<p>"Among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. is ninth among industrialized nations in the share of its population that has at least a high school degree. In the same age group, the United States ranks seventh, with Belgium, in the share of people who hold a college degree.</p>
<p>"By both measures, the United States was first in the world as recently as 20 years ago, said Barry McGaw, director of education for the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Development. [snip] </p>
<p>“‘The very best schools in the U.S. are extraordinary,’ McGaw said. ‘But the big concern in the U.S. is the diversity of quality of institutions – and the fact that expectations haven’t been set high enough.’”</p>
<p>I would attribute most of that to changing demographics–far more less educated immigrants the last 20 years and relatively more births in the US among the less educated.</p>
<p>Funny how these articles…on both sides…seem to always come out at the same time. This one describes our experience–with a very expensive and highly self-regarding public school system–to a T, and provides a sense of why, in addition, we’ve been spending college tuition prices for private middle school and high school for years. I don’t know what the solution is. We can’t all afford private schools, nor will we all be successful as home schoolers.</p>
<p>We’'ve encountered many of the same issues Sowell described. Sadly, the introduction of NCLB has made things worse since the yardstick is how many students pass or fail as opposed to how many are proficient or advanced.</p>
<p>NCLB may have made things worse, I can’t say…but the problems that Sowell describes were <em>exactly</em> what happened to my daughter in 4th grade math 10 years ago. Not in the “inner city,” either. There was an ideology among some of the teachers that dictated “teaching to the class,” which, at that grade, wasn’t allowed to be grouped by ability. Kids who were ready for 5th grade math were told to go to the back of the room and read story-books, while the teacher taught remedial 3rd grade math to the rest of the class–and this, in the second semester of 4th grade! When we griped, we were told that we should feel fortunate that things came so easily to our child. I’ve never felt so frustrated in my life. That’s when we left the public school system.</p>
<p>Well, driver, you and I are “of a kind” and definitely have the same experience! </p>
<p>Almost 17 years ago, we moved to Shaker Heights, OH, which had a national reputation for a first-rate, better-than-anywhere public school system. We paid the extra price in the housing, and the truly outrageous property taxes, not to mention the commute to work in a suburb, in trade for private school tuition. </p>
<p>You can probably guess the rest. S1 did 1 year in first grade there, spending the entire year reading for himself and tutoring other students. The last straw was when the math specialist assured us that even though S1 was doing math at the 7th grade level, she would make sure that he was average by 3rd grade. (I was honestly afraid that my H would bomb the school. No kidding.) The next year we paid the property taxes AND the private school tuition, and the next year we moved.</p>
<p>It has been private schools ever since, no matter what the sacrifice. And I have found that even the most selective private schools still need prodding, sometimes browbeating, for my kids anyway. It is a despicable shame that the most gifted in this country get ignored. It teaches them to be lazy–they can coast through with no problem. They could accomplish so much more, if only it were asked of them. And so it is with EVERY student.</p>
<p>It is sad to say that gifted students are still short changed in schools, and that people are still suggesting to use them as teacher aids. Last year I had four talented math students in my class that should be allowed to take high school geometry this year…but they will be back in Algebra because our school doesn’t have the resources for them and the school district won’t bus them to the high school. I gathered them back into my classes so I could begin to get them a computer tutorial. I still get annoyed at the teacher who told my daughter that her grade would be an average with other students so she had to tutor the kids in her group if she wanted to get better grades.
I discourage anyone from taking too much from the per pupil budget statistics because the costs can be so different from one location to another…Consider the teaching salaries, heating costs, transportation impacts…it can reallly impact this number.</p>
<p>NCLB is a disaster and needs to be rethought. Creativity needs to be encouraged in schools. Teaching for learning has to replace teaching for a test.</p>
<p>I also would argue that the education one class of student may be quite high but race and class discrimination has hurt inner city education.</p>
<p>Driver:
I’ve experienced inadequate teaching for my S for a variety of reasons. Some was ideological: the teacher simply would not allow homogeneous groups to form. Some was lack of competence: one teacher was great at humanities, but too weak in math to even point my S to math resources he could have used on his own despite her willingness to let him work on his own; some had to do with inexperience: a brand new MIT graduate who was still trying to learn how to manage a class of rambunctious 5th & 6th graders, do lesson plans, correct English, etc…
We were fortunate that by 7th grade, the teacher was a specialist who knew what my S could do and enabled him to take classes at the high school. I personally don’t see it as a public vs. private school issue. I know of at least one school district that brought in a high school math teacher to teach Honors Algebra to a 5th grader because the district considered him too young to go to the high school. We briefly explored the idea of sending our S to private school, but decided S was too advanced for a private school to be of help (private school teachers also have to teach to the rest of the class).
Private schools are exempt from the NCLB testing. One strike in their favor. They can try to spread their resources across the range of students rather than concentrating on keeping students from failing. And of course, they’ve already engaged in triage. If public schools did the same, the percentage of the uneducated would soar sky high.
One example that education bureaucrats don’t particularly care to foster excellence. When my S was in 8th grade, we learned that AP-Physics coincided with the high stakes test. Though this did not bother my 8th grader who decided to skip the test in favor of taking the AP exam, I wondered if a 10th grader might be affected by this scheduling conflict. contacted our DOE and was told that the 10th grade state test was mandatory. Luckily, by the time my S reached 10th grade, the AP he did have to take did not conflict with the 10th grade test. But if it had, he would have opted to take the AP. It would not have been so great for the school if others did the same. Another thing: In our high school, every teacher was told that s/he had to take charge of remedial classes to enable struggling students to pass the high-stakes 10th grade test. This has had a significant impact on the range of courses that could be offered, not so much different topics as different levels of difficulty (CP, honors, AP).</p>
<p>if your District accepts GATE funds from the State, then it is likely in violation of the state standards since the adv. math kids’ needs are not being met.</p>
<p>fwiw: our MS kids can take Geom at the local HS (last period), but they have to find their own way there.</p>
<p>My kids consider themselves partly homeschooled, because that was our way of dealing with the frustrations of their public school. Unfortunately, those who are against homogeneous grouping have an arsenal of research that says it’s bad for those at the bottom of the heap. I don’t buy it. </p>
<p>I did get very tired of hearing that my children would learn “if they just sat on a log,” etc.</p>
<p>Aparent–we also consider our kids to be homeschooled plus publicly schooled. We didn’t do formal lessons, but surrounded them with tools (telescope, globe, atlases, microscope, of course tons of books) ideas, discussion and experiences which supplemented their public school educations. I still favor public school, because they are now at home with all members of society–they sat next to kids who were also aiming for selective colleges, but also kids with different aspirations–who joined unions or the military or their dad’s repair shop after graduation. Their friends come from all class levels, and are extremely multiracial. They got an education in community. But their academic education lacked, and especially early on, the “tutor the other kids to get a higher grade” thing made me crazy!</p>
<p>In the college I work at, we recently had a discussion about how to keep the higher-performing students from transfering. When the subject of having honors classes came up, people still trotted out the hoary “but thebetter students raise the level of the class for everyone else” rational for not having them. In college!!! What non-selective college doesn’t have an honors program?! And why are they surprised that the unchallenged, frustrated students leave? I was painted as elitest for arguing in favor. All I want is for students to be taught to the level they’re at–after all, they, and the government, are paying good money to get this.</p>
<p>This thread is fascinating. I hope I call some of you when I’ll need advice for the Xiggi Juniors. </p>
<p>I do have one question: “The consensus about NCLB is overwhelmingly negative. Is there ANY part of the program worth keeping?” </p>
<p>PS I just talked to my Dad about the fact that Belgium matches the US. His comment was that the situation would have been FAR different 30 years ago. He also mentioned that for many high schoolers, the next step after graduation was the mandatory military service or a job. With the endemic unemployment, the best route for avoiding unemployment or the military service was to go and stay in college. The government has been happy to oblige by keeping the tuition low and adding incentives for students and families, thereby avoiding paying unemployment benefits and having to report worse unemployment numbers. My dad also mentioned that the REAL alarm for the US comes from the comparative results for middle and high schools.</p>
<p>Your dad is absolutely right. I have said before that I think the middle school curriculum in this country is delplorable. But when I brought it up in my own community, I was told that the middle school years is when students experience such changes that the focus should be on their psychological issues. When I said that adolescence is a universal phenomenon and it does not seem to prevent other countries from stepping up the learning process rather than slowing it down, I was accused of anti-Americanism (yeah, you read it right, and from folks in my supposedly cosmopolitan community).</p>
<p>I would not mind the high stakes tests if they did not set the bar low. It seems ludicrous to define a high school graduation requirement as requiring 10th grade knowledge to begin with. Graduation should be at 12th grade, with 12th-grade level knowledge. In many states, even the 10th-grade high-stake test requires knowledge that is not much beyond an average 8th-grader.<br>
Since schools and teachers will be judged on the percentage of students who fail the test, they concentrate their finite resources on struggling students so as to reduce the percentage of failures. If a school is put on the watch list for three consecutive years, that school can/will be put into receivership. So the stakes are high for the schools and for the students.</p>
<p>I agree with Marite on the importance of Middle School…that’s when we changed both of our kids to private school. I think the preparation they got there would have put them on the right path in the public high school–but we liked everything else about the whole ethos of the private school that we couldn’t go back.</p>
<p>it’s actually even worse than you presume. The Calif High School Exit exam is comprised of what is essentially 8th grade math material… on preliminary sample tests, many suburban kids in good schools passed it as a freshmen. </p>
<p>In addition to psychological issues of adolesence that schools are concerned about, they also provide many non-academic programs, such as team-building, health, DARE, all of which, may offer some value, but they detract from readin’, writin’ and 'rithmatic.</p>
<p>I agree that the bar has been set too low. Compounding the problem, at least in our HS, is that there is an increasing tendency to dumb down classeshonors and AP classes included. AP scores have been declining every year, but administrators keep blathering about access and opportunity to all students (which in this case does not mean all qualified students). The end result is a mess. The most qualified students get 3s, 4s, and 5s only by supplementing the material taught in class. The many 1s and 2s end up getting the grade and the boost in GPA but apparently learning little of substance in the process. Of course, the AP passing rate is abysmal. I could scream, but no one is listening.</p>
<p>Our private school has parents sign an agreement that, if accepted to an honors course, there will be no tutoring outside of school. If you need private tutoring, you belong in the standard class. I know of more than a few families whose child left our school because the standard classes were too rigorous who are now in honors classes in the public HS.</p>