quote:Oh, and I went to a public high school, which was probably better than the local private school.
I have taught in both public and private schools. There are good and bad schools in both systems. One difference is that bad private schools tend to go out of business. Bad public schools have no such worries. Class sizes in public schools tend to be larger than private schools. Teachers in public schools also tend to have more unnecessary (in my opinion)paperwork than in private schools. I prefer teaching in private schools because I find I am permitted to focus on teaching.
quote:if someone chooses to have faith in the Bible instead of science, then it is perfectly consistent.
The nice thing about science is that it isn't based on faith. It is based on observable phenomena which are testable by experiment.
IvyGirl wrote:
quote:Such as, how do you explain how many mammals walk on land, but there are some, such as whales, that live in the water? What, they got out of the water and then decided they wanted to go back in?
Organisms do not "decide" to do something in an evolutionary sense. Species are molded as a consequence of the environments they find themselves in. While natural selection is not conscious and does not truly "decide", it is one of the mechanisms by which species change. To address your question about whales, let's take, as a starting point, a mammal species similar to dogs. Now imagine that this species' main prey escapes predation by escaping into the water. Some dogs are better adapted to the water than others. Short, oily hair that repels water and decreases drag is better than long hair that absorbs water. Flat, webbed feet work better as paddles than rounded, non-webbed feet. These variations exist now. If such dogs were more successful at capturing their prey, they would contribute a greater amount of their genes to the next generation. As a result, the next generation would have more short-oily-haired dogs with flat webbed feet. As the population spent more and more time in the water, animals with better insulation against losing heat to the water would have an advantage over those with less insulation. As a result, a subcutaneous layer of fat would become thicker over the generations as those with thinner fat would be at a selective disadvantage. Another thing that would be advantageous would be for the animal not to have to raise its' head very far out of the water to breathe. It takes energy to raise the head, and it also makes it easier to be spotted. As a result, animals with nostrils higher on the head would have a selective advantage.
Is the scenario I presented above true? Dogs as we know them did not exist, but animals like them did. The fossil evidence supports the changes in the paw to flipper and the migration of nostrils from the front of the muzzle to the top of the head. There's a good, easily accessable segment in the PBS Evolution series on this.
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Private schools, on average, are better than public schools. I don't think anyone would argue this, especially with the teacher-student ratio being lower in private schools, and the fact that most private school teachers get paid more.
IvyGirl's post also disturbed me. I have met her and her mother at KamaCon, and they are both very nice people. They did not seem ignorant or religious fundamentalist in any way shape or form. Obviously then, the problem is likely in the educational system. But how do you make sure the teachers are smart enough to answer the student's questions accurately? Shouldn't teachers who don't know the answers at least know enough to say, "I don't know, but I can look it up tonight and tell you all about it tomorrrow"? This just enforces the idea I have that America is not doing enough to train teachers and not spending enough money to get the really smart people to teach kids.
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"Private schools, on average, are better than public schools. I don't think anyone would argue this, especially with the teacher-student ratio being lower in private schools, and the fact that most private school teachers get paid more."
Private school teachers usually make significantly less than public school teachers, actually. This varies, though. I appleid for a position at a Catholic school six years ago and they offered me 18,000 dollars. it was a lovely school, but I could not afford to work there.
There are some horrid private schools, and some phenomenal public schools. For public schools, it is all about location, and therefore tax base. For both, it is about class size, cohesiveness of staff, and connectedness of curriculum. (just my opinion, mind you)
There IS a lot of ridiculous paperwork, too. We were just told we had to put any email communication we had with a parent into their file. Ouch! I love to communicate with parents who have email, but I am not going through that when I already have a hundred papers to correct each day.
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posted
Just for the record, I believe FG is a religious fundamentalist, although I don't know how that pertains to their outlook on evolution and science in general.
posted
From an economic standpoint, private schools must be "better" in some way than public schools, else no one would pay a premium to obtain a service otherwise available for free.
Of course, "better" in this case just means "the customer perceives some advantage." That advantage could be the sports team, the religious affiliation, the fully-equipped biochem lab, or the fact that the public schools have kicked junior out for setting the gym on fire.
Since it's impossible to assign values to school along a single dimension, it's impossible to create a list of schools in order from "best" to "worst." School A could be better than School B by one measure and worse by another.
Of course, it's possible to take 2 schools, do an exhaustive comparison of every factor, and arive at a decision that one is "better" than the other. There are even probably many pairs of schools where most people would agree on the outcome. But parents place different weights on different factors. Edit: And there are parents for whom a single factor is so important that they can easily rank schools in a list.
The fact that some parents are willing to make serious sacrifices to send their kids to private school means that they perceive something to be better their. But all you can say is this private school is better for that child according to the perceptions of the parent.
posted
I don't understand what it is about evolution that scares parents. It's just a scientific idea, not a moral one, and not one that is particularly inspiring to kids. All you have to do, if you are a creationist, is send your kid to school, and when he comes home, ask, "What did you learn about?" If he says, "Evolution," then you say, "People outside our religion sometimes believe in evolution, but we don't. We believe that the animal were created much more recently by God." And that's it. End of discussion.
I have never understood the reasoning behind trying to shape your kids' beliefs by preventing them from even hearing ideas put forward by other faiths and systems of thought. Someday, they'll be adults, and they will hear this stuff anyway. If it matters to you that they remain steadfast in the beliefs you have taught them, then for heaven's sake, make sure they get to hear what other people think, and then teach them your opinions on the same subjects. I mean, do you really want them to be shocked and horrified when they find out that there are other ideas in the world? Sheesh.
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I agree Dag...(don't have a heart attack or anything... ).
Value added education means that the parent sees some value in it...not that they are always better academically. A lot of times they are, but not always.
Sometimes the values are religious in nature, and that is a valid point. If you went to Catholic School, you might want your kids to do so as well, so they get a good foundation in religious teachings as well as the 3 R's.
Sometimes that value is educational. Smaller class sizes, better equipment, more student involvment...
And sometimes it is social. There is a whole class of people who thing that it is important to go to the "right" school, even down to kindergardens....so that the right type of social connections are made right from the beginning.
All of these are completely valid views, providing the parent foots the bill rather than the public. (see, even I knew it couldn't last... )
posted
One of the greatest advantages of private school (imho) is that parents chose to send their children there, and that the school can be selective about who they admit.
Therefore, you have a school body which contains "desirable" students whose parents are involved in their education.
Unfortunately, in some cases (especially in inner cities and the rural south) this leaves the public schools bereft of parental involvement, and while there are "desirable" students, there are also the "undesirables," which the public school is powerless over, unless they cross a legal line that allows them to be expelled.
These are generally the schools that people talk about when they say that American public schools are failing our children.
I'm curious, has anyone here read the Sandia Report?
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quote: Therefore, you have a school body which contains "desirable" students whose parents are involved in their education.
"Desirable to who?" is my question.
Many of the private schools around here are full of kids that were expelled from public schools, or got into alot of trouble in them.
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quote:I have never understood the reasoning behind trying to shape your kids' beliefs by preventing them from even hearing ideas put forward by other faiths and systems of thought. Someday, they'll be adults, and they will hear this stuff anyway. If it matters to you that they remain steadfast in the beliefs you have taught them, then for heaven's sake, make sure they get to hear what other people think, and then teach them your opinions on the same subjects. I mean, do you really want them to be shocked and horrified when they find out that there are other ideas in the world? Sheesh.
posted
I haven't seen whatever the original thread is, but I can't seem to let a thread on education pass by without sticking in my two cents.
I too have taught (and attended) both private and public schools. I wouldn't say it's a given that one type is "better" than the other in any all around way. There are many excellent private schools (by all accounts, the one I worked at for six years is considered one of them--we taught kids with such last names as Bush, Estefan, Davis, Dawson, Arison, Morris, Simpson, Iglesias, Gibb, and Taylor, as well as others for whom those just mentioned were insufferably nouveau--as is the one I attended.) But there are many that are "better" to paying customers, as Dag noted, for nonacademic reasons. I specifically would not want to work in an urban public school, and avoided it when I lived in an urban area. But I can't honestly see much of a difference, from an academic standpoint, between the public schools I have worked in full-time (and the ones I subbed in years ago before I began my full-time career) and the private schools I have been involved in.
In my opinion, the main factors keeping public schools from being better are, in descending order of importance, the difficulty in kicking out trouble-makers, the low pay for teachers (relative to expected qualifications), the weight of bureaucracy, and the size of both classes and schools.
Honestly, though, most of those are issues faced by private schools as well. It can be hard to kick someone out when they pay twelve grand a year to be there, or when their parents are potential wealthy donors. At my old private school, people generally only got kicked out when their issues reached the point that they might cause other paying customers to leave. Getting into the news was a good way to get expelled. It was very much a financial decision: at what point does the cost of keeping this kid outweigh the cost of kicking him out? Until that point, he was safe. (This refers to secular private schools. Religious schools, though, are much quicker to kick people out. Most of their students aren't rich anyway.)
quote:and the fact that most private school teachers get paid more.
This statement casts doubt on your whole post, JNSB, because this is, across the board, contrary to fact (as Elizabeth noted).
FWIW, I have not found that my public school colleagues are any less qualified than my private school ones. It'd be nice if they were both more qualified, but we don't pay enough for the qualifications we already demand. Nuff said.
As far as bureaucracy, my old private school was top-heavy as well. And the fact that the administration was ownership rather than elected officials made them less answerable to anybody. Teachers were absolutely treated worse from above at my old private school. We were the servant class. As far as paperwork goes, I would say I filled out more of it when I worked in a private school, though it's a close call.
Private schools generally do have smaller class sizes, except for religious schools, which generally have the same class sizes as public schools. But most private schools are religious schools, and when people talk about private schools, most of them have parochial schools in mind.
A related issue that is exclusive to public schools is that of school-size, irrespective of class size. Research clearly shows that smaller schools are beneficial to student performance. Maybe students feel more involved and have more of a stake in their own performance then. Who knows. But public school systems continue to build mega-schools with thousands of students. This is not common for private schools. Why do they do it? Cost efficiency.
Anyway, I just wanted to pop in and argue against any absolute statements.
-o-
Do public schools evolve? I would say they do, but I'm not sure they always evolve in directions that are beneficial in the long term.
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posted
Public schools absolutely have more money and pay teachers better than private. That is definitely true here in Alabama.
A friend of mine is a 1st grade teacher in a private school. She makes $28,000 a year. She was offered almost $40,000 by a public school and turned it down.
Why? Because in private schools she said, you know the parents are involved in teh kids' education and care about what their kids learn. They have to be, they're paying out the nose. She has worked in public and couldn't bear the apathy and indifference exhibited by many of the parents. She prefers to work where there is truly a partnership between parent and teacher for the betterment of the child.
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posted
I don't doubt that that's her experience. I find the parents in my public school to be somewhat more involved than the parents in my old private school, but then, my public school may well not be typical.
I think, rather than private or public, it may come down to socioeconomic status, or alternatively, religion/worldview, or something different in different cases. Many of my parents tend to be well off, and have the leisure to be able to be involved. Many of my students have two-parent families, as opposed to one parent working 80 hours a week to make ends meet. This would suggest to me that the difference in parental involvement is not due intrinsically to the school, or to a sense of investment that parents have in private schools, but to the parents themselves.
Some classes of parents, for whatever reason, are less involved. But involved parents would still be involved parents, even if their kids were in public schools.
quote:I think, rather than private or public, it may come down to socioeconomic status, or alternatively, religion/worldview, or something different in different cases. Many of my parents tend to be well off, and have the leisure to be able to be involved. Many of my students have two-parent families, as opposed to one parent working 80 hours a week to make ends meet. This would suggest to me that the difference in parental involvement is not due intrinsically to the school, or to a sense of investment that parents have in private schools, but to the parents themselves.
Some classes of parents, for whatever reason are less involved. But involved parents would still be involved parents, even if their kids were in public schools.
(Icarus, I'm so digging your writing today. I wish I were half so reasoned and clear.)
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posted
I think you're definitely in a unique public school environment then. another friend of mine (so many of my friends are teachers - it's weird. The other half are firemen's wives, although a lot are both.) is a reading coordinator for one of the top rated schools in the state. She left the classroom and took a specialist position because she couldn't take dealing with the parents, for many of the same reasons. This is a highly affluent area.
it's going to vary from place to place, I know. But I have to believe that most parents who send their kids to private schools ( and don't have last names like Bush) make tremendous economic sacrifices to do so and are therefore very involved and interested in what goes on.
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posted
From my non-professional, non-parental standpoint, the difference in any education is parental involvement.
I went to a high school in Texas that was one of the top-rated academically in the nation. They would have a number of Ivy-League-bound and service-school (West Point, Annapolis) students every year. They won the debate and academic competitions. Competition was brutal, and the education I got there was INCREDIBLE. My junior and senior years in Utah were mostly repeats of my freshman and sophomore years in Texas. The difference was parental involvement. It was the high school for a new, tony suburb where most of the parents were professionals who got there by virtue of education. It was NOT the best-funded (when the Robin Hood funding system came into place, the high school benefited), but the parents were involved.
There's no other way to make a school great, I think. All the extra funding, high standards for teachers, new programs, and well-stocked labs are an effort to make up for parents who don't have the time or else the energy to do it themselves.
If private schools are better, it's because the parents care enough about the education to send them to private schools and pay attention to what happens to their money when it gets there.
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posted
I've been involved with several of both kind, and it's not uncommon for private school parents to feel that they are paying a bunch so that they won't have to be involved.
I'm not arguing that public schools are better, mind you. Just saying that there is good and bad everywhere, and from where I am sitting, most of the time it makes little difference.
Parents are a much more predictable influence.
(Incidentally, I still have not found the thread that prompted this discussion. Linky anyone?)
-o-
Sara, if I edit the typos in my original posts, while you edit the ones you've quoted? :-p
quote:If private schools are better, it's because the parents care enough about the education to send them to private schools and pay attention to what happens to their money when it gets there.
My point exactly. Private schools aren't always better, but they are more likely to be because the parents are more likely to have a higher stake in their kid's education.
My public school just had the annual achievement test scores come out and we out-scored counties with ten times more funding than ours. Parental involvement is huge - on PTA meetings we have standing room in the back of the auditorium because there are so many parents there we run out of room. There's a rotating schedule for school volunteers because more people volunteer than they have room for in the volunteer room.
That's why we're doing well and our kids are doing well. But our situation is rare, for public schools, but not for the private schools in the area.
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quote: My public school just had the annual achievement test scores come out and we out-scored counties with ten times more funding than ours. Parental involvement is huge - on PTA meetings we have standing room in the back of the auditorium because there are so many parents there we run out of room. There's a rotating schedule for school volunteers because more people volunteer than they have room for in the volunteer room.
That's why we're doing well and our kids are doing well. But our situation is rare, for public schools,
This is my point as well. Except that I think the really involved private school parents would still be really involved if their kids were in public schools.
-o-
If I still lived in Miami, there would be no doubt I would be sending my kids to private school--due to my perception, which could, of course be faulty. Right now, though, they go to public school. And though I have had some struggles due to their developmental delays, I think they have received better service than they could have in private schools. (Another resource issue: with the exception of schools specifically for ESE kids, private schools generally cannot match the resources of public schools for exceptional education.) I have seen no reason yet to believe that I will change my mind about the girls' schooling as they get older.
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And may I say, if IvyGirl should choose to return to post here ever again, she would be showing more dignity and forbearance than many who were so quick to jump on her? She and I disagree on this point, but I'd like to know (for myself) that we disagreed for good reasons, not because of straw man arguments on either side. For us to discuss this, though, we would need to be civil to one another. Otherwise -- if I were her -- I would stop reading any further posts and rue the day I was lead here.
[ September 11, 2004, 01:18 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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Ic, I never have noticed. Honest. I'm leaving for Christy and Tom's but when I get back this afternoon, I'll cull any changes from my quotes. Promise.
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posted
*logging back in for sake of shame and embarrassment
BTW, the irony of me lecturing anyone on practicing "dignity and forbearance" at this stage of the game is not lost on me. However, I still believe in the ideal.
( me )
[ September 11, 2004, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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posted
It doesn't seem as if you are arguing the difference between private schools and public schools as much are you are talking about the difference between the private and the public.
The best ways to a foster public supportive of education is from the top and the bottom and all the sides. Not the top wives, either. I want Laura Bush and Lynn Cheney to talk about the military, and I don't want them talking about the purpose of education. It should come from the top. If the President and the VP made it cool to embrace complexities and attentive thought, then it would trickle down. Instead, we get reading tests, and I don't know how many of you remember your childhood, but reading tests never made me want to read. I like passing tests and all but it doesn't make me want to do the thing itself for the sake of itself. ___________________________
Lastly, everyone is talking about how we should be teaching: how to get test scores up; how to get literacy rates higher; but nobody is concerned with why we are teaching what we are teaching.
I think that is the central question, and the nation is miles apart. I think communities are so far apart they have a sloppy, half-assed, ill-focused programs in place because there without purpose. And if you think the purpose of an education in America is the to score higher on a standardized test, then we have a problem.
quote:(Incidentally, I still have not found the thread that prompted this discussion. Linky anyone?)
I honestly didn't intend to start a new thread. My post was intended to be in the thread " I never thought about it that way " I suppose I will leave it up now. I seem to have struck a nerve.
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quote:(Incidentally, I still have not found the thread that prompted this discussion. Linky anyone?)
I honestly didn't intend to start a new thread. My post was intended to be in the thread " I never thought about it that way " I suppose I will leave it up now. I seem to have struck a nerve.
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posted
Glenn, I seem to recall having read about it in a chapter about the gains in integration that we have been re-losing since 1980. (i.e., we are returning to a state of de-facto segregation).
posted
I believe that book was mentioned in another thread. I have not read it. I just read the teaching manual of the fifth math book, now. For fun, I read Marilyn Burns.
Icarus, does being solely a math teacher mean I HAVE to become even more geeky than I already am? I actually prefer reading these books to the ones beside my bed, now.
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quote:Sara-you quote things. You edit your quotations.
What on earth are you talking about? What is your point?
I don't think I've ever edited someone else's words as I quoted them, and even if I did, it would be, well, obvious. Thus pointless, except if someone else were to edit their original post that I quoted -- but why would that bother you?
posted
I think that's either Annie or mack, grinding their "quotation" versus "quote" axe again. Click on my smiley above.
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On Hatrack, I speak in informal language. However, should either of those two excellent young women be interested, I'd be delighted to police their posts for indiscretions against formality.
[ September 11, 2004, 08:23 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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posted
The Sandia Report was commissioned by George H.W. Bush in 1990, in order to find out what problems existed in American schools. If you remember, Bush wanted to be "the education president."
The study was done by Sandia national labs, and published as "Perspectives on Education in America."
When the study came back, the results were so oppposite of what had been expected, that the Bush administration suppressed the release of the report. Eventually, Clinton quietly released the report to the public in 1994.
What the Sandia report found, was that most americans percieve that our schools are "failing our kids," but that perception is not supported by any evidence. Our public school system is in fact one of the best, perhaps the best, in the world.
The report detailed why this perception exists. Several examples are:
That SAT scores (on average) have been going down since 1971 (actually since 1957).
That there are more students reaching high school level while still illiterate than there had been before Public law 94-142 (1975; the original "No child left behind" law, which guarantees all children a right to a "free education in the least restrictive environment")
That U.S. schools are "dumbing down" educational requirements.
That on standardized tests, U.S. children perform worse than students in other "industrialized countries."
Taken one at a time, and very briefly:
SAT scores in any particular demographic group have gone up since 1957, and the score differential between black students and white students has been narrowing.
What HAS happened is that since more people are going to college, more people from the lower quartiles are taking the test, so the AVERAGE scores are going down. But this is a good thing, since it shows that we are graduating a wider cross section of society and sending them to college. In fact, the U.S. leads the world in this regard. Sandia also documented the highest college graduation rates in the U.S. for women and minorities compared to the rest of the world.
The "illiterate students" that we now have in high school (and in fact graduating from high school, and going to college in some cases) were previously forced to drop out by educators that considered them "not educable". Most of these are learning disabled students, who either were institutionalized, or if only marginally disabled, went into the work force after dropping out of high school or middle school. Keeping these students in school gives them a greater opportunity for education. Advances in special education have made this possible, and PL 94-142 made it a legal requirement.
The charge of dumbing down education comes from the fact that we now have to offer a wider range of educations. Children once considered "uneducable" cannot be forced to memorize numerous facts, cannot be forced to read (esp dylexia), and cannot be forced to do higher math. Courses now are tailored toward keeping lower performing students in school, rather than "holding them to the same standards."
However, at the other end of the spectrum, "Honors level" students are actually held to higher educational standards than they have ever been, historically. More students are completing AP courses in sciences, math, history and english. These courses now cover more material than ever required previously. (example: chemistry and physics now cover quantum mechanical effects. This was not even touched during the 1970's)
And regarding standardized tests. Sandia found several things:
1. international test results are not comparable.
2. U.S. scores compared to other industrialized countries were not "failures." As an illustration, it's like saying the U.S. scored a 94%, while 11 other countries scored between 95% and 97%. Yet this is presented as "U.S. scores are ONLY 12th in the industrialized world.
3. The U.S. lags behind other countries in rote memorization, but teaches a broader range of material, including the arts, and focuses on better comprehension and problem solving skills, which are not as easily tested or compared.
What came out of the suppression of the Sandia report was that both the news media and politicians have no motivation to report that American schools are doing well. Good news doesn't sell advertising, and it doesn't get votes.
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posted
We are doing well with respect to tests. I'm not too worried about literacy levels. That can be adjusted. That can be fixed. The 9/11 hijackers were literate. I'm worried about the percentage of people who don't want to read. Literacy rates are the effects, not the cause. If we tailor programs to address the effect, then it seems we ignore the cause. And I wonder if it's going to be the cause that leads to the higher incarceration rates or suspicious public decisions.
I think whether people want to read is not terribly related to the state of american education, as it is to the overload of the media, and the intrusion of non-written forms of communication. That's part of why I don't have TV in my home.
The reason I bring up the Sandia Report is that it seems everytime the subject of education comes up, it becomes clear that the vast majority of americans feel that our schools are giving our children inferior educations. That simply isn't true. I'd like people to discuss education from a "What are the problems left to solve?" standpoint than from a "well everything's going to hell in a handbasket" standpoint.
The latter position seems to put people in a defensive position of demanding better education for their own children, and let the other schools be damned. I always find it appalling that the same people that vote to increase spending in their own district criticize poorer school districts when they ask for state or federal funding.
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