Hatrack River Forum: Our public educational responsibility: sufficiency or parity

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :

So I'm having a conversation with a friend and an interesting dilema grew out of it. I figured I'd share.

To set the stage, I was talking about a story I had read about a dispute going on in a nearby township. It's split east and west, with the east side being much more affluent than the west. (I want to interject an EAST SIDE!!! in here, but I don't know many people will get it, especially without the chest pound and e-sign.) Anyway, the parents of the students in the one public school CB-East donated private money and solicited corporate donations in order to build a new football stadium. This apparently brought up a problem because up till now, both schools had been using the somewhat run-down field at CB-West. Now, the East kids would be playing at the as yet unconstructed new standium and the West kids would remain at the old field. Crap, this is getting too long. Anyway, the West parents are protesting this new construction on the grounds that it's unfair and all. Their demand is that the new field not be built.

The football thing is not really the point I'm trying to get at. In the course of discussing this, we brought up other things perhaps more central to the educational mission of the public school system that are also party to this income disparity problem. A good example would SAT prep courses, although more complicated ones could include quality teachers, materials, and experiences.

I think it's obvious that kids whose parents can afford to pay for SAT prep courses have an advantage of the kids whose parents can't. And that brings up an interesting problem. Is that unfair? Even if it's unfair, can we (and should we) reasonably do something about it?

I was taking the line that the mission of the public school system is to provide a sufficient education to its students. My friend countered with the idea that if the education is not up to par with what other kids are getting, then these kids are being disadvantaged. Especially when we're talking about getting into colleges, sufficiency is based on comparative, not absolute, standards. As we move even further into a knowledge economy, these disparities threaten us with an increase in the generational poverty issues that we're already experiencing.

I honestly don't know where I am after this discussion (and I'm willing to bet I'm doing a bad job of summing it up. It was about 30 minutes of two very intelligent, passionate people going at it. Hard to compress and hard really to capture. I didn't even get into the, to me, terribly interesting differences in what different classes of kids expect they can get out of the system and the learned helplessness implications.) Despite my trepidation that everyone is going to come down on one side, I figured I'd share this hear and see what people thought.

Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :

I think the problem is that very often, the only solutions people can think of for educational disparities are coercive solutions. Not letting the one school build a new facility because the other school doesn't have it is a good example.

In Orange County, Florida, a couple of years ago, the school district forcibly moved all National Board Certified teachers away from their schools into low-achieving schools. On the surface, that makes a kind of sense: why do the most advantaged students seem to get the best teachers? Inexperienced teachers start off in the worst schools and with the worst classes, and, if they survive, transfer out as soon as they can, so that a new crop of inexperienced teachers can take their place failing to reach these disadvantaged kids. So, forcing the "best" teachers to teach the neediest kids is a good idea, no?

Well, no. I personally teach a mile away from my home, and that is very important to me. I specifically sought out this job at this campus, and would not have accepted a job anywhere else in my county. Also, I already paid my dues. I feel like I should be rewarded for my experience, and the uncommonness of my credentials--sort of a free-market approach to job vacancies.

Are these our only choices, then? Abandon the weakest kids or force teachers into those jobs against their will (at the risk of losing more teachers in a time of shortage)? These are the only choices a lot of people see. People tend to instinctively see everything as a dichotomy. But there could be other possibilities. Maybe it would be possible to make people want to teach at the traditionally underperforming schools. For instance, maybe teachers at those schools could earn 20% more per year (I recognize that salaries are a zero-sum game, but I'm just suggesting some kind of playing around with the salary structure.) There must be a break-even point where some people will decide the extra money makes teaching in low-achieving schools worth the sacrifice. Or there can be non-(directly)-financial incentives. Give teachers in those schools more planning time per day, or smaller class-sizes, or some other kind of perk that makes it so that people want to work there, instead of forcing people into it--essentially punishing people for their loyalty and uncommon credentials.

I don't bring this up as if it's the only important issue, but as an example of a situation where people only see two possibilities because they're not trying hard enough to find alternatives.

I think that's at the root of disparity in education: people only seeing the obvious choices, and not trying to find creative solutions.

Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :

quote:

I was taking the line that the mission of the public school system is to provide a sufficient education to its students. My friend countered with the idea that if the education is not up to par with what other kids are getting, then these kids are being disadvantaged.

That's the argument in a nutshell. I think the problem is competition. We thrive on it, or at least appreciate its advantages, but the constant competition these kids face from grade school through life forces me to take your friend's position seriously.

Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :

I think you're definitely correct that there are major differences in education level based on class. However, I don't really think you can ever eradicate those differences. People will always want to give their children an advantage and the wealthy have the greatest ability to do that. We can try and raise the standard of public education, but short of facist practices we can't get rid of the disparity.

Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :

It is unfair to the better students too, if you remove good teachers because they do well on tests, and stick them with the newer, less experienced teachers...

I don't agree with the comparitive model at all.

Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :

Right, Kwea. My point, though, is that it may be possible to find a more natural way to make the distribution more even. Incentivize what you want somehow instead of taking heavy-handed measures.

Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :

My main problem is the sense of entitlement that's so prevalent among the lower economic class. They're more likely to say, He got that and we should get that too. Instead of going out and earning it themselves they want things given to them and to insure they get them they relentlessly beat the 'equality' drum.

People are going to be more and less successful. There's no way around that.

I guess my approach to this is to put myself as a student in both schools. Whether I have access to an SAT prep class has little to do with my scores on the SAT. The fact that one school doesn't have the prep course indicates nothing more than they didn't want one enough to go out and get it. If you give them one anyway, though a lot of students my use it I bet many of them won't pay attention to what is being offered.

Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :

When I was a student-teacher, I got to experience both the Cleveland School of the Arts -- a private school in Cleveland's ghetto that, despite being well-funded compared to the nearby public schools, still suffered from routine desk and textbook shortages -- and a public school in Winnetka, Illinois, which is a suburb so wealthy that they've been able to spend their local tax monies on four gymnasiums and two swimming pools, having already put a networked computer on every desk by 2001.

Since then, I have firmly supported the collection of tax dollars at a state level, rather than a local level, to be doled out per capita to localities.

Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :

That's an interesting idea, Tom.

Posted by Goo Boy (Member # 7752) on :

There is an admittedly minor problem with that: if funding is handled at the state level, then salaries will be normalized across the state (or not, but that would be an even bigger can of worms). Right now smaller counties pay less, because they have less money, but the trade off for that is that the cost of living in those counties is lower, and these counties tend not to have the problems of urban school districts. If salaries were leveled across the state, that would benefit me immensely, because I live in a poorer area with, theoretically, a lower cost of living. (It doesn't quite work like this, thanks to the tourists. [Grumble]

) However, this would cause a mass exodus of teachers from Miami and Jacksonville, and possibly Orlando and Tampa as well.

I also wonder how much clunkier collective bargaining would be when done across the state level. I already find our teachers union unresponsive to my personal priorities.

Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :

Would the state be able to apply a cost-of-living factor to a base salary?

I remember the situation you described Joe. One of the ideas at the time was to pay teachers more if they would work in low-achieving schools, but the union was opposed to it.

Posted by Goo Boy (Member # 7752) on :

I favor applying an economic model to filling job vacancies. Harder to fill vacancies should be paid more. Of course, I think this should extend to math and science teachers . . . [Wink]

(We used to do that too, until the union had a cow.)

(I think implementation would be problematic if you actually dropped some salaries to raise others, but I believe, based on previous salary schedules and bonus schedules I have seen, that this would not actually be necessary. Just have some salaries grow at a smaller rate, and perhaps consider willingness to teach at a failing school in the same sort of category as possessing an extra degree or a National Board certification.)