when special needs departments are particularly mismanaged, there arises the issue of vastly disparate needs groups being clustered together into the same facilities. Students with relatively minor issues like visual impairment needs or dyslexia issues are, as a matter of course, put in the same classrooms as students with behavioral problems, drug-related issues and insubordination problems, and the severely mentally disabled, where they effectively receive no education. Talk to a number of parents with special needs kids who hail from these numerous districts and you will encounter many problem stories related to this sort of systemic neglect.
This whole situation, still not even completely managed to this day, to the best of my knowledge, was not the product of real financial necessity (though in some districts it is!) but was the result of systematic neglect and repurposing on the administrative level, for administrative interests. Cut spending in one area, you cover up overspending in others; in the most egregious cases, overspending on sports or executive concerns. Sally was eventually removed from district B to a special educational program provided for at private expense.
3. The third situation is one I will only describe very generally: it involves the administrators of schools in open enrollment/busing districts purposefully neglecting their ESL and english immersion programs in the hopes of driving down hispanic populations in their schools, working to prevent them from becoming a minority-clustering school in that district and to avoid ESL issues on NCLB testing (which must be taken in english for any student after three years) as well as to reduce the issues related to language IEP's. Scummy, but effective relative to the needs and wants of administrators.
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quote:Originally posted by Sala: Belle, it amazes me that a graduation exam would be discontinued in this age of test, test, test and accountability and NCLB. Wow, how are they going to get away with that?
It shouldn't. They've been pretty much done away with in one form or another in most states. The exams are still given, but you get some sort of High School Diploma whether you pass or fail.
I'm not a huge fan of the CAHSEE, and some of the court cases are still pending. But so far, it IS still in place.
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When I was in school, you could graduate with a high school diploma, and you could also get a regents diploma in a variety of specialties. I got regents diplomas in math and science.
It seems to me that the concept of grade inflation and social promotion needs redefining, or just better understanding. Students perform better when they are learning material that is easily mastered. That means that we should present material at the correct level for each student to understand so that every student should be able to average A's and B's. But when teachers (or schools) do that, they are accused of dumbing down education. To do it right, each student should be presented with material that is right for them, which doesn't mean that the curriculum is dumbed down. In a perfect world, every student should get straight A's, but it should be easily understood that an A in math for one student doesn't mean the same as an A in math for another student.
We take a diploma to mean that a student has learned a certain amount of "stuff". Employers don't look over your high school transcript and see that you completed algebra, but not analytical geometry, and make an assessment of your skills based on that information. They want a quick look at your diploma and then just want to be able to assume that means you have certain basic skill set. It would make much more sense to me to eliminate the diploma, and replace it with a transcript. "Here's what I learned," is much more valuable than: "I graduated."
There is a quote: "Education isn't about filling a bucket, it's about lighting a fire." I've seen students who couldn't read, but were enthusiastic learners. I've also seen students who could reel off facts that they'd memorized, but who hated school and did everything they could to undermine their own educations. It seems to me that prescribed curricula, no matter how basic, is just about filling the bucket. Education fails our students because forcing kids to learn some bureaucrat's wish list is guaranteed to put out the fire.
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quote:Belle, it amazes me that a graduation exam would be discontinued in this age of test, test, test and accountability and NCLB. Wow, how are they going to get away with that?
I don't want to answer for Belle and I'm not trying to...but I had to bite on this...
No Child Left Behind is one of the drivers behind, or a direct result of, the perceived 'entitlement' of a high school diploma.
Do you honestly think the people of your state, or this country, would stand for legislation that mandated a high school graduation exit exam, the results of which would be used to determine whether a diploma was awarded or not?
Schools are being held more accountable, all right. They're being held accountable for graduating all their students. That seems to be the legacy of NCLB.
Personally, I've become pretty liberal with my belief that some students should not graduate. I'm perfectly content with the idea that some students will fail to graduate from high school and some (perhaps even more) will fail to graduate from college. I'm not saying that we should remove all accountability from schools, though.
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They say they aren't making things easier for the students because they are replacing the grad exam with "end of course exams." The idea being, if a student takes biology in 9th grade, they'll take an end of course exam when they complete biology instead of taking the biology portion of the graduation exam.
What I have not determined yet, is whether that biology exam is standardized across the state or if they are just saying that any student who passes their final exam gets credit for the course and therefore gets a diploma. Having seen some of the final exams that are given, I can easily see how a person could be given a passing score on an "end of course exam" and not truly have learned anything. I've seen some teachers who make their final exams open book.
And Tstorm is exactly right. The NCLB requirements factor graduation rate into the adequate yearly progress rating. If your drop out rate is too high - you don't make AYP. I can almost guarantee this change is directly related to Alabama's high dropout rate - they figure if they make it easier to graduate fewer people will drop out and more schools will make AYP.
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Samp, Everyone of your examples support my point. Administrators create bad policies in response to unrealistic expectations from the community.
Take your first example, what were the administrators alternatives? He/she could have supported the Math teachers, kept the high failing rate and high drop out rates, but then they would have failed AYP and people would be blaming the administrator the high drop out rates. The administrator would be getting even more pressure from the school board and the legislature to do something about drop out rates and when he/ she couldn't fix the problem without lower the standards, he/she would most likely be replaced by someone who was willing to do that.
Ideally I suppose, the teacher and the administrator would come up with some plan to get more students to turn in the homework. But what tools do they have to accomplish that which they aren't already using? They can't nail the kids feet to the floor and pump math down their throats. Ninety percent of education has to come from the learners not the teachers. It the learners are not willing to do their part, the teacher is left with few if any options.
NCLB simply codified what the community expected from schools without actually providing any ideas about how schools should meet those expectations or providing them with any resources to do it. Its just one in a long line of examples of how the community expectations for schools are completely out of touch with the on the ground reality of teaching and learning.
[ September 12, 2009, 09:11 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote: They say they aren't making things easier for the students because they are replacing the grad exam with "end of course exams." The idea being, if a student takes biology in 9th grade, they'll take an end of course exam when they complete biology instead of taking the biology portion of the graduation exam.
Ahh, now I understand. We also use EOC exams here in Georgia instead of high school graduation exams. I was reading it as there being no exams, not a transfer from one type to another.
Posts: 315 | Registered: Dec 2005
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quote:Samp, Everyone of your examples support my point. Administrators create bad policies in response to unrealistic expectations from the community.
Take your first example, what were the administrators alternatives? He/she could have supported the Math teachers, kept the high failing rate and high drop out rates, but then they would have failed AYP and people would be blaming the administrator the high drop out rates.
Considering AYP wasn't in effect when this began and that this condition was created by a school's administration trying to avoid accountability to the district's analysis, can't say you're right on this one. The administration was trying to cover up evidence of a dire math education situation in that school, one that wouldn't really be revealed until standardized testing for the state broke the issue.
besides, I wouldn't really consider "a school with a troubled math program should reform that troubled math program" to be an unrealistic expectation from a community, and that's pretty much what it came down to once NCLB was in effect, because now it was no longer sufficient merely to get the kids to cruise through.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Well today I talked to a high school teacher who has heard more than I have and her understanding is that the EOC exam is actually the exact same exam they used as the Graduation Exam. The only difference is when it's taken - the Grad exam used to be given in the junior year and all subjects were given together - you'd take biology and reading one day and English and math the next for example. Now, the EOC comes at the conclusion of the course, which actually will work better for those students who take biology in their freshman year. They won't have to wait two years before taking the exam.
Looking at it in that light, it seems to be a logical choice and without any lowering of standards - the students still have to prove mastery of the same material. So if what I heard today is correct, I withdraw any objection to the change. Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Looking at it in that light, it seems to be a logical choice and without any lowering of standards - the students still have to prove mastery of the same material. So if what I heard today is correct, I withdraw any objection to the change.
It is better than I originally thought, but it does lower standards in a back handed way. The new procedure, tests what the students have mastered at the conclusion of the course. The old standard, tested what they retained a year later. Retention is an important aspect of mastery and they will no longer be testing that. Retention isn't 100% for anyone. Assuming the passing level is kept at the same point, this is definitely lowering the standard.
Since not all students take the classes at the same time, this procedure is arguable more equitable and possibly justified. But don't fool yourself into think it doesn't lower the standards.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: Well today I talked to a high school teacher who has heard more than I have and her understanding is that the EOC exam is actually the exact same exam they used as the Graduation Exam. The only difference is when it's taken - the Grad exam used to be given in the junior year and all subjects were given together - you'd take biology and reading one day and English and math the next for example. Now, the EOC comes at the conclusion of the course, which actually will work better for those students who take biology in their freshman year. They won't have to wait two years before taking the exam.
Looking at it in that light, it seems to be a logical choice and without any lowering of standards - the students still have to prove mastery of the same material. So if what I heard today is correct, I withdraw any objection to the change.
I was still in high school when they started the EOC exams in Georgia. It was still in its trial phase; however, so I also got to take the Georgia High School Graduation Test. They were definitely similar to the GHSGT and were treated by the school just as any other standardized test. I don't recall particulars but I'd assume having the test at the end of each course allows for more questions on a single topic.
Posts: 96 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Considering AYP wasn't in effect when this began and that this condition was created by a school's administration trying to avoid accountability to the district's analysis, can't say you're right on this one.
Irrelevant. High drop out rates were considered a problem long before AYP. You said yourself that this decision to keep the school from looking bad. Looking bad to whom? If it was just the district, why did the district care about high drop out rates? School board pressure? Pressure from the legislature? If you keep following the line, it eventually leads the community, and the fact that most members of the community expect schools to keep kids from dropping out. It still boils down to community expectations.
quote:The administration was trying to cover up evidence of a dire math education situation in that school, one that wouldn't really be revealed until standardized testing for the state broke the issue.
That isn't consistent with what you said before. You said students were failing because they didn't turn in homework. How is that evidence of a serious problem in math education and why would a school want to cover it up. If students couldn't pass a standardized exam even after completing all work attempting all the work assigned in class, I'd agree it was the math programs fault, but you didn't say that was happen. You said the students were failing because they did not turn in home work. Was this the case or wasn't it?
You can't possibly hold the school responsible for the students not doing homework. Very few people can learn math without doing homework, I can't imagine any reforms that would have made it possible for most people to master math without doing homework. Do you really think it is the schools responsibility to force students to do homework? How can they do that? What tools do they have which they weren't already using? If the community expects that some minimum fraction of kids will pass math and those kids refuse to do the homework required for them to pass, what options do the schools have? They try harder to motivate the kids to do homework and if that fails, they either lower the standard for passing or fall short of the community expectations. The problem lies in the communities refusal to hold the kids and families responsible and placing the full burden on the schools. Its not a simple question of lilly livered administrators.
Policies that allow students to pass without doing the homework may lead to a vicious cycle that results in yet fewer students doing homework, but once again these policies are a symptom of the underlying problem not the cause.
At some point, you have to recognize the responsibility of the student in all this. No one can force kids to learn. If they don't cooperate and do their homework, they aren't going to learn. One of the biggest problems in American education is that we hold schools responsible but not kids. On of the biggest problems was with NCLB (and all similarly motivated programs that preceded it) was that it placed 100% of the responsibility on the schools for something that was not 100% in their control.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:I don't recall particulars but I'd assume having the test at the end of each course allows for more questions on a single topic.
Not if Belle is correct that the only difference is when the exam is administered. As I said before, this new system is arguably more equitable, but it is also clearly a lower standard since the old procedure required that students be able to retain material if they had mastered it, and the new standard does not.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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My favorite was on the TAKS (the Texas graduation exam) that first year. Students had to 'pass' the exam to graduate, but on the math section "passing" was a score of only 42%. Of course, many kids STILL failed, but even the ones that passed may not have known more than half of the material.
Another trick I saw played at the school where I taught - "homeschooling". I had at least 5 who I TAUGHT drop out of school, but at the end of the year the school recorded only two drop outs. How did they get away with this? They convinced the parents to "withdraw" their children and claim they would "homeschool" them. It was BS of course! One of the mothers who did this didn't even LIVE with her child. It was a pure cheat to the system!
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
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Except, Rabbit, two years after you took biology, the school would re-arrange your schedule for several weeks and allow you to attend a "refresher" course with the biology teacher to get you ready for the grad exam.
One reason the state board said they made this change is to alleviate the interruption of teaching and learning that the grad exam caused. I think it might actually be beneficial. A significant amount of time was dedicated to remediating students who didn't pass the grad exam. Basically, you would make sure they passed by giving them multiple tries and having teachers doing grad exam prep before each try. This might actually save instructional time and be a more accurate measure of what students actually know, rather than what we've spoon fed them through grad exam "prep sessions" which is nothing more than teaching to the test.
I'm actually coming around to the idea that it's probably a good change.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:At some point, you have to recognize the responsibility of the student in all this. No one can force kids to learn.
If you at all think that is either my position or my point, you're just talking past me now.
Then please explain yourself better. In the example you gave where the school administration forced teachers to wave the homework requirements in math, what was the school doing wrong in the first place? Why do you see the fact that so many students weren't turning in homework as a failure on the part of the schools math education program? What is it you think the school was trying to cover up? Was the school doing something that made it unnecessarily difficult for the students to complete the homework? Was there something they could have been doing but weren't which would have resulted in more homework being done?
So far what you have told me is that the students were failing because they hadn't completed homework. The administrators were concerned the low pass rates would be blamed on the school system, so they lowered the standards. You accuse the schools of doing this to cover up there inadequate math program but the only problem you've told me with the program was that a huge fraction of the students weren't doing the homework.
Can you see how that looks like you are holding the school responsible for something that should be the students responsibility?
Please tell me what I'm missing.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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For starters, none of my points are predicated on the idea that I think you can 'force kids to learn.'
These students who were coming into that school were a problem precisely because their earlier schools had sort of 'passed the buck' on their math education. Rather than represent this resulting lack of math performance or participation, the administrators instead opted for an artificially sustained graduation rate. They took a real problem and acted in a way which was for the benefit of the adults alone, not for the benefit of education.
Yes, I recognize the responsibilities of students. I can conversely say that you need to appropriate a fair amount of recognition for responsibility that lies on the schools, when it comes to districts and schools that are ultimately dysfunctional. There are plenty of adults behaving badly in these situations. Many of them are part of the system. Many of them are protected by the system.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: Except, Rabbit, two years after you took biology, the school would re-arrange your schedule for several weeks and allow you to attend a "refresher" course with the biology teacher to get you ready for the grad exam.
One reason the state board said they made this change is to alleviate the interruption of teaching and learning that the grad exam caused. I think it might actually be beneficial. A significant amount of time was dedicated to remediating students who didn't pass the grad exam. Basically, you would make sure they passed by giving them multiple tries and having teachers doing grad exam prep before each try. This might actually save instructional time and be a more accurate measure of what students actually know, rather than what we've spoon fed them through grad exam "prep sessions" which is nothing more than teaching to the test.
I'm actually coming around to the idea that it's probably a good change.
I didn't mean to argue that this was overall a bad choice. I can see many advantages to the system, including those you cite. On the whole, I think its probably a better system. But it is a lower standard, even taking into account refresher courses. S
Students who barely pass under the new system, will retain less of what they learned about biology after graduation than they would have under the old system. Retention is an important measure of mastery. The requirement that students remember the material at the end of the class is easier to meet than the requirement that they remember it two or three years later. It is a lower standard.
As for the problems of teaching to the test, this system simply shifts those problems from the refresher courses into the regular courses. It won't eliminate them. Remedial work will still have to be done for students who don't pass the test the first time. Poor students will still require multiple tries to pass the exams and teachers will still be required to prep them before each try. These problems can only be reduced if more students pass on the first try. That may in fact happen under the new system, but only because the standard for passing is effectively lower.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Your point about retention is a good one, and you are correct that remediation will still have to occur. No doubt about it.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: Your point about retention is a good one, and you are correct that remediation will still have to occur. No doubt about it.
Thanks, and as I said, the new system has many advantages. On the whole I think I would support it. I just think its important to recognize the caveats.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote: The administrators were concerned the low pass rates would be blamed on the school system, so they lowered the standards. You accuse the schools of doing this to cover up there inadequate math program but the only problem you've told me with the program was that a huge fraction of the students weren't doing the homework.
Maybe you should read this sentence again. You name one problem, then say you can only see another one.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
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Let me take a crack at this and see if I understand what The Rabbit is saying.
1. Students were not doing the homework. 2. Schools were concerned about the low passing rates being blamed on the schools instead of the students. 3. Schools lowered the standards to pass more students.
Assuming we're just talking about the math department in SamPrimary's post, I think I understand what Rabbit's driving at.
In Sam's example, the district 'managed the problem internally', which (if I'm understanding her position correctly) is a cover-up. In summary, the district lowered the standards for students, to enable more to pass. This does not solve the underlying issue, it merely hides it from public knowledge; hence, the cover-up.
I'm not sure I agree with this, but I trust Sam to let me know if I'm misrepresenting her position. That would not be my intention, here.
What other steps could the district have taken? Assuming that "take no action" results in public disclosure of the failing students and condemnation from the public that the school is failing. I'm interested in what other things might have been done. For the sake of the discussion, let's assume that there aren't infinite resources to tap.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:In Sam's example, the district 'managed the problem internally', which (if I'm understanding her position correctly) is a cover-up.
And it's exactly what Rabbit *asked* for:
quote:Sam, I don't know what systems you are looking at or what specific administrative policies you are looking at, but I'd like to know what you think motivates administrators to make these policies. You say its coverup. What exactly are they covering up?
They had a problem they had to deal with, students unwilling or unable to do math work. Instead of dealing with it they instead create new problems (no real academic standards) to cover up the issue so they do not have to put themselves at risk tackling the open issue.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: When I was in school, you could graduate with a high school diploma, and you could also get a regents diploma in a variety of specialties. I got regents diplomas in math and science.
That's because you (clearly) went to high school in New York State.
While I have some issues with the NY Department of Education, the Regents Exams are one of the things about NY that I think should be used as a model for more states.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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In NY you can no longer just get a high school diploma. You have to get a diploma issued by the state, and as a result of state testing.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Back in the 1970s, as an enlisted Airman, I applied for the Airman’s Education and Commissioning Program. You had to have 60 hours of college credit to qualify and then you had to complete CLEP (College Level Examination Program) tests to prove that you had learned something in those courses. After that, you still had to pass a local board interview and compete with everyone else who had applied. Success meant a full Air Force scholarship to complete your degree and a shot at Officer Training School. After two tries I made it. My point is that testing by itself is not bad. It has to be backed up by actual course work and not just test prep—as seems to be the practice today.
Posts: 8 | Registered: May 2009
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