A Model School Flops
It sounded like a great idea: Stanford education professors would create a model school to show how to educate low-income Hispanic and black students.
Or, as it’s turned out, how not to.
In March, Stanford New Schools (aka East Palo Alto Academy) — a charter high school started in 2001 and elementary grades added in 2006 – made California’s list of schools in the lowest-achieving five percent in the state.
This month, the Ravenswood school board denied a new five-year charter. The elementary school — now with K-4 and eighth grade — will close in June. Another year or two wouldn’t be enough to improve poor student performance and weak behavior management, Superintendent Maria De La Vega told the board.
The high school will get two years to find a new sponsor: the local high school district has said “no,” but there are other options.
How did it happen? Stanford New Schools, run by the university’s school of education, seems to stress social and emotional support over academics.
Stanford New Schools hires well-trained teachers who use state-of-the-art progressive teaching methods; Stanford’s student teachers provide extra help. With an extra $3,000 per student raised privately, students enjoy small classes, mentoring, counseling and tutoring, technology access, field trips, summer enrichment, health van visits, community college classes on campus, and community service opportunities. The goal is to send graduates to college as critical thinkers, lifelong learners, and “global citizens.”
The school provides students a web of support, reports the New York Times:
High school students have one teacher/adviser who checks that homework is done, and when it is not, the teacher calls home. Teachers know students’ families and help with issues as varied as buying a bagel before an exam to helping an evicted family find a home. Teachers stay late and work weekends, and tend to burn out quickly — causing a high rate of turnover.
EPA Academy enrolls very disadvantaged students: Most are the children of poor and poorly educated Spanish-speaking immigrant families; the rest are black or Pacific Islanders. Their English skills are poor. Those who come in ninth grade are years behind in reading and math.
In comments on the news stories that have run, I see a common refrain: It’s impossible to teach these kids. Not even Stanford can do it.
But other schools with demographically identical students are doing much better. The top-scoring school in the district is East Palo Alto Charter School (EPAC), a K-8 run by Aspire Public Schools, Stanford’s original partner. An all-minority school, EPAC outperforms the state average.
Rather than send EPAC graduates to Stanford’s high school, Aspire started its own high school, Phoenix, which outperforms the state average for all high schools. All students in the first 12th grade class have applied to four-year colleges.
Aspire co-founded East Palo Alto Academy High with Stanford, but bowed out five years ago. There was a culture clash, Aspire’s founder, Don Shalvey told the New York Times. Aspire focused “primarily and almost exclusively on academics,” while Stanford focused on academics and students’ emotional and social lives, he said.
Deborah Stipek, Stanford’s dean of education, says the elementary school is too new — in its fourth year, but with only two years of scores — to be judged. Stanford considers the high school a success.
In an email to Alexander Russo, Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who helped create the high school, defended the high school’s “strong, highly personalized college-going program.” The graduation rate of 86 percent exceeds the state average. “In addition, 96 percent of graduates are admitted to college (including 53 percent to four-year colleges) — twice the rate of African American and Latino students in the state as a whole.” Half the students enroll in Early College classes on campus.
Fool that I am, I sort of incline towards assessing academic ability as a means of seeing who is fit for higher education rather than the Barry Soetoro affirmative action lap of honour. Soetoro Stalinism will turn the USA and indeed the world into a race of Eloi cannibalised by a race of Morlocks, with Islam as the corrosive used to exterminate the last free humans first.
Well said. I do belive that’s their intended goal.
“… EPA Academy enrolls very disadvantaged students: Most are the children of poor and poorly educated Spanish-speaking immigrant families;”
I’m positive that should read “illegal immigrant families”.
I’m going to sound all mean about this, but rather than bankrupting ourselves educating the hopeless children of criminals who stormed our borders, and ripping our own children off by cramming their classrooms with the seething throngs, we should be expelling the illegals in droves. I have lived for more than twenty one years in Los Angeles where I’ve seen the effect of the Hispanic human tsunami drowning our state.
I came to the area with nothing, but with my own hands and imagination, great risk, and back breaking work I built a successful animation company which generated millions in revenue and employed dozens with high-paying jobs. The state of California was always there with their hand outstretched to confiscate nearly $2 million tax dollars over 16 years – and well over $10 million more went to the Fed over that same period…
The criminals in government have looted a fortune from my hard work, and they have abused that loot in ways which can only be described as obscene. It would be one thing had government at least performed even marginally their primary functions and promised services, both of which I paid for. But they even failed that low bar requirement catastrophically.
I’m positive that should read “illegal immigrant families”.
Why?
Why the illegal assumption? Perhaps because the parents don’t speak English and haven’t properly assimilated into American society and have learned English via legal immigration?
Not a good assumption. There is a very significant population of people who are native-born, speak Spanish as a first language, and who think it’s too bad the Anglos haven’t assimilated into the local culture.
One of my ongoing annoyances with these arguments is that people are ignorant of the degree to which Spanish-speaking culture is American culture, particularly south and west of the Arkansas River. (History pop quiz: why that river particularly?)
I’m not sure where you’re going with that?
French and Spanish Settlers in Arkansas
Are you suggesting we should we all speak Français too?
How about German and Italian as well?
English is AMERICAN, learn it, love it (it’s a melting-pot language sourced from many languages)!
I think you pov is well-intentioned but misguided pap. The only legal immigrants who do not desire to assimilate themselves into America’s culture are being counseled by professional “organizers” against their own better interests, and are just too unsophisticated to understand that. Illegal immigrant families clustering around them are simply following that lead. None of them really understand the path to failure they’ve chosen.
What are the odds they are legal? I don’t have any statistics—but my guess is that minimally 80% of all immigrant children in California’s public schools are illegal. The legal ones might be in private schools. Once again, though, I concede that I am indulging in mere speculation. Victor Davis Hanson, it should be added, estimates that California is home to five to seven million illegals.
David, I’ve never understood why you think “I don’t have any statistics so I’ll make some up” is a useful argument.
you are very witty Charlie …ever think of writing your own pieces.
How soon they forget.
I offer it as an educated guess. Nothing more.
Charlie, if I want a lecture about my lack of knowledge of some PC version of American history, I’ll toddle over to the local community college. The subject is grotesquely expensive, grotesquely dysfunctional public schools in America, subsidized by the American taxpayer, that reify the dysfunction of the communities in which they reside. The subject is real problems arising from a social crisis that we are all personally being told to subsidize, not your opinion regarding the location of the Nation of Aztlan.
I’ve taught a number of young people who lack basic English skills after 12 years in public schools. That’s a shame, not a point of pride. I feel for them. We’ve let them down with decades of nonsense, a failure so obvious it hardly needs to be quantified.
I was kidding Charlie ..never miss your pieces ..and love it when I see you comment on other essays.
Regards
Morton, I know exactly how you feel and understand completely.
The only way to fight this, unfortunately, is to cut the government off completely from its lifeblood.
Deprive it of your work, and your revenue to their coffers.
They squandered the resources you gave them without so much as a thank you note.
And the mere act of discussing it will make them hate you.
Because they feel you owe this to them, that they know better.
Let them print more money and go further into debt, and raise the ire of the citizenry, exposing it for what it really is.
Then come November, replace them with adults who Will. Not. Tolerate. This. Any. More.
I am sick of “good intentions”.
Especially when they are just masks for corrupting liberal theology, paid for with other peoples’ money.
The results speak for themselves.
F them.
Starve the government.
Quit producing for corrupt regimes.
Just quit. Or move to a place that will appreciate and value your contribution to society.
“You, sir, may go to hell. I shall go to Texas”.
Sounds about right to me.
A classic example of Ivory Tower incompetence. This is what happens when people who have never had to produce a tangible product stick their noses into real life. They fail and then lie to each other, congratulating themselves on a job well done, while in this case the kids are left uneducated and ignorant.
This would be funny if it didn’t leave large numbers of people unprepared for anything but the government dole.
Progressive ”experts” from academia, a sure fire recipe for failure.
“state-of-the-art progressive teaching methods”
That’s been the problem since the 60s. Dumb teachers produce dumb students.
Kids really do want to learn, but like parents that want to be ‘pals’ to their little ones, it’s garbage in, garbage out.
Won’t change. You can’t make them change. It’s called tenure.
The Iron Triangle of university ed schools, teachers’ unions, and union-controlled school boards have inflicted the failed Stanford model on public schools across the nation- and there is no political will to break the stranglehold.
Theory meets reality, reality wins.
By objective measures, kids these days are learning less in schools. Few write well. Our best are good, the worst abysmal, and the majority are weak in math, science, and logic.
We have the resources of the world online. The best teachers, native speakers for every language, animated displays of every scientific and mathematical concept are all possible. We continue to warehouse kids, infuse them with political rectitude, and subject them to the bottom twenty-five percent of our college graduates, at ruinous expense. I’m surprised the system has lasted this long.
There are good and dedicated teachers, and I intend no insult to them. They are part of an inefficient and unsustainable 19th Century solution. The system will collapse. New Jersey may have fired the first shot with the overwhelming rejection of school tax increases.
Suppose the engineering department at a prestigious university such as, oh, I don’t know, Stanford, set out to build a car with average reliability, performance, and gas mileage. They use their best faculty, are given vast resources, and produce a vehicle with the performance of a Yugo and the mileage and reliability of a 70s era Jaguar. Is there any way the university could justify not shutting down that engineering department immediately?
I’ll give them credit for trying, but if ever there was a demonstration that there is no such thing as an “education expert”, this is it.
Is there any way the university could justify not shutting down that engineering department immediately?
Tenure.
The Dewey-based educational system that has plagued our nation for 60 years has turned our education system into an assembly line of semi-illiterate fodder for government programs. Which incidently is what the liberal intelligensia wanted all along. So of course the Stanford educrats will consider their school a success: Graduates who cannot read, or think are easier manipulated.
Educrats who live and work in the ivory towers of academia have NO idea what it takes to educate a child. Zip. Nada. And what it does take to educate a child are anathema to them: Discipline, hard work, study, merit, high expectations, merit, challenge, and oh, did I mention discipline…. It does not take social justice or affirmative action, or pity (really white guilt) or esteem building.
This is the point of the Dewey based educational system. Do some research on Horace Mann and John Dewey and the only conclusion you can come to is that they intended to destroy academic based education.
The one clear truth in life is that you can only get what you expect to get. If you start with the attitude that the student is an under achiever you will always get an under achiever. It is not possible to get anything else. If on the other hand you expect success you have a much better chance of achieving success.
Too many teaching methods, have at thier core, an assumption that traditional methods do not work because of social disadvantage of the student. This dooms the student from the start. It places them in a group think of failure right from the start and failure is what you will get right from the start to the end.
The older methods worked because well, they worked. They worked for thousands of years. It takes a soecial kind of hubris to think you can toss aside thousands of years of accumulated wisdom and design a better method and then presented with evidence to the contrary not admit you might have been mistaken.
School choice with other peoples money is not better than public schools
I’m sure that if they had to pay with their money they wouldn’t sustain this touchy feely, socially conscious progressive brainwashing for that long and destroy so many kids lives
The only solution looks like is to de-fund public schools and have all parents pay out of pocket … and don’t forget to lower those taxes too
Public schools have such bad incentives that even the charter school remedy sometime fails, so lets the education free market work
Predictable as the sun rising in the East. Some “teacher” thinks they know how – that they know better than others who have actually demonstrated success. Then they go inflict their failure on some poor kids. At the public expense I might add. And they make excuses. Pathetic.
Not every child should go to college, and schools should acknowledge that and have significant vocational training in high school. Two problems with this strategy are that it will require schools to employ conservative men who actually have skills and therefore won’t provide unionized public sector jobs for Democrats.
For those students who have the skills and drive to succeed in higher education, academic rigor is required. Other countries do this well, let’s not reinvent the wheel (again) like the Stanford eggheads. High stakes testing comes to mind as one very positive direction we could take. Eliminating affirmative action and college sports are two others I would suggest. We have enough semi-pro basketball teams to take up the slack.
And stop pouring public resources into programs for autistic, disabled, learning handicapped, etc. Sorry the payback isn’t there. Its am economic waste. The kids are human and deserve respect, they just don’t merit extra.
Last, do like they did to my mother-in-law on her first day in school (in California!). They sent her home because she didn’t speak enough English. No English, no school. The rest of the story is that she learned English, came back next year and graduated salutatorian of her high school class. Accommodating illegal aliens so that unionized public school employees can have jobs is a waste, as is educating Mexican (or other) citizens.
The money quote: “Stanford considers the high school a success.” This is a classic example of the liberal worldview – reality is in the creation of the beholder, or else! They are completely disconnected from reality, to the detriment of those kids who, if challenged, would surely rise up and become a success.
it is like the “Dog Whisperer” …you see his clients are generally well to do …supposedly intelligent and educated and they give the power to the dog.
education is not about money. it is not about fun and games.
instead of empowering students and giving them responsibility …they do the opposite.
the system and their proponents have taken responsibility away from parent and away from students.
meals in schools are a perfect example.. it provides an excuse ..parents should be providing meals not schools. everything is an excuse for some one failing their grades except the people most responsible ..the student and the parents and third the teachers.
you don’t need a computer to learn language or math or science. you don’t need a swimming pool to teach people the basics.
Exactly! But it’s gone beyond the educational system. All governments, local, state and feeral, have been usurping parental powers on the liberal pretext they’re better prepared, due to education, to handle it. Many homes do not teach personal responsibility either because the parents have none, nor do the schools. Our president came from the same environment and as he does quite frequently, his solutions are excuses. If that doesn’t work it’s time to blame someone or something else.
“Will Stanford education professors learn from their mistakes?”
I hope this is a rhetorical question. Liberals NEVER learn from their mistakes. Their M.O. is to create victims where there are none, step in, make a mess, spend too much money, claim victory, then move on to the next class of ostensible victims. The only way public education in the U.S. will improve is for there to be a culture of competition among parents for their children to do well academically, as is happening in many eastern countries. Parents their make sure their children get tutoring if necessary, make sure they are doing their work in school, and pride themselves on their children doing well academically. Visit any major university library on a Saturday night to observe who’s there: Asian students. Not white, black or Hispanic – they’re at a ball game, bars, or on a date.
Indeed.
Lefty Rule #1: Leftism never fails.
Lefty Rule #2: If leftist policies might possibly be seen as failures, see rule 1.
That’s all there is to it.
Liberal Academic Educrats + “Progressive” Agenda+ Govt Funding=FAILURE
Every time, Every where.
Questions?
It is not the function of government to replace the family. Motivation is the key. Students must be motivated, or they will not put out the total effort needed to succeed. If they are taught that they are only accidental collocations of subatomic particles; without meaning or value, ie, “there is no God Who rewards and punishes”, we should not be surprised to find them lacking in motivation; therefore in effort.
The cure is apparent.
This is an exemplary example of the failure of our ed schools. Contrary to what some may think, there is a need for pedagogy. It is not intuitively obvious for many and perhaps most prospective teachers how to break down subject matter to teach it to a given audience. Moreover, a six year old responds differently from a sixteen year old. It is not intuitively obvious for many and perhaps most prospective teachers how to manage a classroom so that students have the opportunity to learn. A chaotic classroom results in much less learning: students not on task will not learn.
There have been classrooms with teachers and students for over two thousand years. In that time, evidence has accumulated regarding what works and does not work. Unfortunately, ed schools are not so much concerned with conveying the nuts and bolts of what works in teaching, as with constructing the next big theory that will explain it all or with aligning classrooms with the newest politically correct fad, such as diversity or constructivism. In the ed schools, professors present conjecture as if it were fact. Is is any accident that Bill Ayers is an ed school professor?
There is very little that ed schools do that actually assists prospective teachers to get it done right in the classroom. One example: at the ed school I went through, student teachers did not set foot in the school until six weeks into the class year. Yet ed schools push books like The First Days of School, which correctly point out that the way a teacher presents the first days of school are vitally important for the rest of the year. Why not have student teachers observe in the school from the first day of school, instead of waiting six weeks?
Fortunately, there are some researchers in education that are actually investigating what works in teaching, not on pushing diversity, constructivism, or cooperative learning -whatever the latest ed school fad is. Building a Better Teacher, which appeared recently in the NYT(not all the NYT does is BS), gives a good summary of some steps in the right direction. It discusses a taxonomy of learning that Doug Lemov had developed from observing teachers who got superior results from students.
Here is an example of the poor job that ed schools do in preparing ed school students for the teaching profession, taken from the NYT article:
While some teachers may be born to the job, teachers can also be made:
If ed schools return to the nuts of bolts of teaching, of researching, discovering, and documenting what works, instead of flitting about with the most current fad, we will turn out better teachers.
I speak as a former teacher. Had I been exposed to something like Lemov’s taxonomy instead of the nonsense in ed schools, I might still be teaching. It is of note that Lemov did not come from an ed school.
Terry & pelaut, dead-on!
Appending ‘progressive’ to any concept is just that. Imagery, smoking mirrors and phony accomplishment.
Sure, you can give a student(s) every means possible for a positive educational experience. On the flip side the same student(s) must go home to a dysfunctional, inept, entitlement-savvy parental unit(s) who’s unable to provide guidance, assistance, discipline, accolades, essential dietary needs, study-friendly environment etc.,
3 cheers for progressivism.. oy!
#18 Gringo
You may be interested in this
http://city-journal.org/2009/19_2_freirian-pedagogy.html
G.L. Alston:
Have you read this article (also from City Journal)?
http://tinyurl.com/62tv
Happy Reading
There is NO MAGIC TEACHING METHOD. There are methods that work on Monday, but fail spectacularly on Tuesday. There are methods that work beautifully with Bobby, but flop with Sammy. There are methods that succeed in teaching math but tank in teaching composition.
Teaching and learning are mostly art, not mostly science. Forcing teaching and learning into a lock-step manufacturing process (even one in the guise of “student support”) will fail every time.
Like Jacobs said, the teachers (and schools) that succeed are the ones who acknowledge failure, seek what works, and constantly strive to improve the learning of their students–NOT the test scores or public recognition or number of articles published in journals.
I speak as a teacher with over 20 years of experience.
I speak as a teacher with more than 40 years of experience in the classroom and nearly 70 years of experience on this planet. All the responses on this thread are spot-on, and the keynote is: What works is real learning, yet most teachers of my acquaintance are not much interested in learning. The most serious problem with the education system is the quality of the teachers. Real talent, by and large, is not attracted to the ed-school culture and its attendant corruptions and imbecilities A dumbed-down politicized and generally unionized profession has gradually produced a dumbed-down education system. Thousands of articles and hundreds of books have exposed the mess over the past few generations, yet it just keeps getting worse and worse. There is something mysteriously stubborn about cultural decay; all serious and virtuous people know what needs to be done, but the decay is perhaps fatally resistant to necessary correctives.
Many years ago, a few years after college, i had a girlfriend taking a Masters course in an ed school. She was panicked over a term paper that she had to turn in. I asked her to get me the appropriate reference material and we put a paper together, with me doing most of the writing. I had never taken any course in teaching or education, but the paper received an A grade. This is an example of the “rigor” of work done in schools of education.
One of my grandmothers came to the United States from Russia in 1888, when she eight years old. She spoke not a word of English, only Yiddish. Her father was opposed to education for girls, so she loved the truant officer. She was only able to go to school until the school leaving age, which at that time was 12 years, so she only got 4 years of education. With that background, she was able to read, write, do arithmetic, all very well. I still have a letter of hers which is better written than that of most current college students.
She had fine teachers, whom she remembered when she was in her nineties. What was important was learning how to read, write, and do arithmetic, not social work – she came from a poor, immigrant family, 6 living in one room, with “family dysfunction” but she learned.
This is what happens when ed schools become involved in education–they fail. Sandra Stotsky was right in her paper years ago–ed schools are the shame of the nation.
Charlie Martin the sophist asks me “Why?” I’m positive that the article should read “illegal immigrant families”.
It’s just a hunch, Charlie, just a hunch. What do you honestly think? Can you create for us a scenario in which the totality or vast vast majority of those children are not illegal aliens or the children of illegal aliens?
Your hunch is more like a extremely accurate assessment of reality.
I taught in Los Angeles Unified School District. It was little more than
a baby sitting service for masses of illegal alien children. Classrooms
were holding pens for 40 so called students who spoke no English, defaced school books, used art materials to make hash pipes, tagged building walls with gang signs, slashed teachers tires etc etc, all before inevitably dropping out to take menial jobs, or, if female, to waddle off at age 16 to the maternity hospital.
My neice and newphew attended the University School in Nashville. Formerly, it was called the Peabody Demonstration School- run by Peabody College, the top school in the country for education majors. The school is fabulous. Peabody has now merged with Vanderbilt University.
Don’t paint all universities with the same brush.
Ive met hundreds of these “fabulous” teachers fromt he most fabulous and of course top notch programs. Everyone of them was fabulous..fabulously cheery, fabulously chock full of the approved
gibberish, fabulously committed to being “fabulous” teachers ..and everyone of them a vague, bland, substanceless, half educated moron putting in the years necessary for a fabulous pension.
If this (or something similar posts twice, my apologies) As a graduate of Peabody Demonstration School I can assure you what made it great had nothing to do with Peabody College. When I attended PDS Peabody College announced it was closing the dem school — the best prep school in the city. The kids attending that school were all middle and upper middle class kids. Our parents were college educators or business people who believed in the value of an excellent education. Many of the student teachers that came thru the school when I attended were incredibly weak. We probably discouraged many from teaching.
When the college felt it no long needed the demonstration school it was the parents, students, teachers, staff and alums that rallied together to build USN. The school never missed a beat. USN continues today as the best (and most elitist) prep school in the city. Yes the college started it but it never made it great. We did it!
Peabody College is one of the problems today. Its admission standards are not the same as Vanderbilt’s. It has definitely not helped improve the level of education found in the public schools in the city in which it is located…I do not understand why it has it’s number 1 ranking…if someone could help me with this I would appreciate it…
Your niece and nephew went to a lab school of Peabody/Vanderbilt.A lab school (laboratory for learning), which is the term I use for a primary or secondary school associated with an institution of higher education, tends to have a select student body. This is either because the lab school does not have open admissions, or because the school is located in a middle class to upper middle class neighborhood- which is by definition select.
If a lab school is high-performing, it is due more to its having select students than to its teachers. From my experience as a student, I know that good to outstanding students teach themselves more than less capable students do. A good to outstanding student is also often better able to overcome a poor teacher than a less capable student. I also know this from my experience as a student. Lower level students are more dependent on teachers than are higher level students.
The performance of the Stanford lab school, where it had a less than outstanding student body, show how teachers perform when given a less than outstanding student body. While Stanford may maintain that no one could have reached those students, the record says otherwise. Google the American Indian Charter School in Oakland. Grade A performance with a student body composition similar to what the failed Stanford school had.
BTW, I had an ed school professor who got her doctorate from Peabody/Vanderbilt. While much of what she had to say about teaching was spot-on, a certain proportion of what she said and did was tinged with the nonsense of ed schools. How can I tell it’s nonsense? If it intuitively strikes me as wrong, due to my experience, and if I can readily document that from some research.
All of my relatives of older generations were teachers at one time or another. Very few of them had anything good to say about ed schools. Ed schools haven’t been spouting nonsense for just the last fifteen years: they have been doing it for generations.
If you have ever looked at the books, and curriculum of the typical
“Education” Dept …you are struck with one thing…the jargon. The convoluted
maze of jargon and abstraction that chases it own tail. Education Bureaucracies are about..Education Bureaucracies. And the “teachers” who “succeed” and graduate from this morass of gibberish are guaranteed to be faithful
apparatchniks who will perpetutate the hoax for another generation.
So being poor and not having much money equals being stupid, unable to behave and needing 24/7 supervision up to and including the late teen years? It’s no wonder our nation is crashing and burning. I always thought being poor and not having much money (and I’ve been there) just meant I had to watch my pennies and try to get a better job or an additional job. I never thought it had anything to do with my brains or my responsibilities in the family or the community. Oh, well. What do I know. I’m just a stupid lower middle class who keeps paying taxes (over $1,000 more this year than last–guess that big tax cut obeyme threw out there didn’t reach us) and paying our bills and enjoying life. Now I did it again: I canNOT get through my head that since I don’t have a lot of money I am supposed to just hate those who do and I shouldn’t be enjoying my life. (Tell that to the robins out on the lawn, the strawberry patch that is leafing up and the daffodils that are grinning their bright little faces off this morning.)
Joanne,
Just a little correction. On the Early Assessment Program, the 11% were students who were “conditionally ready” meaning that if they did significant remediation in the 12th grade they might be ready by the time they got to school. There were zero students who were actually ready for college-level math.
Dave
http://www.theteeparty.com/designs/illiterate.html
Ann — As a graduate of PDS I can assure what went on in that school had nothing to do with Peabody. Peabody shut the school down. It was because of the parents, students, teachers and administrators the school lives today and thrives as (IMHO) still the best prep school in Nashville. Peabody has been out of the demonstration school business for three decades. Even when it was PDS we were a middle to upper middle class school. Our parents were either college educators or business people and all believed in the power of an excellent education. As students we probably drove more student teachers out of teaching than helped them as if they were weak we would show them no mercy.
Don’t get me wrong — it was great Peabody started the dem school. But Peabody had nothing to do with what made that school great when I attended and absolutely nothing to do with what makes it a very elite (and elitist) school today still providing a first rate prep school education.
This is information that is roughly seven years old, but it indicates that few Mexican immigrants arrived in this country legally in recent years:
Migration Policy Institute:
“Mexican nationals were among those most affected by the slowdown in adjustments of
status, with their numbers declining by 47.2 percent.
Fewer than 116,000 Mexicans became legal permanent residents in FY 2003, compared to over
219,000 in FY 2002. According to the new figures, Mexican nationals accounted for 16.4
percent of legal immigrants in FY 2003. They had represented 20.6 percent in the previous fiscal
year.”
Everyone has an opinion on education, eh? High school education is something almost all of have been through. Many of the critical things said here do apply to many teachers, and most of the Ed. jargon, but there are also many good teachers out there and I would like to think that I was one of them for 37 years. That is not to say that there were not many bad moments or failures, even some very bad years; it is dealing with human beings and it is more of an art than a science. I was probably better on the accountability piece than on the inspiration piece, but I did not settle for students pretending to learn. Every student has a different set of things he/she already knows or is good at and things he she needs to learn, and you are never dead-on with all of them all the time.
Teaching is hard to do well and also a lot of work to do well. Righties are usually grumbling about it, but I don’t see many of them stepping forth to do it the right way, in fact, a number have bitter stories to tell of their failed efforts. If you have the time, it is easier to home school your kids than to try to teach 100-150 of other people’s kids, although trying to cover all the subjects competently must be a ball-buster. I have no idea how I would teach kids Chemistry or calculus, but I guess I would have to re-school myself. A teacher like Escalante, who was both inspiring and rigorous, is kind of a genius, a Bill Gates, Steve Jobs of teaching. Being THAT good is truly exceptional; most of us settle for being decent overall, with our good days and bad days.
This is information that is roughly seven years old, but it indicates that few of the more recent Mexican immigrants arrived in this country legally:
Migration Policy Institute:
“Mexican nationals were among those most affected by the slowdown in adjustments of status, with their numbers declining by 47.2 percent.
Fewer than 116,000 Mexicans became legal permanent residents in FY 2003, compared to over 219,000 in FY 2002. According to the new figures, Mexican nationals accounted for 16.4 percent of legal immigrants in FY 2003. They had represented 20.6 percent in the previous fiscal year.”
Please note that the 2003 figure of 116,000 Mexican legal immigrants is nationwide—and not specific to California. One definitely seems to be in the ballpark in saying that most Mexican immigrants of the last decade are here illegally. Furthermore, is there anyway to find fairly accurate statistics breaking down the numbers of those more recent legal and illegal immigrants from Central and South America?
It all comes down to math 105(college algebra). If you can pass it, you can get a degree that’s worth something. If not, it’s education,sociology or gender studies for you. You can only work for the government.
Don’t even try to lump me in with your stereotypes. In addition to my 20 years of teaching experience and English degree, I’ve worked in prissy, feel-good industries like industrial construction and risk management. I’ve even owned a small business–another prissy, feel-good occupation.
I took no college math because I took plenty of it in high school. Algebra, geometry, trig, and calculus were required just to graduate. Four years of English, science, and social science (history and economics) were also required. Was it a hoity-toity prep school? Nope. It was a plain ol’ public high school in a socioeconomically diverse city. The school, however, committed what would now be considered a cardinal sin: It had college-prep and non-college-prep tracks. But even the non-college-prep track required four years of math and English, which surprisingly few high school curricula require today.
I can’t say the ed system back then was perfect, either. But if we combine the discipline of disciplines with some of the no-one-answer, nebulous problem-solving tasks kids do today, I think we’ll be on a better path toward educating our children.
“EPA Academy students are graded on a five-dimensional rubric, based on (1) Personal Responsibility; (2) Social Responsibility; (3) Communication Skills; (4) Application of Knowledge; and (5) Critical and Creative Thinking.”
This told me everything I need to know. The school administrators know upfront that the kids are going to under-perform, so they need to develop some clever way to make sure the kids’ feelings won’t be hurt. Little Janie can’t read or write but she shares her lunch with the homeless guy outside the school fence (social responsibility). Let’s give her an A. The soft bigotry of low expectations.
My niece by marriage attends a KIPP Academy in Oakland. She’s at high risk for failure given her race, the neighborhood she lives in, she’s the child of an unwed mother, etc. But, she does exceptionally well in school. Because KIPP doesn’t tolerate b.s. and has high academic expectations of it’s students. My niece’s mother, who went to Oakland public schools, was allowed to take all of her classes on a “Pass/Fail” basis. Imagine her own mother’s surprise, when after years of “passes” on her report card, she discovered that the girl scored 300s on her SATs.
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
Spitting in the eye of mainstream education
Three no-frills charter schools in Oakland mock liberal orthodoxy, teach strictly to the test — and produce some of the state’s top scores.
May 31, 2009|Mitchell Landsberg
OAKLAND — Not many schools in California recruit teachers with language like this: “We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multicultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply.”
That, it turns out, is just the beginning of the ways in which American Indian Public Charter and its two sibling schools spit in the eye of mainstream education. These small, no-frills, independent public schools in the hardscrabble flats of Oakland sometimes seem like creations of television’s “Colbert Report.” They mock liberal orthodoxy with such zeal that it can seem like a parody.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/31/local/me-charter31
“Special needs” is one of the 800 lb gorillas in the room. It is incredibly expensive, but the parents whose children “need” it are often very vocal and have learned how to work the system (after all, it is for their child, and what parent does not want the best for their child; when the child is “special” then the pressure, even obsession, is also special. In some ways the model has been expanded so that everyone is “special needs.” My wife administers AP tests and it is astonishing how many students have untimed AP tests. We are not talking SAT’s here, but ADVANCED PLACEMENT!
As schools cut their staffs in these tough times, how they cut special needs programs (which are often proscribed by the state) as opposed to the rest of the programs will create some sparks. Most educators/administrators are not good at drawing tough lines beyond which services will not go. The customer is always right, eh, and in education, the customer is the parents.
A lot of private schools avoid most of these special needs issues by not accepting the most needy; let the publics do it and bill the taxpayers. These kids do need services, for sure, but more lines will have to be drawn. My school was supposedly making the transition from promising “the best possible program/services” for each special needs student to “fulfilling the state requirements,” but I can’t say that I saw any
substantial movement in that direction.
Bingo! Special needs and IEP has become the catch-all for parents who cannot parent. Since the SCOTUS has decided that all children regardless of their ability to learn and ability to behave belong in the SAME classroom, our public education system has taken an even sharper downward thrust. Parents have been gaming the system so they don’t have to kill their bank accounts for education; still others use the system to hide their lack of parenting skills.
Units, classes and topics have to be dumbed down to such a point that the special needs students can learn, the pace is slowed for the special needs students and so on. Students who have no reason being in a regular classroom distract the other students; students with severe behavior problems and violence intimidate, threaten and abuse other students and disupt the learning environment. And forget about expelling students-you pretty much have to have the consent of Congress to kick a student out of school. And beware if the student is a minority.
The good and capable students are left to wander and get an unfulfilling education. Their hopes and aspirations are given short shrift to the special needs students.
And the expense is enormous to the districts. The unfunded mandate by the SCOTUS through the federal government really hurts education.
And do you think the progressive cares? Not a wit.
My wife has corrected me; the tests are not untimed (she says if that were the case, that some students would never give up their tests) but extended time.
Lets consider if the term “Public Education” isnt the problem itself.
For most humans, and especially for the American Teenager, the learning curve arcs up and then flatlines usually about the onset of puberty. After that entire waking consciousness is absorbed by clothes, friends, popularity, thrills, and sex. Thats why the media with its gimmickry is so incredibly successful with 85% of the population. Thats why whole apparatus of “Public Education” fails with precisely the same 85% of the population. More money, more teachers overtime, more elaborate schools do nothing to change this.
As one of my favorite authors, Kingley Amis, said. “Public Education itself is an oxymoron, there are not enough brains to go around”
There is some truth to what you say, but your 15% is too low. That may be the number of good students who are substantially ready to learn, but the the other 85% is not a complete loss. Many of them have their moments, or you just have to work harder to entice them, pressure them, or catch them at the right moment. There are so many students out there that one could find data supporting widely varying conclusions about how successful schooling is. As in the army, there will always be waste and inefficiency, and it has obviously become a favorite whipping child for righties, but public education is here to stay. It deserves to be taken seriously and have serious proposals made regarding improvements.
I have my own half-baked theories that most righties (if posters here are typical) tend to be too impatient, rigid, and given to sputtering and pontificating to be able to deal with needs of the young, the flow of the classroom, and the rhythms of romance and precision which one needs to teach well. I think they do (to generalize) have or at least mouth, an appropriate sense that one must be responsible for one’s own success or failure in the classroom, but if they taught, they would be blaming student, parents, and administrators, if they could not make it happen…or would just realize that it was not for them. I would like to hear from teachers who consider themselves conservative about their successes or failure; some such people do exist out there, right?
The people who are in the classrooms have their own sets of issues and problems, for sure, but, whatever proscriptions are made by planners, one has to also be able to find people who can apply them where the rubber meets the road in the classroom. As Rumsfeld said, you have to go to war with the army that you have.
Those that know me here know that I am rather libertarian with one major issue, education. I am in education and I really believe we need a further break up of our nation’s education model, especially in our major cities. My colleague’s are not happy about my beliefs but as we know, I am not concerned with “the flow”. So, with the costs rising through the rooftops we should close all the schools and dissolve all the departments of education for the first six-eight years (nationally). Then just “block grant” em (to coin a Reagan phrase) with the money and let them educate their own, block by block, then test em and if they dont pass, then they go another route till they do. So there. The government is out and the people are completely in charge. Would that work? Lets do it and find out.
You are not PC
Of course your plan is crazy enough to work; It already has, repeatedly.
The problem is breaking the death-grip the State has on the school system.
The most effective strategy is contagion: Using a successful school as an
example to convince the parents in the adjacent school systems to join up.
The bad news is that the success of your plan will take years to become
obvious, and 20 years, one full generation, to improve the US work force;
The US needs to show the rest of the world convincing evidence of change
in our economic strategy, to give the world hope that we will not default
on our debts, starting _now_. We must fight and win an economic world war
with the brains we have now, not the ones we may have in 20 years.
I don’t know the percentage of illegal aliens enrolled at Stanford New Schools’ East Palo Alto Academy. At Downtown College Prep, which serves similar students but is nearly all Hispanic,about 25 to 30 percent of students are undocumented.
Except for very recent immigrants, students typically speak English to their friends, though their vocabulary and grammar may be poor in English — and Spanish.
Mexican immigrant parents want their kids to learn English. They know what it’s like to earn a living without good English and they want better for their kids. They may not know how to help their children do well in school since many immigrant parents have very little formal schooling.
“Mexican immigrant parents want their kids to learn English. They know what it’s like to earn a living without good English and they want better for their kids. They may not know how to help their children do well in school since many immigrant parents have very little formal schooling.”
Please explain then why I find 3rd generation children in Memphis and Nashville church programs who speak little to no English.
In the so called “Dirty South”, its probably a ploy to avoid interaction with black students. A lot of legal semi-assimilated hispanic parents, knowing full well their child has the adequate English language skills, will insist on them remaining in the bilingual education track to avoid black classmates and black teachers. This is the case in many mixed districts. If the district is steadfast in English only or English immersion, this plot quickly goes to pot.
I sure wouldn’t consider Stanford as a College for my kids…lol idiots!
Well, cheer up; Stanford is about as selective as they come, so they probably wouldn’t consider your kids either.
For better or for worse, Stanford, more than any other Univerity is probably to blame for our current Googled culture and why you and I can chat so amiably on the internets. Computers make pretending to learn and plagiarism easier than ever, but they also can engage students. I doubt if most schools have figured out the best ways to use computers or avoid their abuse. An underlying issue is “Why learn something if you can Google it?” But a worse problem is why learn basic math if you have a calculator? Gulp
Once again it is proved that education is about academics and discipline, not feelings. There are more lazy, underperforming kids that need a kick in the ass than ones that need a shoulder to cry on.
Giving the inmates of a College school of education control over a school, is like giving Dr. Mengele control of a pediatric ward in an Israeli hospital.The sooner we close down these bastions of charlatanism,the sooner we can begin to rebuild our pathetic public schools system.
And do you think that you have (or can acquire) what it takes to contribute something constructive? As I said earlier, most righties here are clear on what they don’t like, but much less convincing about what will work. People (students) are what they are, not what either the left or the right dreams them to be.
That the system is broken is not news. “Why Johnny can’t read” was written in the 60′s, and public ed has only gotten worse. With unions, leftist inodcrination, social “progress” that has led to high divorce rates, broken homes and latch key kids, no one shoudl be surprised. But here we are and what to do. The best corrections are usually the simplest. Get rid of Dept of Ed and disband unions, allow districts to hire/fire freely. Teaching is difficult, but teachers arent any more deserving of tenure, exoecially bad teachers. Good teachers would never have to worry about jb security, exoecially since unions are out if the way. Get rid of beaurocrats/administartors. Arent needed, esp. if dept of ed is gone. Stick to good old fashioned liberal arts: writing, reading and arithmetic, to the point of mastery. Get rid of gay studies, feel good classes, pass/no pass grading, multi-cultural nonsense. All meat, no fluff. It’s not that difficult. Hire good teachers, give them authority and get out of their way.
The less said about the quality of your writing the better, but it’s not clear to me that you would know the difference between excellent and mediocre education, so it is understandable that you are willing to jettison everything.
Who makes the decision to hire GOOD teachers? Good school administrators. The same are needed to evaluate the good teachers and fire bad ones. Who determines that the curriculum builds upon itself each year and is actually being being taught? You got it.
Some charter schools are terrific and some are disasters. Often when you start from scratch you go backwards. Some schools are so bad that you would have little to lose if you just started over, but many affluent communities have damned good public schools (even if the teachers never vote for your candidates.) My (where I taught; not where I live) particular high school’s top students competed and produced on the same level as the students in the most expensive private schools in the area. Yes, our bottom students were far below that level, but we had to take everyone, and the high-stakes state-wide test forced us to focus more on their achievement as well…a good thing. Our minority students scored at the state’s average for all students in these high stakes test, (which is not to say that there was not an achievement gap within our own school, because there was. The community had good schools and they paid top dollar for them. Richer communities generally have more motivated (and intelligent) students and parents. Property values were so high that I could not afford to buy anything close to the house and lot I have I the community where I live, but so it goes. That’s what you call the market, right?
First of all you can’t fix stupid. You must be insane or brainwashed to think otherwise. Secondly the education system in this country is not failing. It operates exactly as intended. The last thing the denizens of Washington D.C., the District of Criminals, and their Bankster owners on Wall St. and in the City of London want is a population of well educated, self-reliant, responsible adults. How are they suppose to rule and loot a people like that?
RONIN: STEEL ON TARGET RONIN! BRAVO, BRAVO, BRAVO! The leftist plutocracy manipulates the” progressive” idiots who control our educational system, allowing them to foster ignorance, illiteracy and learned stupidity, through crackpot experimentation.Are you in the ed. field?
DWIGHT:So the poor are more stupid than the affluent?and it’s the market’s fault that the schools(run by liberals) are so bad? BILGE!It’s not a question of money,or brains ,some of the worst public schools in the US are in NJ and NYC,where the governmnet spends 15 to $20,000 a year per student. It’s quite easy to fix the schools. First,arrest the educrats(see above) for 40 years of child molestation(turning innocent children into ignorant,brain dead dolts).After permanently locking them up, let the cognitive scientists, spearhead an efffort to require phonics, vocabulary analysis,and the scientific teaching of the 3Rs in all American schools;adopt,Hirsh’s rigorous,humanistic core curriculum;institute a program of solid vocational training for the non-college bound: get the ACLU out of our schools to permit the exclusion of the criminal, the psychotic and the disruptive from our classrooms;require that ALL teachers earn a REAL degree(Mathematics,History, Anthropology,etc),instead of the cretinous ED. degree;pay teachers a generous bonus to attract talent to the inner city classroom. Hire only ex-teachers to administrative positions,instead of the amoral political whores who defend the status quo. It won’t happen, because educated citizens would have never elected a welfare pimp like Obama,or an agent of the Mexican plutocracy like Bush.(SEE RONIN ABOVE)
deguello
“DWIGHT:So the poor are more stupid than the affluent?and it’s the market’s fault that the schools(run by liberals) are so bad? BILGE!It’s not a question of money,or brains ,some of the worst public schools in the US are in NJ and NYC,where the governmnet spends 15 to $20,000 a year per student.”
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Yeah, it IS a question of money and brains, and it’s just common sense to know that. You are correct that huge dollars don’t cure many schools, essentially beause they do not have the brains to go along with the money. Brains in the parents, the administrators, the teachers, and the students, plus money is a tough combination to beat. Also, it takes a few brains to know that you need a couple spaces after your periods.
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“It’s quite easy to fix the schools. First,arrest the educrats(see above) for 40 years of child molestation(turning innocent children into ignorant,brain dead dolts).After permanently locking them up,”
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OK, I guess we can always add the goofy responses, to the realistic ones.
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let the cognitive scientists, spearhead an efffort to require phonics, vocabulary analysis,and the scientific teaching of the 3Rs in all American schools;adopt,Hirsh’s rigorous,humanistic core curriculum;institute a program of solid vocational training for the non-college bound: get the ACLU out of our schools to permit the exclusion of the criminal, the psychotic and the disruptive from our classrooms;require that ALL teachers earn a REAL degree(Mathematics,History, Anthropology,etc),instead of the cretinous ED. degree;
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OK, a lot of these are NOT goofy and are all things which should be considered, certainly for all levels above elementary
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“pay teachers a generous bonus to attract talent to the inner city classroom.”
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Actually, the pay at many inner city schools is pretty good, but that does not seem to be nearly enough to turn the tide. Who will pay this extra money, though; the Feds?
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“Hire only ex-teachers to administrative positions,instead of the amoral political whores who defend the status quo.”
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OK, a bit of goofiness again in you final phrase. You do need GOOD administrators, and I will agree to the extent that all administrators should have taught at some point.
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” It won’t happen, because educated citizens would have never elected a welfare pimp like Obama,or an agent of the Mexican plutocracy like Bush.(SEE RONIN ABOVE)”
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Again, this kind of goofy rhetoric is so over the top that it is absurd. Such sputtering gets one taken less seriously by anyone trying to have a remotely reasonable discussion
Dwight meant “your”, not “you,” and Deguello needs one space after each of his commas.
Gov. Jan Brewer http://azgovernor.gov/Contact.asp
Please take the time to write the Az. Gov. Jan Brewer thanking her for efforts to make this country safer. This is not a race issue it’s an issue of safety.
Mayor Gavin Newsom http://www.sfmayor.org/contact-the-mayor/
Please also take the time to tell San Fran Mayor Newsom that you are boycotting everything San Francisco for being a sanctuary city and their lack of support in keeping Americans safe.