Educational Apartheid

[mikemac]

<p>you know, this is supposed to be a friendly forum where folks can discuss whats on their mind, presumably in discussions somewhat tied to facts. But I keep reading stuff mini posts and I swear the stuff is just invented. </p>

<p>No justification yet for the claim

For the past 3 generations, spending on white middle class public schools per student has been roughly double what it has been in predominantly minority ones.

And now we are supposed to believe

The rich know how much it takes to educate a child who already has all the advantages … $32k a year, give or take.

Where did this come from? This is just as implausible as the last claim.</p>

<p>In Palo Alto, CA, one of the best school districts in the state if not the country (Stanford is nestled in Palo Alto), the district website says they spend $10,215 per student. This isn’t close to $32K, not even for large values of $10K :)</p>

<p>How about Marin, CA? Its one of the school districts mini specifically mentions. Its not clear what she means by “Marin” because their is no county-wide school district, but lets look at the Mt. Tamapalais district in the area. On their website they say “The District has approximately 3900 students from 14 separate Marin County communities attending three four-year comprehensive high schools” so I think this is a representative candidate. How much spending do they report? $11,553 per student if you do the math (see <a href=“http://www.tamdistrict.org/admin/budget/200506.pdf[/url]”>http://www.tamdistrict.org/admin/budget/200506.pdf&lt;/a&gt;) Again, nothing remotely resembling $32K.</p>

<p>You know, I think we DO need to do something to improve our schools, and that conditions in some inner-city schools are dreadful just like the original article outlines. However it does little to advance the cause to make wild claims. In America it seems nobody doe anything unless there’s a “crisis” even if it has to be invented. The saddest thing is there really is a crisis in education, but throwing out made-up statistics to illustrate the crisis only preaches to the faithful. Even if you add in the “annual value of donations and fundraisers” as mini postulates there’s just NO way its $32K. Every reader here can look around their community and say “spending $32K? No way!!” and it just completely discredits everything.</p>

[Mr.B]

<p>My k-8 school’s nurse is part-time, Friday only. We don’t have a professional librarian. My heater/air conditioner has not worked this year, and has been out for months at a time during the winter. Our math students cannot get to matheletes to compete because we have no bus or van. My daughter wanted a mock trial team in the high school, she found an attorney to be a coach, convinced a teacher to let them use her room for practice and put the team together acting as a student coach, and I drove. Her team came in third…the first and second place teams had an attorney for each team member, they came from wealthy neighborhoods. The free advice of almost 15 attorneys might add to the dollar value support that those districts get over ours and it wouldn’t show up on a district financial statement.</p>

<p>I teach at low income multi-cultural schools intentionally, as do most of my peers, we get a kick out of the idea that our school would be improved if we could only get the volvo drivers from the suburban schools to teach in the hood. Maybe if we could get a residential facility to keep our kids away from drugs and prostitution, or a counselor to help kids get needed medical help.</p>

[driver]

<p>

Maybe if we could get a residential facility

That’s what I was getting at in post 35. I’d support that. It would be money well spent. But there would have to be conditions, accountability, and consequences for everybody.</p>

[Mr.B]

<p>I would also mention, I am one of those teachers who did not major in the subject area that I teach. I met the requirements for two areas of specialization relating to economics at Cornell so I have a BS in Economics not math. When you add all the math classes I took for my degree and since my Masters…it exceeds thirty hours of college level math. I am very capable of teaching my course, Algebra. </p>

<p>The challenge of reaching inner city kids is getting them to believe that it is worth the effort to learn, to encourage them to excell, to identify for them the hope that lies in the opportunities that could be available to them if they make a sincere effort. You have to convince them that there is a better life, and that they could have it. </p>

<p>We also need to develop a sensitive way to educate parents who are making decisions to pay for cable television, but not for books or magazines.</p>

[driver]

<p>

The challenge of reaching inner city kids is getting them to believe that it is worth the effort to learn, to encourage them to excell, to identify for them the hope that lies in the opportunities that could be available to them if they make a sincere effort. You have to convince them that there is a better life, and that they could have it.
We also need to develop a sensitive way to educate parents who are making decisions to pay for cable television, but not for books or magazines.

I completely agree with all of this. I just think it’s a tall order for an algebra teacher, who is supposed to be teaching algebra. As for the parents, well that’s the crux of it. Teacher2005’s posts reminded me of an article I read a few years ago about a young man from Philadelphia who had graduated college, gone to grad school, taught, and then returned to Philly as the principal of one of the high schools. He was determined to turn things around, and one of his innovations was to stop mailing report cards home, so the parents would have to come to the teacher’s conference to get them. Sounded like a plan, but according to the article more than 3/4 of those report cards went unclaimed. In my school district you can have to park 1/4 mile away and walk to get into a parent-teacher conference night because so many parents are there. I don’t know what the answer is, but just pumping more money into the same system isn’t the answer. The folks we’re talking about need a different system, where they’re taught what needs to be done and are supervised into doing it…not a “sensitive” way of educating them into making basic, adult decisions. It won’t happen in my lifetime.</p>

[mini]

<p>Even if you add in the “annual value of donations and fundraisers” as mini postulates there’s just NO way its $32K. Every reader here can look around their community and say “spending $32K? No way!!” and it just completely discredits everything."</p>

<p>Manhasset, as cited in the article, was at $22k (double New York City’s), before adding in the value of voluntary contributions. Of course, they begin with infrastructure paid for through bonds, not through per pupil expenditures (as does Marin - try Sausalito). Add in the value of the bonds on infrastructure (which is why the need for investments over time), and the voluntary contributions.</p>

<p>Go to the websites of Andover, Exeter, Taft, Groton, etc., and you’ll see what a year costs. $32k-$35k. Granted, that includes board, but it does NOT include income spent from endowment, or voluntary contributions. Lakeside School in Seattle (we don’t only have to talk about the REALLY fancy east coast ones), which is not a boarding school, is $23k before voluntary contributions and income from endowment. Bush School in Seattle (relatively mediocre) is about $1k less. And this is in low-cost Seattle. Try out the ones in L.A.</p>

<p>But $30k is cheap. In 2000, the Rand Corporation figured out the added societal cost per minority high school dropout. It came in at $1.2 million per, in current dollars (that is 2000 dollars). Over time, the rich folks could actually LOWER their taxes at the $30k figure. </p>

<p>“Maybe if we could get a residential facility to keep our kids away from drugs and prostitution, or a counselor to help kids get needed medical help.”</p>

<p>The fancy private schools (and the Scarsdale-like public schools) provide virtually every kind of counseling service imaginable. (And the kids already have their medical taken care of. ;)) </p>

<p>Anyhow - just reverse the funding streams. For three generations. That’s really all it would take. Every dollar for Scarsdale High or Naperville Junior High means two for Thurgood Marshall Elementary or Fanny Lou Hamer High School. What would happen? There would be libraries, drug counselors, community outreach workers, well-paid teachers, real books in classrooms - one per student! (would you believe my d. has one to take home and one at school, this at a time when in many schools there is one book for every four students?), the heating systems would work, there would be toilets, and water fountains, and windows that open and close. Maybe even an extra janitor or two. Music teachers. Art teachers. Maybe there would be cardio machines and climbing walls, just like at Naperville Junior High, though I doubt it, and people who stayed after school every day to show kids how to use them (just like in Naperville.)</p>

<p>There would be much government waste, just like the amount spent on flower gardens at Groton, likely less than that spent on obsolete military equipment each year. Even an outdoor playground! </p>

<p>Oh, there would be pre-school programs. Just like the “Baby Ivies”, which cost roughly $24k for a full-day program. Available at age 2. </p>

<p>And, you know? I think the current teachers (like Mr. B) could probably do the job really, really well if given the opportunity, and the wraparound services that made it possible to really teach. (Not braiding, of course.) A lessening of the misery index - it would take time, of course, but not forever. About three generations would do it; less than the time it took to get us where we are today.</p>

[driver]

<p>Mini, if you’re so sure about this, why not address the results of the KC experiment (#26). Did they really just need 30 more years of it?</p>

[tenisghs]

<p>This is funny. Jonathan Kozol visited my university (Northwestern) last year. I actually went to the seminar. He was a pretty cool guy, albeit very long-winded.</p>

[garland]

<p>You know, a suggestion that gives up on the next two generations doesn’t interest me, though it makes a great sound bite.</p>

<p>the more than 16,000 per year Newark gets covers those things you list; I don’t think it will change much; it hasn’t. It’s a disfunctional community for a million reasons, mostly but not all out of the control of the citizens. </p>

<p>You want to change things right now? Try national health insurance. The newly painted walls, highly paid teachers, and ample books they have won’t help a kid who misses months of school with asthma, or the ones whose moms are immobilized with high blood pressure and diabetes.</p>

<p>Get rid of a government that’s corrupt to a level you can’t imagine up there in the northwest.</p>

<p>Figure out how to get rid of the gangs. They’re in my kid’s HS, too, but worse and more dangerous in Newark. And the drugs, while you’re at it. Even if a kid avoids them, he has to deal with sitting next to the one who doesn’t.</p>

<p>A college freshman in my program was a top ten student in one of the magnet hs’s; she said she couldn’t concentrate or learn because of the disruptiveness of the other students. You tell me what the answer to that is.</p>

<p>I feel like your three generation “theory” is a gigantic copout; and you know what, you’re unwillingness to really deal with the issues and individual realities gives the rest of us progrressives a bad name.</p>

[mini]

<p>Want realities? My stepniece teaches at a junior high school in the district next to Manhasset. She is just beginning her third year teaching math. She is two years out of college (Queens), and is certified in math, though doesn’t yet have her masters. Her salary is $85k. But that’s not all. The school district is paying for her masters, and even pays for extra “study time off”. </p>

<p>But that’s not all. The school district pays her $80 an hour “after school” to tutor kids “who are in danger of falling behind” (love the term - they haven’t really fallen behind yet, they’re just in danger of it.). Last year, she picked up roughly an extra $40k that way,about the median salary for a teacher working about 14 miles away in NYC. (The median salary in her school is roughly $10k higher than her $85k, before all the perks. It isn’t anywhere close to being the highest.)</p>

<p>This IS the reality. It isn’t pretty, and it isn’t subject to quick fixes. Manhasset and its neighbors know how much it costs to educate their children - who grow up with the advantages of being born into Manhasset to begin with. So it might cost a wee bit more for the non-Manhassetites; probably not a lot, if you spread it out over time. </p>

<p>That’s just the reality. It isn’t a cheap one. I don’t expect it be fixed in my lifetime. Because it doesn’t need just a little more money thrown at it. It needs LOTS of money, OODLES of money, climbing walls and cardio machines and toilets filled with money. $80 an hour tutors for those “in danger of falling behind”. Not alternative programs with small inputs that exist for three years and then disappear. Whole Napervilles, and Manhassets, and Scarsdales, and Sausalitos full of money (or just a little bit more.) And that wouldn’t even be sufficient for change; just the precondition. </p>

<p>Progressives like to make believe that change can happen on the cheap. Conservatives are not so naive. We know what the “progressives” deal out - you just have to read the Williams v. California lawsuit for the gruesome details.</p>

[marite]

<p>For a while, my Ss’ k-8 school shared the same building as another school. The composition of the student bodies and the educational results were like night and day. More than half of the NM Commended and Semi-Finalists last year, more than half came from our former k-8 school (there are 12 k-8 schools). The other school, however, has been struggling for years and has faced declining enrolments.
The two programs differed in educational philosophy. And their different philosophies attracted different constituencies. The more traditional one drew heavily from the immediate neighborhood: a working class, heavily immigrant community of parents working two jobs or different shifts, many with limited English and unfamiliar with the American educational system. The School Council could not get more than two parents to attend meetings, even those that dealt with crucial issues, such as potential mergers or even closing.
The other program was an “alternative one” and attracted students from all over the city (they were bused in) with a sizeable minority component but a white, middle class majority. The parents were heavily involved in the school, fund-raising, organizing book drives, going on long field trips, attending parent-teachers conferences, and attending School Council meetings. Sometimes, the turnout was so heavy, meetings had to be held in the auditorium.
The two schools shared many of the same facilities, including labs, and had the same per pupil spending. While the poorer neighborhood was not gang ridden or a site of drug dealing, its residents’ resources, both economic and cultural, were far more limited than those of the parents who enrolled their children in the alternative programs.
All this to say that throwing more money at schools is not necessarily the best way to address problems that have their roots outside of schools.
Just to clarify that the success of one and relative lack of success of the other are not due to their different curricular philosophy, another highly successful k-8 school has a traditional curriculum, based on E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge. Again, it has a significant minority component but also a very active middle class group of parents</p>

[poetsheart]

<p>“What they need is good enough schools, safety–in school and outside it, good health care ( the leading reason for school absence is asthma and it’s much worse in the cities), positive parental attention, nutritious food, discipline, and a lot of books read to them.”</p>

<p>Amen and amen! I’m sorry, but I must stridently disagree with you Mini, as you seem intent on ignoring the fact that the problems facing poor, inner-city schools (and often, poor rural schools) are MULT-FACITED, and that they come together to brew a very complex and toxic stew. Yes, no doubt adequate funds spent in the proper places would go a long way toward fixing the problems for which funds alone would make all the difference—school structural inadequacies and lack of basic facilities, such as gyms, playgrounds, bathrooms, classrooms, etc. And that’s a lot. But in no way is it enough to even begin to close the inequity gap, no matter how much money you were to throw at the problem, because lack of funding is only ONE aspect of the problem. The others, as outlined above: safety, discipline, health care, POSITIVE PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT, nutrition and “a lot of books read to them”, are often only given a glancing acknowledgement. These other components are present in EVERY school district that works, and absent in EVERY school district that doesn’t, regardless of spending. </p>

<p>It seems to me that the linchpin components of school success or failure are, first and foremost, social. It’s about values, and the commnunity (if not parental) will to place the very HIGHEST priority on the needs of children and children’s education. This takes more than money, more than lip service, more than the demand for higher test scores. </p>

<p>The most successful school districts in the country exemplify these basic educational values, whatever their spending budgets. If these values are in place, the presence of rock walls, in-school broadcasting facilities, and olympic sized pools, are only icing on the cake—nice, no doubt, but not essential to academic success.</p>

<p>The hydra has many heads. If we insist that chopping off just one or two of them will slay the beast, we are doomed to fight it world-without-end.</p>

[garland]

<p>Congrats, Mini–you know someone who works in a rich school district. Bully for you. I work with the graduates of a different kind of place. My students come from the Abbot districts, SATs averaging about 800 (and these are the successful ones.) My H was a pediatrician in neighborhoods you know nothing about. Please tell me how rock walls are going to help the tenth kid of a drug-addicted mom. Or the twins with tons of chronic health issues born to the 14 year old.</p>

<p>So who gives a flying fig that your neice is overpaid in Manhasset? That’s her issue. Newark teachers are paid higher than the average teacher in NJ, they start 10,000 higher than in my town. You, in other threads, take great pains to point out that people like Manhassetans are the upper tiny percent of the richest, yet most school districts made up of much more typical folks function just fine. You set up a straw man and then knock it down. I myself woudn’t and didn’t choose to live in that kind of community, and my kids are just fine.</p>

<p>And lastly, where did you see that I or any other “progressive” wanted to do anything on the cheap? I think that the money needs to be spent, equitably and thoughtfully, and not on pools and gadgets and astroturf. But you’ve developed a schtick–why not stay with it?</p>

[pyewacket]

<p>I know this will alienate a lot of folks here, but frankly, I think the problem is that too many affluent parents said their kids to private schools. Public schools only get better when a sufficient number of middle class parents have kids in the schools and advocate for them as well as raise money. As long as urban public schools are seen as “only for poor people” they will continue to be short-changed. On the other hand, it’s a chicken and egg problem–when public schools only offer inferior education, you can’t blame those who can from opting out. Fundamental re-ordering of priorities and radical change are the only hope.</p>

[pyewacket]

<p>Send not said! sorry.</p>

[Teach2005]

<p>I just wanted to agree with Mr.B’s post about degrees in education. First, let’s clarify a few things. Middle and high school teachers HAVE to either have a degree in what they are teaching or an education degree in what they are teaching such as science education or math education. You will never have an algebra teacher who does not have an extensive background in math because a math education degree requires a lot of math hours. Elementary teachers are the ones who simply have a degree in elementary education (and I teach at the elementary level so I can say this). I teach gifted education now but when I taught 2nd grade I taught all the subjects so it was impossible for me to have a degree in science, math, english, and history. However, I did have concentration areas in math and english meaning I have at least 18 undergraduate hours in both of those subjects. I also have both a master’s and a Ph.D. AND I teach in a public school so we do exist. I teach in a public school because I feel I’m needed more here than in a private school. </p>

<p>I know a LOT of very capable and qualified teachers that teach in some of the worst situations. However, there are variables out of our control. I believe it was Mr. B who pointed out that it would be easy to teach these kids if we plucked them out of their lives and placed them in ideal residential situations. I have to agree. At the first school where I taught we had a sixth grader (yes, I said sixth grader) get pregnant because her mom had been prostituting her out to earn money. Do you think this mother worried about whether she did her homework or not first? I would guess no. I had two students that year whose mothers were in prison. When the counselor came to do a drug education lesson with my class and another, hands shot up all over the room because kids wanted to volunteer that their dad/mom/uncle, etc. did drugs. At Open House that same year a girl approached me because she remembered me from high school. We had graduated together and her daughter was now in third grade at the school. I started teaching when I was 21!! I think we can all do the math there. </p>

<p>My point is that while inner-city/lower class schools would benefit from more money, better teachers, etc., the problem goes so much deeper than those issues. In order to fix those schools, some of the societal problems have to be addressed. I don’t know how to do it. If I did, I would try to fix it…but I know that so many educational fixes proposed are merely band-aids for the problem. School vouchers? If a bunch of urban lower class kids started using vouchers and going to suburban schools, what would happen? Many of those suburban kids would pull their kids out and send them to private school. I think I mentioned that I grew up in Mississippi under a desegregation order. That’s what happened with that. We went from neighborhood schools to being bused across town. Slowly but surely, middle class parents of both black and white children began moving out of the city district to either county districts or private schools. I know I’m being long winded, but this is an issue I’m pretty passionate about. =)</p>

[Mr.B]

<p>Some thoughts on improving inner city schools.
Two room school house model, with one teacher in charge or k-3 and the other 4-6. Students spend seven years with two adults in their lives who get to know them and care about thier needs.</p>

<p>Residential facilities linked to schools to allow long term and respite care for children.</p>

<p>Pediatric and dental clinics at schools.</p>

<p>Housing in the community for teachers, firemen, nurses and police…there are federal programs but they don’t work. </p>

<p>Require a satisfactory high school report to get a drivers licence before 18. </p>

<p>Incorporate a judicial review, counseling and community service into hard behavior cases. It takes too long to get kids help, and in too many cases they just switch schools as the paper work is filed.</p>

<p>Pay teachers to do home visits. Seeing where a kid lives creates wonderful insight.</p>

[driver]

<p>I’m pretty passionate about it too, and I am also without answers. But I do have a problem with wild-eyed utopian schemes such as that described by Mini. Mr. B should have a working HVAC system in his room, no question. But doubling his pay and putting in new athletic facilities and libraries aren’t going to begin to address the needs of the children of prostitutes, drug addicts, and imprisoned criminals. Just as the solution to poverty wasn’t setting unwed mothers up in project apartments and giving them food stamps. There are needs to be met here, but they’re not the needs that would occur to people leading normal lives; they’re not even fundamentally about scholastic education. Meeting them properly is going to require a degree of accountability on the part of the recipients of such assistance. I think a residential community–an orphanage/refuge for dysfunctional families, if you will-- might be a useful approach. But there would have to be rules, regulations, accountability, and enforcement. As we have in private school.</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>just wanted to agree with Mr.B’s post about degrees in education. First, let’s clarify a few things. Middle and high school teachers HAVE to either have a degree in what they are teaching or an education degree in what they are teaching such as science education or math education.</p>

<p>I think that one of the main things that NCLB is working toward is teachers who have proven competency in the field they are teaching. HOwever, schools can get waivers, rural schools where teachers are teaching several areas, alternative schools etc. We currently are not as a nation at a place where all teachers have been proven to have reached certain standards in teh subjects they are teaching.
Example. My daughter had one teacher in 4th grade- this was her 2nd year teaching, her first year she taught 1st grade, but the next year they needed a 4th grade teacher. She did not learn math, in her classroom, I am really not sure what she learned, the teacher was still making the transition from 1st gd to 4th gd.
In 7th and 8th gd my daughter had this teacher ( same school) for her math teacher. She taught the curriculum, but didn’t fill in the gaps of the curriculm, my daughter got A’s, but her placement test in high school indicated she was a year behind and she began a remedial class.</p>

<p>

States are now preparing to meet the 2005-06 deadline for ensuring all of their teachers are highly qualified. Ahead of that deadline, the Department is providing three new areas of flexibility for teachers to demonstrate that they are highly qualified. This flexibility will benefit teachers, local and state administrators, and most importantly–students.

<a href=“http://www.ed.gov/nclb/methods/teachers/hqtflexibility.html[/url]”>http://www.ed.gov/nclb/methods/teachers/hqtflexibility.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>the way that math is taught in many districts is ridiculous.
Why is process more important than product?
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/opinion/16friedman.html?hp[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/opinion/16friedman.html?hp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[xiggi]

<p>“And lastly, where did you see that I or any other “progressive” wanted to do anything on the cheap? I think that the money needs to be spent, equitably and thoughtfully, and not on pools and gadgets and astroturf.”</p>

<p>Garland, there is so much truth in what you wrote. Noboby in his right mind and heart disagrees that education deserves ample and adequate funding. The biggest issue is that the definition of adequate funding seems to be so different among the interested parties. And so is the definition of “basic” needs. When poorer districts in Texas started to receive the Robin Hood plan’s windfall, they rushed to build new athetic facilities that private schools couldn’t even afford.</p>

<p>Rather than comparing the most deficient and inefficient district to the richest, we ought to look around and emulate the schools that are on the right path. I graduated from a private high school with a tuition of less than $5,000 per year for FULL paying students. About 50% received financial aid. The school would dream to have the same spending as our local public schools. The school is right in the middle of town and next to the poorest public school. How much grass do we have- and I mean the kind you walk and play on? Not a square foot! We practiced in the parking lot or in public parks. Every game is an away game. That did not stop us to win the State championship in soccer. When we traveled 14 hours to the site of the final, we piled up 7 or 8 into PARENT’s cars. We slept 6 in a room in a motel 40 miles away from the fields. When the local public school went to the same venue, the team FLEW back and forth and stayed in a posh city hotel. </p>

<p>Some of our school books were twenty year old and were kept together with duct tape. On the other hand, local public schools find a way to change their books every time a new edition comes out. I read a report that California wastes 1 billion a year by not having a centralized purchasing office for books and allow each district to be “hosed” by the publisher. Obviously, enough officials DO benefit from disguised kickbacks and perks for the racket to continue. </p>

<p>To find solutions, we may also look abroad, especially at countries that have a fraction of our wealth. I taught SAT classes to students from a small city two hours south of the border. One 10th grader scored a perfect 800 on the Math section despite attending a school that has ONE computer and where her math books are mere photocopies. On the other hand, her notebook was 3 inch thick and filled with HANDWRITTEN graphs and problems. Her parents earn $50 a week and her teacher earns $110 per week. </p>

<p>Not exactly Rye and Manhasset rates, or Harlem for that matter! </p>

<p>“I know this will alienate a lot of folks here, but frankly, I think the problem is that too many affluent parents [send] their kids to private schools.” </p>

<p>As far as families leaving the public schools for private schools, could someone explain WHY this has a negative impact on the FINANCES of the public schools? If 10% of students pay for a service they do not use, it seems that the remaining 90% gets an extra 10% of resources. This is different from MOVING to a better school district. Isn’t it the same criticism that homeschoolers have to hear?</p>