posted
One measure I would love to take, but don't see it being politically viable, is to break down any school district with more than 3 high schools.
The biggest wastes of precious resources I've witnessed is when political wanna-be's get on the boards of large school districts, and play "The Kingpin" to their hearts content.
Washington DC's district.
St. Louis MO's district.
East. St. Louis Mo's district.
Los Angeles school District.
Houston TX School District.
and many other's I've heard about on the news, all have people playing power politics without caring about the kids.
That's how you get requirements that 80% must pass, or no new books, but yes to the new football stadium.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by DarkNight In most cases, teachers do have little power in the classroom, and are not given adequate reasons because of the Admins in charge. School districts do have enough money. The amount of waste and mismanagement is staggering. For example, teachers have old and/or not enough textbooks because of the way the district's administrators setup the line item budgeting. If a school needs to spend on average $50,000 a year on books, the Admins will create a line item in their budget called Books (or something similar) and place $30,000 in it. The district may very well have enough money to fund all of those books but it chooses to spend the money on other unneccesary projects, or hoard it somewhere in it's many many bank accounts. Admins do this because they want to be seen as a 'poor' school district with insufficient funds, no matter how affluent the district. Plus they can truthfully say there is not enough money to buy books because in the line item for books there is not enough money. Admins get thier gold stars by bringing money into the school district, not from solving problems, or taking care of students needs. Politics inside of school district are beyond measure. Everything boils down to how do I look. Bad test scores are always spun to be 'someone else's fault' and certainly nothing to do with the school district, especially not the Admins.
I would submit that this is not the case in all districts. There are districts that are short on money because of declining enrollments and shrinking tax bases. The money is not always being 'hidden' by evil administrators. It's also worth pointing out that in many cases, the school boards must approve administrator's budget proposals. Frankly, I think that this viewpoint of administrators, which I've heard many times, is a gross generalization and is extremely disrespectful to many hard-working school administrators and school boards.
(Everything about your local district, I'm leaving alone...you know it better than I do and I won't presume to dispute your knowledge there. )
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Tstorm, I did have some qualifiers in the start of my post because I know not every district is the same. I do believe that poorly run, politically charged school districts are the norm and not the exception.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I saw your qualifier on "most cases, teachers", but I must be missing the qualifiers on all the other claims...?
I find it sad that you believe that, because I believe that in my area, most schools are not poorly run, even if they are politically charged.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
In my experience (and coming from a family of teachers, I have a decent amount of it) MANY school districts are run VERY badly. However, on the surface it seems like the amount of scandal that can be "gotten away with" increases in direct proportion to the school size. Oh, sure, there are PLENTY of things a sucky superintendent can do (and is doing) to screw up my little 1000 student school district (yes, that is K-12). However, it's easier for people to nail down when he's lying to them than it is when you're talking about a school district with 100,000 students.
See, in small school districts, the members of the school board are still just average Joes. They are parents, grandparents, aunts, or uncles of kids that are ACTUALLY IN SCHOOL! They can know the issues that the school is facing and can know a large enough percentage of the other parents to understand what is important to people in general. Even if you get a corrupt Superintendent or other administrators, even if you have one or two corrupt school board members, the others are there watching them and it doesn't take long for the news to filter back into public view.
Contrast that to the HUGE school districts where even the regular school board members are true politicians who get paid vacations to conferences all over the world... It's hard for any parent or parent group to know where to even start approaching a system like that to try and bring about change. So, maybe there is something to this idea of busting up big school districts!
As far as the sex-ed thing goes, Texas has what is known as an "Abstinence First" curriculum. That means that they stress abstinence as the only 100% fool proof method, but do discuss other forms of protection and contraception. The thing is, many, many, MANY of Texas's teen pregnancies are NOT accidents. These girls WANT to be pregnant. They want three or four babies before they even turn 20 - and the reason behind that goes back into what we were discussing about the education system. These girls don't see their future in education. The system has failed them. They see their future in a baby bump and the unconditional love of an infant.
So, see, when you teach them in Sex Ed about condoms and birth control, what they're really thinking is "Oh - I need to stay FAR away from that", and "Ok, so I can get the pills, but just skip taking them for lots of days a month, and my boyfriend won't know so he won't use a condom, and then I'll have my BABY". They don't need sex ed, they need a few crash courses in practical economics and a stable place to turn to for love and respect.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Of course, it also might help if we stopped allowing people to get away with villifying academics, intellectuals, and "smart kids".
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: Of course, it also might help if we stopped allowing people to get away with villifying academics, intellectuals, and "smart kids".
Agreed, that would help. But, to be completely fair about it, the vilification goes two ways. There are a lot of academics, 'intellectuals' (and let me note that one of the few OSC opinions I share is about literature departments in colleges) and smart kids who look down their noses at the kind of people who shop at WalMart and keep guns in the house. I'm not immune myself; Wal-Martians really are a loud, obnoxious lot - more so even than middle-class Americans, who as a general rule have not been taught the concept of an indoor voice. But the savage contempt and really biting jokes, by people who don't seem quite aware that they are not talking about fictional characters - it's not helpful in maintaining respect. Respect travels two ways, or it is mere touching of the forelock to the squire. (And the squire, for all his flaws, at least spoke to his tenants once in a while!)
If academia wants respect, I think there are several steps it can take on its own side, which will be a lot more useful than any reform aimed at the working classes. The workers resent attempts to improve them, especially improvements in the direction of forelock-tugging, and who wouldn't? But they respect, or at least they have respected in the past, genuine knowledge that doesn't, on its side, despise non-intellectual work. So, my three-step plan for increasing academic respect:
Throw out the English, "X studies", and philosophy departments, and do considerable amounts of cleanup in sociology. The 2% of these departments that is actually useful can be accomplished without separate departments producing 98% dreck.
Stop trying to form the entire nation in an academic mold. It seems possible, although unlikely, that we do in fact need 50% of our workforce to have a college education. But the plain statistical fact is that for college to mean anything, you need to be a sigma or so above average, and that means that at most one-sixth of the population can get a meaningful college degree. Trying to shoehorn the remaining five-sixths into academicians will not produce college degrees in the sense of people who know how to think, it will produce pieces of paper saying "University of Attendance Checking". With, more than likely, a major in X Studies. This is not useful, it's just the Brahmin caste trying to shoehorn the Vaisya and Kshatriya into its own mold by exploiting its mystique and supposed command of otherworldly forces. It won't work in the long run.
Stop the dang sneering. Ok, you don't personally want to keep a gun in the house; there's no reason to assume that those who do are low-browed Neanderthals who enjoy taking potshots at neighbours. Same for shopping at Wal-Mart. So you have a college degree, good for you; tell me, how sure are you that it's not a piece of paper? And the reason it might be a piece of paper is that the previous generation insisted on this kind of sneering - and their degrees, to be fair about it, really did mean something. Then the unwashed masses decided that fine, they would prove they could do college too, dammit. They stormed the doors of the universities, who weren't about to turn down tuition-paying customers (especially since, with lots of scholarships granted by politicians voted in by the new college-determined masses, they could turn up the tuition without any particular student feeling the pain) but found that, oops, these people couldn't be taught anything approaching a real liberal arts degree. But no matter, they would pay just as well for pieces of paper saying, in good calligraphy, "University of Attendance Checking attests that this Wal-Martian has faithfully attended classes in X Studies, and therefore has the right to sneer at those who haven't." And, more to the point, not to be sneered at by the actual ruling class, a convention you'll notice I'm not paying much attention to, here.
Again, it may be helpful to have a look outside America, to see how other nations deal with this kind of thing. My experience is with Norway, so that's the example I'll draw on. First, let's note that Norway, like most of Europe, has a tradition of, eg, University professors being an extremely high-status position. Case in point: My father is 'dosent', roughly equivalent to a teaching professor, of mathematics at the Naval Academy in Bergen. He was hired in 1981, and his appointment had to be confirmed by Royal Order of the King in Council - roughly speaking, the equivalent of a Cabinet meeting, or perhaps a Senate confirmation. (Except that they didn't actually have him turn up in person and answer questions; the actual procedure was a bit of a rubber stamp. It was just a holdover from older days.) He can only be fired by impeachment, requiring a simple majority of Parliament. Now, this is a dreadful anachronism, and in fact the custom was discontinued shortly afterwards; these days the Naval Academy hires and fires like an ordinary school. (Indeed, my father was the last teacher there to be appointed by Royal Order.) But it demonstrates the tradition of respect and the seriousness with which academics are treated in Europe. There had been a time when this was the procedure for every university professor in Norway. (Which is, fortunately for the guy with the rubber stamp, rather fewer than in America! But notice that there was also a time when no rubber stamp was involved.)
That's one example; another is the way our secondary education is organised. There is no assumption that secondary education is preparation for college. At 16, you choose whether to enter the academic track or a vocational track. If vocational, you get a bit of theory - the people taking these tracks tend to complain that they get more theory and academic stuff than they actually want - and considerable practical education. For electricians, you spend say ten or twenty hours a week fiddling with wires; carpenters, a similar amount knocking pieces of wood together; and so on. Then you get an apprenticeship (while technically still in school) and are off to work. These tracks are very popular and not at all un-prestigious; in a slight irony, they are over-subscribed and you need good grades from your 13-15 education to get in. (There are only so many apprenticeships.) The academic lines, on the other hand, will take anyone who breathes, so they get a mix of college-bound overachievers and the working-class overflow from the vocational tracks. (Which occasionally makes for some odd social dynamics, but I digress.)
I don't say that this approach would solve every problem of America's schools, but it does seem to me that it would be a lot better than what you have now. Get the people who are bored by academics out of the academic setting where there is nothing they can do to shine, and let them work with their hands doing something useful. I think a lot of high-school problems are down to primate instinct, and this would alleviate that. A human male of age 16 to 18 is, biologically speaking, ready to be a father, a hunter, and a warrior or even a leader of warriors. When, instead, we put him in a classroom and tell him to sit down and listen, he interprets this as "My tribal status is low", and his natural instinct is to either lead a bloody coup against the tribal leaders and take all their women for himself, or else to strike out into the wilderness with a small band of followers. Neither is very practical today, so you get all the familiar litany of high-school dysfunction instead. (I write about males because that's the set of hormones I'm familiar with, but I imagine there's a similar effect for women, who biologically are ready to be mothers and food-providers at 16. But female status games tend to be a bit less violent.) The exception to this is the people who do well in an academic setting, and can gain status and prestige by listening to the teacher. And notice: Here is a set of people against whom the non-academics can viably rebel, and by god, they do!
The obvious solution is to take the non-academics out of the academic setting and give them prestige for something they can actually compete at. Few people find it unpleasant to be low-ranked in something they can see the point of. A man might chafe at low grades for literary analysis, when he loathes the meaningless chatter of the books he's given to read and hates writing about them. And who can blame him? But if he does badly at electrical wiring, at least that's an activity he understands the purpose of; it's meaningful to him even if he can see that he's not that good at it.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
DDDash- For a lot of those kids, nothing the school system does is going to help. My husband had many students who wanted to have babies. He was shocked that the kids were proud of getting girls pregnant or the girls of being pregnant. But they were very strongly raised to believe that this was a good thing. Their parents reinforced it daily, as did their friends and the community. Even though the school and the teachers were trying to show the kids how stupid pregnant at 14/15 is, a few outsiders (and every teacher was considered an outsider if only because of race- the school was 90% Hispanic with maybe 3% of the teachers/counselors/principals as Hispanic. And yes, I know Hispanic is not a race) did not make a difference. While race is not supposed to matter, I do think the kids would have been more motivated if there was a higher amount of people in authority of the same race as them.
One disastrous policy that a lot of the schools seem to be going with is fire the bed teachers. A bad teacher is anyone whose students do badly. The year my husband quit, they fired nearly the entire math department (like 6 teachers) because the kids had too low of scores and those teachers did not have tenure or seniority enough to protect them. This meant that the teachers with 1-3 years of experience were gone, replaced by teachers with 0 years experience. The principal got a promotion to superintendent for her efforts, leaving the next principal with a huge mess. And everyone familiar with the district who knew what the last principal had done refused to take the job. So, not only was almost half the math department brand new, the principal was also new to the district and the area.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Northern Kansas...quite rural. The town I live in has a school with a K-12 enrollment of just over 1000.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
There are quite a few schools with fewer than a 100 students, in their entire high school.
I went to an average sized school for this area, and my graduating class was the largest in the district, by far, with 75 students.
Back to the subject...
Kansas has a history of running a decent education system, but that appears to be facing some difficulty. It's the largest expense in the state budget, and we currently have quite a ridiculous crop of legislators attempting to cut funding. It doesn't help when the recent funding increases were handed down as a requirement by the state supreme court, which found the funding formula was inadequate and unconstitutional. May we live in interesting times...
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: Of course, it also might help if we stopped allowing people to get away with villifying academics, intellectuals, and "smart kids".
Agreed, that would help. But, to be completely fair about it, the vilification goes two ways. There are a lot of academics, 'intellectuals' (and let me note that one of the few OSC opinions I share is about literature departments in colleges) and smart kids who look down their noses at the kind of people who shop at WalMart and keep guns in the house. I'm not immune myself; Wal-Martians really are a loud, obnoxious lot - more so even than middle-class Americans, who as a general rule have not been taught the concept of an indoor voice. But the savage contempt and really biting jokes, by people who don't seem quite aware that they are not talking about fictional characters - it's not helpful in maintaining respect. Respect travels two ways, or it is mere touching of the forelock to the squire. (And the squire, for all his flaws, at least spoke to his tenants once in a while!)
If academia wants respect, I think there are several steps it can take on its own side, which will be a lot more useful than any reform aimed at the working classes. The workers resent attempts to improve them, especially improvements in the direction of forelock-tugging, and who wouldn't? But they respect, or at least they have respected in the past, genuine knowledge that doesn't, on its side, despise non-intellectual work. So, my three-step plan for increasing academic respect:
Throw out the English, "X studies", and philosophy departments, and do considerable amounts of cleanup in sociology. The 2% of these departments that is actually useful can be accomplished without separate departments producing 98% dreck.
Stop trying to form the entire nation in an academic mold. It seems possible, although unlikely, that we do in fact need 50% of our workforce to have a college education. But the plain statistical fact is that for college to mean anything, you need to be a sigma or so above average, and that means that at most one-sixth of the population can get a meaningful college degree. Trying to shoehorn the remaining five-sixths into academicians will not produce college degrees in the sense of people who know how to think, it will produce pieces of paper saying "University of Attendance Checking". With, more than likely, a major in X Studies. This is not useful, it's just the Brahmin caste trying to shoehorn the Vaisya and Kshatriya into its own mold by exploiting its mystique and supposed command of otherworldly forces. It won't work in the long run.
Stop the dang sneering. Ok, you don't personally want to keep a gun in the house; there's no reason to assume that those who do are low-browed Neanderthals who enjoy taking potshots at neighbours. Same for shopping at Wal-Mart. So you have a college degree, good for you; tell me, how sure are you that it's not a piece of paper? And the reason it might be a piece of paper is that the previous generation insisted on this kind of sneering - and their degrees, to be fair about it, really did mean something. Then the unwashed masses decided that fine, they would prove they could do college too, dammit. They stormed the doors of the universities, who weren't about to turn down tuition-paying customers (especially since, with lots of scholarships granted by politicians voted in by the new college-determined masses, they could turn up the tuition without any particular student feeling the pain) but found that, oops, these people couldn't be taught anything approaching a real liberal arts degree. But no matter, they would pay just as well for pieces of paper saying, in good calligraphy, "University of Attendance Checking attests that this Wal-Martian has faithfully attended classes in X Studies, and therefore has the right to sneer at those who haven't." And, more to the point, not to be sneered at by the actual ruling class, a convention you'll notice I'm not paying much attention to, here.
Again, it may be helpful to have a look outside America, to see how other nations deal with this kind of thing. My experience is with Norway, so that's the example I'll draw on. First, let's note that Norway, like most of Europe, has a tradition of, eg, University professors being an extremely high-status position. Case in point: My father is 'dosent', roughly equivalent to a teaching professor, of mathematics at the Naval Academy in Bergen. He was hired in 1981, and his appointment had to be confirmed by Royal Order of the King in Council - roughly speaking, the equivalent of a Cabinet meeting, or perhaps a Senate confirmation. (Except that they didn't actually have him turn up in person and answer questions; the actual procedure was a bit of a rubber stamp. It was just a holdover from older days.) He can only be fired by impeachment, requiring a simple majority of Parliament. Now, this is a dreadful anachronism, and in fact the custom was discontinued shortly afterwards; these days the Naval Academy hires and fires like an ordinary school. (Indeed, my father was the last teacher there to be appointed by Royal Order.) But it demonstrates the tradition of respect and the seriousness with which academics are treated in Europe. There had been a time when this was the procedure for every university professor in Norway. (Which is, fortunately for the guy with the rubber stamp, rather fewer than in America! But notice that there was also a time when no rubber stamp was involved.)
That's one example; another is the way our secondary education is organised. There is no assumption that secondary education is preparation for college. At 16, you choose whether to enter the academic track or a vocational track. If vocational, you get a bit of theory - the people taking these tracks tend to complain that they get more theory and academic stuff than they actually want - and considerable practical education. For electricians, you spend say ten or twenty hours a week fiddling with wires; carpenters, a similar amount knocking pieces of wood together; and so on. Then you get an apprenticeship (while technically still in school) and are off to work. These tracks are very popular and not at all un-prestigious; in a slight irony, they are over-subscribed and you need good grades from your 13-15 education to get in. (There are only so many apprenticeships.) The academic lines, on the other hand, will take anyone who breathes, so they get a mix of college-bound overachievers and the working-class overflow from the vocational tracks. (Which occasionally makes for some odd social dynamics, but I digress.)
I don't say that this approach would solve every problem of America's schools, but it does seem to me that it would be a lot better than what you have now. Get the people who are bored by academics out of the academic setting where there is nothing they can do to shine, and let them work with their hands doing something useful. I think a lot of high-school problems are down to primate instinct, and this would alleviate that. A human male of age 16 to 18 is, biologically speaking, ready to be a father, a hunter, and a warrior or even a leader of warriors. When, instead, we put him in a classroom and tell him to sit down and listen, he interprets this as "My tribal status is low", and his natural instinct is to either lead a bloody coup against the tribal leaders and take all their women for himself, or else to strike out into the wilderness with a small band of followers. Neither is very practical today, so you get all the familiar litany of high-school dysfunction instead. (I write about males because that's the set of hormones I'm familiar with, but I imagine there's a similar effect for women, who biologically are ready to be mothers and food-providers at 16. But female status games tend to be a bit less violent.) The exception to this is the people who do well in an academic setting, and can gain status and prestige by listening to the teacher. And notice: Here is a set of people against whom the non-academics can viably rebel, and by god, they do!
The obvious solution is to take the non-academics out of the academic setting and give them prestige for something they can actually compete at. Few people find it unpleasant to be low-ranked in something they can see the point of. A man might chafe at low grades for literary analysis, when he loathes the meaningless chatter of the books he's given to read and hates writing about them. And who can blame him? But if he does badly at electrical wiring, at least that's an activity he understands the purpose of; it's meaningful to him even if he can see that he's not that good at it.
There are vocational high schools in America. I don't know how prevalent they are outside of my homestate (RI), but when I was in eighth grade, the folks from the local vocational high school came, gave a presentation, and told folks to apply.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
Some people are just destined to be ditch diggers.
And even more end up digging ditches regardless of what they could have done because of attitudes like this.
The problem is that some people shouldn't be teachers, and if one of those people is your child's teacher they might end up in those types of classrooms regardless of where their talents lie just because the teacher doesn't want to deal with them.
It happened to my nephew, who was a huge problem in classes a few years back. A lot of the problem WAS his fault, but it all started with some of his teachers attitudes about him. He didn't see any point in trying, because every time he did hew as basically told he was a piece of crap.
He went to a chool for kids wiht learning difficulties, and now gets all a's and B's....and not because of watered down classes, either. He just rejoined the mainstream classes, and his grades are even better THERE than in the special needs class.
Why?
In the other school, there were 10 kids to a teacher. It's amazing what "ditch diggers" can accomplish if their dyslexia gets treated and the teachers get to spend quality one on one time with each kid.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I graduated #256 in my class, and was in the top third. We rented the Pontiac Silverdome for your graduation, no joke. By graduation, we had about 780 kids left. We had started about 3 years before that with over 1000.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:There are vocational high schools in America. I don't know how prevalent they are outside of my homestate (RI), but when I was in eighth grade, the folks from the local vocational high school came, gave a presentation, and told folks to apply.
Sure. America is so big that you can find an example or two of practically anything. But in Norway, every child is asked to choose between vocational and academic tracks, and there is nothing unusual about either choice. There are vocational high schools in the US, but you can't tell me they are the norm; they are an addition to the system rather than a part of it, and the kids have to make an unusual effort to go to one. The middleof-the-road, path-of-least-resistance teenager - and this describes most teenagers - will not go to a vocational school. In Norway they will.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:In the other school, there were 10 kids to a teacher. It's amazing what "ditch diggers" can accomplish if their dyslexia gets treated and the teachers get to spend quality one on one time with each kid.
Quite so, and have you thought about how well this model is going to scale? There are only so many teachers and so many hours in the day. On the scale of a nation the size of the US, you just cannot do this sort of thing for every child. In fact I rather suspect you can't even do it for all the children with special needs.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have my reading intervention class for a block period (1.5 hours) PLUS another regular period that is 50 minutes long.
And that's not enough to address their reading problems. They are 20 of them, and 1 of me plus an exceptional ed teacher who is in there with me. Two teachers - 10 kids per teacher.
But it's not enough. It sounds good to say we need more one on one time but KoM is right - it doesn't scale. I have over 100 kids. That's actually pretty good - if I didn't have my reading intervention block class I'd probably have at least 130-150 students per day. High school teachers routinely see 180-190 students (six classes of 30-35 students).
Besides my reading intervention class (which has 15 kids with special needs in it - out of 20) I ALSO teach an inclusion class where out of 26 kids - 14 have special needs. In those classes I have a special ed teacher in there assisting me but that still means she has to split her time between the 14 students who need her help. I wind up spending a lot of my time assisting her with the students who have special needs and my other kids get the short end of the stick.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote: It's popular to blame the "bad" parents for all the problems, but it's the over-protective ones that have castrated teacher authority.
Over-protective is just a different kind of bad parent.
When I was a teacher I could give zeroes on assignments, and although I couldn't give less than a 50% on a report card, I could include (it was a preprogrammed choice in the grading software) a note that said "actual grade is less than 50%.
I would go one step further than saying that control over educational content should be decided locally: Educational content should be decided by the students themselves. That is, especially at the beginning of middle school, students should be give choices as to what track they want to take, and what specific courses they want to take. So much of what is wrong with education has to do with how powerless kids feel, and how irrelevant the material is to their interests.
quote:Some people are just destined to be ditch diggers.
quote: And even more end up digging ditches regardless of what they could have done because of attitudes like this.
Don't dismiss it. I think it's important to pay attention to the kids that want to be ditch diggers (or whatever). Make sure that they have access to the best ditch digging technology and training available.
As far as attitudes go, it's really important to recognize the validity of what people want to do. We need ditches dug, and society would be a lot better off if ditch diggers got some respect, instead of being treated as an example of some kind of subhuman.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Like so many things, I think a lot of the problem is an over-reaction to a previous problem. There was a time when a lot of bright, academically inclined kids didn't get into college because they couldn't afford it, or didn't have the right connections, or whatever, and they had to go and be ditch-diggers. And this was a genuine tragedy! I might even call it worse than the current case where non-academically-inclined kids are made unhappy by being forced to read Moby Dick, or whatever. (Although possibly my own Brahmin-caste origins are showing through, there.) A lot of human potential was wasted this way. So as we got richer, we decided to fix that, and by dog we did! Whatever other flaws the system has, I think a bright kid who would do well in college would have to work pretty hard, these days, not to get a degree, if he wanted one. Unfortunately, in saying "Every kid who can benefit, should get a college degree", we went a bit overboard and made that "Every kid we can lay hands on, will-he, nil-he, suited for it or not."
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes I have. Which is why I think we need more teachers, and to pay the ones we have better.
Glen, I wasn't vilifying anything, nor was I suggesting that every child go though a Masters Program. My sister went to a Tech college, and now works for that same college because she believes it is a better education for a lot of people than a standard 4 year college. It was wonderful for her, and gave her both the education and the confidence she needed to succeed, and she is actually doing far better than I am.
I myself and retraining in a Vocational program, a 1 year long LPN course, and doing well in it. I could handle the full RN course, no problem, but this allows me to work as a nurse while continuing my education.
posted
Yes, yes; you can solve any problem by plain throwing money and bodies at it. If you want badly enough to get into orbit, build a really big pyramid. But this does not address the problem of what is possible within the constraint of not using 50% of GDP in one dang sector of the economy.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Yes, yes; you can solve any problem by plain throwing money and bodies at it. If you want badly enough to get into orbit, build a really big pyramid. But this does not address the problem of what is possible within the constraint of not using 50% of GDP in one dang sector of the economy.
Thanks for the example of a strawman argument, and for the continued example of the very arrogance you described above.
posted
Well then; tell me, which of the following options would you like to use to fund your extra teachers and more pay?
More taxes
Cutting other government spending
Borrow and pass the problem on to the children whose education is being funded?
If you choose to cut spending, please specify what you are cutting and by how much, then estimate how many extra teachers and/or extra pay that will cover.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
That's going straight from a strawman to a false dilemma. You could also reduce educational costs by cleaning up inefficiencies in schools and otherwise renovating their bureaucratic overhead. Or you could even let schools be empowered to remove bad teachers again. That would give you plenty of room to start reducing class size and freeing up more for special needs students, and it's a better approach than abandoning them to cut costs.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
| IP: Logged |
posted
Would you like to estimate just how much removable inefficiency there is in the school system, and how many extra teachers that will fund? Bearing in mind that the removing will be done by the same government methods that got us into this mess in the first place? As for removing bad teachers, that's certainly a desirable reform, but I don't see how it reduces class sizes.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
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.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
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.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
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!
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
| IP: Logged |
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.)
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
:blinks: Constitutional questions? Does the Constitution have anything to say about education?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
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.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
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 ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
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.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
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?
Posts: 315 | Registered: Dec 2005
| IP: Logged |
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.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged |
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.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
By graduation, we had about 780 kids left. We had started about 3 years before that with over 1000.
