<p>I’m with you on this one nmd and am. It’s the job of the parents to send kids to school with a decent attitude and controllable behavior. Given that, the teachers I know actually want to (and do) teach and most of them do it well. Maybe we’re just lucky here in VT.</p>
<p>OOps, I take that back…better to have rotten to the core, corrupt, bloated and ineffectual schools and blame the parents than take the chance that–gasp!!–some school board, somewhere may try to impose school prayer or abstinence education on its students. I got it.</p>
<p>Since when am <em>I</em> protecting the education establishment in this country? LOL!</p>
<p>Read my posts from this thread. I have problems aplenty with American education.</p>
<p>I was curious about the issue of spending, SPED (MA does not spend a penny on gifted ed) and student performance. I’m providing basic data for Brookline, MA, a high-performing district, and Chelsea, MA, a district whose students performed so badly that it was put in receivership. The crucial difference, it seems to me, is the percentage of ELL students. </p>
<p>Brookline, MA:
students: 5,984
ELL: 27.3%
SPED: 18,4%
Percentage of teachers licensed in their area of teaching: 98.8%
Spending per pupil:$11,107</p>
<p>Chelsea, MA
Students: 5,533
ELL: 77.4%
SPED: 15.1%
Percentage of teachers licensed in their area of teaching: 92.9%
Spending per pupil: $8,958.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/special/inside_our_schools/brookline.htm[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/special/inside_our_schools/brookline.htm</a>
<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/special/inside_our_schools/chelsea.htm[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/special/inside_our_schools/chelsea.htm</a></p>
<p>“Charter schools have been a dismal failure and seem to be underperforming even their public counterparts.”</p>
<p>Not entirely, AM. Some of them, including ones I’ve recently taught in, or, LOL, tried to teach in, although few of my students spoke English – are ranked near the bottom of the State in performance; you’re right about that. However, those are the ones with the home conditions & attitudes & low expectations you enumerated. The only site charters that are performing well (& in those cases, hugely better than non-charter schools in the same SES neighborhoods), are those who are radically different in format & style. They have very long school days and lots of old-fashioned, hands-on classroom teaching — whole class, not individual projects, learning stations, or various forms of chaos. These are structured schools with very strong discipline (i.e., order, not abuse). There are in fact some ESL (not usually ELL) learners in these schools, but they are absolutely not catered to, language-wise. There are concrete consequences for cumulative misbehavior, such as, removal of retreat privileges & other school events. And here’s the important difference between such schools & other schools, whether charter or non-charter. The ADMINISTRATION IS ON THE SAME PAGE AS THE TEACHERS, and I don’t mean just with lip-service. The teachers are not reprimanded for enforcing discipline but are supported for doing so. And can you imagine what the result is? she asked rhetorically. It’s heaven to teach in them. You can actually be heard in the classroom! Hands are raised, just like in the old days. Students participate, are respectful, and they’re expressing themselves well. These are not upper-income, privileged kids. </p>
<p>Quote from NMD:
“Take charter schools as an example. The early ones appeared to work better. With greater numbers, the success differential disappears. So it was not charter schools per se that mattered, but something else. (what? I have no idea, and doubt anyone else does either)” </p>
<p>I don’t have statistical studies to back this up, but I’ll offer observations based on my experience working in several types of charters, including ones I’ve worked in since their start-up, limited to my own state of course. </p>
<p>When charters began, overall the students came from more educationally aggressive & competent households. The student body population was more homogeneous, and on the achieving, self-sufficient side. The more educated parents would not tolerate the insanity of the system which compromised their own students’ success, due to some of the priorities AM refers to (a little exaggerated, but not entirely inaccurate). </p>
<p>Attrition by these families affected the system in general, which is based on attendance, which drives the state dollars & the site staffing. Attrition combined with state budget squeezes eroded the quality of the remaining traditional schools even further, to the point where even the less educated households were opting out, & joining or creating charters. As parental education & parental availability is tied very much to student success, the success quotient of charters, singularly and overall, began to be diluted. </p>
<p>Charters are also geographically bound (tied to the county in which they were born). Further, many of them arise as a response to needs or desires of a narrower locale (the old neighborhood school concept). The tremendous influx of non-English-fluent students with illiterate parents has resulted in a concentration, often, of ELL learners not prepared to learn the langauge or reinforced by English in their home or community. Some of these populations dominate particular charter schools. One that I am thinking of is one that ranks very low. The principal is terrible, although some of the teachers are quite good. And there is a complete enabling of foreign language dominance, despite the entire curriculum being of course in English. Translators are provided, & in every other way students are directly & indirectly encouraged to remain as ELL learners.</p>
<p>There are other charters with very different populations than just described. In some cases the quality of the teaching, while better than at many low-performing non-charters, is not what it would need to be to meet the very expectations of that charter (which are usually beyond “state standards”). But in most other cases (this is not “blaming administration,” it is just a budgetary fact), they are poorly administered because even the most competent administrators are overwhelmed: the State under-budgets to an extreme (administratively) the charters, while over-budgeting to an extreme the non-charters. The under-budgets result in thinly staffed schools not prepared to provide sufficient oversight over teachers, students, and non-compliant parents. (i.e., parents not fulfilling their end of charter agreements, such as homework oversight, etc.). </p>
<p>I hope you weren’t referring to me when you criticized the “blaming” of unions. I’m not blaming unions for the condition, the performance of schools. I’m saying that the system is broken overall, and that salvation does not lie with unions because they support the system.</p>
<p>Interesting site, Marite.
Also notable that Brookline spends $19.600+ per student per year on Special ed while Chelsea spends $14,173. </p>
<p>An interesting statistic would be, though largely unique to Massachusetts where the state public laws on special education (not for gifted kids evidently) are more generous than federal laws, what % of students in special ed are in fact in Private or out of district schools paid for by the school district, as opposed to in house programs.</p>
<p>Last weekend I was at a grad party in another state. One of the women I met was talking about a student whom she had worked with this year. The district no longer had a program which suited the child and so the child will be sent out of district next year. I asked her to describe the child’s needs and why this reasonably well funded school district couldn’t serve them. It turns out the child is 8 years old, severly impaired and functions at the 9-12 month old level for most skills.</p>
<p>This sort of situation is the exception, rather than the rule. However, before questioning (as some previous posters did) the identification of ‘softer disabilities’ and the expenditure of resources for children who have them, I think there has to be a frank and rational look at how money is spent referenced to what the outcome changes will be for the money spent. </p>
<p>Many of the ‘diagnoses’ for which children are being given services are somewhat arbitrary and based solely on the reality that in the bell curve of all human functions someone is going to function in the lowest 20 or 10 or 5 %ile. This is just how things are with continuum diagnoses. Even dyslexia, which is so well understood now compared to many other learning differences, is now understood as the tail distribution of reading learning abilities, not an entirely different process of reading (Shaywitz et al). Asperger syndrome is an rather extreme version of social skills variations, dificulty in understanding the thinking of others, and quirky/sometimes rigid thinking. ADHD is 6/9 of 1 or 2 sets of characteristics of which on any given day many kids who are ‘normal’ might show 3 or more. </p>
<p>I am not dismissing these diagnoses, but having just read “The Last Normal Child” by Dr. Lawrence Diller am quite in agreement with his premise that the whole landscape of understanding children and then knowing what to do about what you understand needs to be cautiously approached.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Couldn’t Catholic schools produce quite a bit of “magic sauce” if armed with budgets similar to public schools, or a fraction of the budget at rich private schools. </p>
<p>The “magic sauce” is probably as elusive as the Holy Grail, but that does not mean we should stop looking, especially looking at countries that do much better than the United States, and often for a lot less money. There are examples worth studying and maybe worth emulating in countries as wide ranging as the Netherlands and Belgium all the way to … Cuba. </p>
<p>Is the Belgian constitutionally protected school choice and school freedom better than our system? Is a tightly controlled curriculum taught by well trained teachers in Cuba part of the solution? Hard to tell! What is, however, not hard to tell that the current combination of powers in the United States is a disaster in the making. </p>
<p>And for what is worth, allowing the imminent collapse --or drastic reduction-- of the Catholic educational system to happen is a testament to the misguided values and fears of the people we are trusting and have trusted for too long. For a country built on liberty, freedom, and … capitalism, we are exhibiting a rather surprising fear of the same components that made the US one of the greatest countries on earth.</p>
<p>PS Despite dating from 1991, this article is still worth reading:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,973017,00.html[/url]”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,973017,00.html</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>For a more recent viewpoint:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_catholic_schools.html[/url]”>http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_catholic_schools.html</a></p>
<p>I live in MA, and know for a fact that our special ed costs are disproportionately higher than communities from other states. Even friends of mine in NJ, which have very odd ed funding with the Abbott disticting, are in awe of the amount of money we spend on out of SpEd district placements.</p>
<p>The huge elephant in the room, which we are, of course, too PC to address, is whether after spending millons of dollars to educate very few students in out of district placements (I don’t even know what in the district costs are in most towns…I don’t think I want to know), what the results will be. Some IEP goals, in these expensive placements, are as insignficant as “So and So will take care of personal hygiene 80% of the time”. Yes, we are paying $100K taxpayer $$ in out of district costs so some boy will learn to take a shower. </p>
<p>And at the same time, we fund not one penny towards gifted education. I think it is criminal.</p>
<p>I don’t know of Lawrence Diller’s book, but thanks for the recommendation, Anita. I plan to pick it up, because I become increasingly disturbed by what I see happening with education in general, and special education, specifically.</p>
<p>Anitaw:</p>
<p>There are so many discrepancies between Chelsea and Brookline (two districts I selected because they have a similar size population, but totally different composition and income. Brookline can afford to pay more, to have more teachers with the proper credentials, to spend more on SPED, to spend more generally; but it is Chelsea, with its larger proportion of ELL students who should be spending more. So it’s no wonder that Brookline with the inbuilt advantage of a population better prepared for schooling and the added advantage of being able to spend more where it makes a large difference is doing far better than Chelsea. It’s not a matter of blaming schools, teachers’ unions, parents, students. It is just a fact of life that Chelsea is not Brookline, or Weston, or Lexington or Newton.
That site does make for very interesting reading, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Regarding Asperger’s, yes, that, too is part of a continuum. Our nephew was diagnosed border-line Asperger’s with ADD. He is very smart but suffers from major disorganization and has difficulty relating to others.</p>
<p>Allumusic-- In my state, bus service is free to any child who lives more than one mile from his/her school (private, parochial, public, charter.) You cannot imagine the money spent on private tranportation services for kids whose parents have mounted successful lawsuits (or threats of one) claiming that their child is too disabled to ride a school bus.</p>
<p>A kid in my neighborhood was picked up by taxi at the end of his driveway… had a dr’s note that he was asthmatic and that the walk up the bus steps was too exhausting. Parents threatened to sue until the district sent a cab. Kid is an all-star in Little League… but too asthmatic to walk up the steps of a school bus. Hey, I take public transportation to work but would sure love door-to-door service as long as you were paying for it!</p>
<p>Many of the costs buried in the special ed numbers are not, in fact, educational expenses (i.e. attributed to instruction.) In my mind, that’s where the outrage is-- transportation, aides, administrators, overhead, etc. that have nothing to do with educating the kid, whether or not the need is legitimate, appropriately diagnosed and monitored, appropriately remediated, or not.</p>
<p>
Blossom, I realize there is plenty of abuse, and fear of lawsuits. But this is nuts. And SO easy to shoot down if the kid is actually playing ball. Have you ever questioned this taxi service at a BOE meeting, or in a private phone call?</p>
<p>“And at the same time, we fund not one penny towards gifted education. I think it is criminal.”</p>
<p>Agreed.</p>
<p>Gifted ed in the public schools will do nothing do help a “profoundly gifted” child–it doesn’t really do much to help a “moderately gifted” child–other than allowing the kid to hang out with his “peers” at the elementary and middle school level. Only acceleration will help a profoundly gifted kid–which costs nothing.</p>
<p>Sticker, my town spent more money on private investigators last year than it did on Gifted Ed. Plenty of people have “phoned in” the fraud… but first the case gets assigned to an administrator before a file can be opened.</p>
<p>I predict this kid will be drafted by the Red Sox before the town gathers enough evidence to discontinue the car service and chuck the parents in jail!</p>
<p>Blossom, why can’t they just go to the Little League with a video camera! How much evidence does it take to prove that a kid can handle stepping up onto a bus. I hope his parents are enjoying their little chuckle as they steal services from a program designed for kids with CP or Downs Syndrome or real disabilities.</p>
<p>Sorry, HH, but giftedness is not only about acceleration. It’s about a lot of other things, that at the very least call for specialized training for teachers, due to different psychological & cognitive dynamics of the gifted child, which are definitely not the same as the standard cognitive development taught in even the best credentialing programs. It is a specialty area (like SpecEd/LD) which requires information and understanding. The approach of the gifted toward their education can be fundamentally quite different from that of the non-gifted child. The fact that their brains work on a higher level means that also their manner of learning is different, not just their speed.</p>
<p>I’ve said this many times, and I’ll say it again, because there is much confusion about it. The high achieving child and the gifted child are not necessarily one and the same. Most gifted children do achieve at a superior level of depth & rate, but many high achievers are not gifted (even when they’re accelerated).</p>
<p>The only thing that gifted ed does is identify that such a child exists.</p>
<p>We are all about identifying special needs students (and those that just want the accommodations and services), but our schools apparently have no desire to identify the gifted.</p>
<p>We got what we needed for one of our children, because it was abundantly clear that he needed compacting. But no one in either of two school systems chased us down, and told us they recommended this (in fact, one poopooed us, and recommeded he join Little League). It takes a well educated parent to get what is needed educationally for a gifted child.</p>
<p>epiphany: oh, yes, that is all true, but if you think your everyday run-of-the-mill school can serve the highly gifted kids, other than accelerate them, you are dreaming, with all due respect. They are rarely known to do an adequate job with moderately gifted kids.</p>
<p>It also takes a well-educated parent to get what is needed for a special ed child. To get service for a gifted/ld kid? You’d better be one fierce mama-bear.</p>
<p>I think we’re all pretty clear about the difference between high-achievers and “gifted” kids, epiphany.</p>
<p>blossom - It may be that the school bus diesel fumes are a potent asthma trigger for this kid. That is not all that uncommon. If the asthma attacks are severe and the diesel fumes are a trigger, then the kid can’t be around them.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Most college teachers at elite schools know that students who are identifiably Asian or Jewish disproportionately populate the top of the curve and the harder courses, while athletes and URM hog the bottom of the curve or take easier courses (which of course weakens the SAT-to-performance correlations in all the studies, and eliminates it altogether after the first year). Those group memberships have SAT correlates in admissions, so one can draw some conclusions over time if not necessarily in every individual case.</p>
<p>Typical statistics for a big class at a top 10 school (something with a quantitative component, not only reading and writing) are that a large majority of the black/URM students are in the bottom third of the class along with many of the identifiable athletes. There are much rarer instances of black and Hispanic URM cases at the top of the grade list (not counting children of engineers from Nigeria or South America, who are a different type of population), but surprise surprise, those are very often the ones with National Merit scholarships or other evidence of high SAT.</p>
<p>SAT information tends to be available from academic advisors, especially for freshmen, when the students start flunking the mid-term exams. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The pattern is very different for quantitatively and cognitively taxing courses. There are many expressive people who can hold forth fluently in writing without necessarily being good at the sort of concrete sentential/linguistic precision and command of vocabulary involved in the SAT.
The grading at college is also relatively lax and rewards “many types of intelligence”, as it were. The weight given to homework, the fudging of exam grades (curving) and the use of partial credit, all mask the true level of relevance of SAT-like skills to competent performance. Why, for example, do law schools give so much weight to the LSAT if good writing is enough?</p>