Have we talked about this story yet?

[PeachyDoodle]

Quote

After two years of struggling to pass any of his community college classes, Jamarria Hall, 19, knows this for certain: His high school did not prepare him.

The four years he spent at Detroit’s Osborn High School were “a big waste of time,” he said, recalling 11th and 12th grade English classes where students were taught from materials labeled for third or fourth graders, and where long-term substitutes showed movies instead of teaching.

What’s less certain, however, is whether Hall's education in Detroit’s long-troubled school district was so awful, so insufficient, that it violated his constitutional rights.

That’s the question now before a federal appeals court that heard arguments last month in one of two cases that experts say could have sweeping implications for schools across the country.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-lawsuit-over-detroit-schools-could-have-earth-shattering-impact-n1072721?cid=eml_nbn_20191103

[Laura Corin]

Isn't tax structure part of the problem? Insisting on relatively local funding of schools?

[Arcadia]

58 minutes ago, Laura Corin said:

Isn't tax structure part of the problem? Insisting on relatively local funding of schools?

While my school district is mostly funded through the local property tax, most in California are funded by the state. The “local funding” through the PTA does aggravate the funding disparity between “poorer” schools and “richer” schools. 

For example, the PTA of a local school managed to raise $10k during the first week of school through donations. Another school one mile away can’t raise anywhere near that amount. When I was giving the “compulsory” donation of $5 to my kid’s class, his classmates’ parents were giving $20 to $50 as their contribution. 

[Tanaqui]

Quote

Now, don't get me wrong, when a school district has 5 or 6 high schools of 3k students each, there's a lot of staff needed.  And, maybe, what really needs to happen is that some of these ginormous inner city districts need to split up.  Maybe instead of DPS or IPS or CPS, they need to split up into 4 or 6 sections, so that instead of one inner city district covering nearly 100k plus students, (some over 100k) they are multiple smaller districts, where not so much staff is needed and they are better able to focus on the needs of the students than on the needs of all that staff.  

 

Don't we typically talk of economies of scale, where larger organizations tend to require less staff, proportionately, than smaller ones?

[vonfirmath]

40 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

While my school district is mostly funded through the local property tax, most in California are funded by the state. The “local funding” through the PTA does aggravate the funding disparity between “poorer” schools and “richer” schools. 

For example, the PTA of a local school managed to raise $10k during the first week of school through donations. Another school one mile away can’t raise anywhere near that amount. When I was giving the “compulsory” donation of $5 to my kid’s class, his classmates’ parents were giving $20 to $50 as their contribution. 

 

I don't know what you can do to prevent parents from supporting their kids. Nor do I think it is a good direction to go.

[melmichigan]

Michigan is different than many states.  The state gives an allocated amount for each student seated in each school, but then the local school districts must levy millages to pay for the buildings/facilities. They may also levy additional millages as long as they are evenly distributed to all schools within the voting community.   The other problem is that parents have final say in a students progress, so a teacher can recommend a child be retained, but the parent has the right to refuse that advice and move the child forward.  It's much more complicate than that, but those are two big problems facing our schools today.  This has been attempted before, and was dismissed because the Supreme Court has held there is no right to an education, or an equal education.

Edited November 4, 2019 by melmichigan

[katilac]

Back when the county next to us first implemented something like a graduate exit exam (this has been some time ago), there was a big story in the paper because one school's salutatorian could not pass it. Second in the class but could not pass the basic exit exam. 

[Terabith]

I recently got my elementary certification.  There were a bunch of classes on teaching reading, but there was NO instruction about phonics.  I had professors ridiculing it, using the example of working with a six year old who was trying to read the sentence, "The kite will fly high."  The professor said the child was trying to sound it out, but that was why phonics was ridiculous and we needed to teach kids to use picture clues.  I raised my hand and said, "Or, wouldn't it be much simpler to teach the child the phonogram igh says /long i/?"  The professor was dumbfounded.  She had a ph.d in teaching reading but didn't know basic phonograms.  There were tons of examples like this, both in the literacy classes and in the teaching math classes.  I learned WAY more homeschooling my children than I did in teacher education classes.  

[PeachyDoodle]

7 minutes ago, Terabith said:

I recently got my elementary certification.  There were a bunch of classes on teaching reading, but there was NO instruction about phonics.  I had professors ridiculing it, using the example of working with a six year old who was trying to read the sentence, "The kite will fly high."  The professor said the child was trying to sound it out, but that was why phonics was ridiculous and we needed to teach kids to use picture clues.  I raised my hand and said, "Or, wouldn't it be much simpler to teach the child the phonogram igh says /long i/?"  The professor was dumbfounded.  She had a ph.d in teaching reading but didn't know basic phonograms.  There were tons of examples like this, both in the literacy classes and in the teaching math classes.  I learned WAY more homeschooling my children than I did in teacher education classes.  

I think you're hitting on something important here. Funding is a major issue, but not the ONLY issue. Our educational system is broken at so many levels. 

[Tanaqui]

1 hour ago, vonfirmath said:

 

I don't know what you can do to prevent parents from supporting their kids. Nor do I think it is a good direction to go.

 

There's "supporting your kids" and there's "funding double the teachers". And one thing you CAN do is require that a sliding-scale percentage of all PTA monies after a certain threshhold go into a communal pot to be used by all schools in the area, and that the poorer schools get a larger share of the community pot than the wealthier ones.

[Terabith]

1 minute ago, PeachyDoodle said:

I think you're hitting on something important here. Funding is a major issue, but not the ONLY issue. Our educational system is broken at so many levels. 

Absolutely!  Funding IS a huge issue, with teachers being poorly paid (which means it doesn't exactly normally attract the best and brightest); there aren't enough textbooks or resources; class sizes, etc.  But so is teacher training and classroom management and allowing teachers to TEACH rather than be micromanaged/ focus solely on standardized testing.  Another major issue is classroom management.  When you have classrooms where you're expected to teach and get everyone up to a level to pass standardized tests (even if they entered school WAY behind, maybe speaking a different language, who isn't in school regularly), it's doubly frustrating to try to deal with kids destroying classrooms and attacking people.  Which maybe goes back to funding, because those kids need more support and resources than they're getting, but I'd say the two things that are pushing teachers out of the classroom are not the abysmal salaries but difficulty with management of classroom and not being able to be autonomous teachers/ obsession with tests.  

But teachers absolutely need to know how to teach phonics and have the resources to do so.  Same with math.  The fact that I understood what multiplication MEANT (not that I knew my facts, although that was also unusual) made me a unicorn in my teaching math to elementary kids classes.  I was frustrated by people going on to teach math to elementary kids when they don't have an understanding of the principles of math themselves, in many, many cases.   

[vonfirmath]

10 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

 

There's "supporting your kids" and there's "funding double the teachers". And one thing you CAN do is require that a sliding-scale percentage of all PTA monies after a certain threshhold go into a communal pot to be used by all schools in the area, and that the poorer schools get a larger share of the community pot than the wealthier ones.

 

I think you would find this would mean Parents would slow down  funding the school and put more money into their kids' private activities.   So then not even the kids at that school would get the benefit. Just their own kids.

 

When government tries to force charity, they end up moving around where people put their voluntary funds.

Edited November 4, 2019 by vonfirmath

[Tanaqui]

7 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

 

I think you would find this would mean Parents would slow down  funding the school and put more money into their kids' private activities.   So then not even the kids at that school would get the benefit. Just their own kids.

 

When government tries to force charity, they end up moving around where people put their voluntary funds.

 

There's only so much money you can put into afterschool activities. No matter how much you spend, in the end, your kids still spend most of their waking hours at school or home.

[Ottakee]

The problem with teacher pay based on progress as it really penalizes the teachers in lower income areas.  They are often facing many additional challenges that teachers in richer districts don't face....poverty, drug/alcohol exposure for kids and addict parents, kids who might not be eating regular meals, sleeping in safe housing, etc.  Those kids are starting out way behind through no fault of their own.

[katilac]

23 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

 

There's only so much money you can put into afterschool activities. No matter how much you spend, in the end, your kids still spend most of their waking hours at school or home.

You can spend a pretty astounding amount. I don't think most people donate so much to their school that they can't switch most of it to ECs. If you did donate a hefty sum, you might decide you could now afford that super fancy summer camp or whatnot. Or you might decide to donate directly to the office or classroom, bypassing the PTA entirely. I agree with vonfirmath that you really can't control charitable giving (and nor should you, imo). 

I do think it makes sense to take a long hard look at having a more equal divvying of  GOVERNMENT money.

[Terabith]

43 minutes ago, Ottakee said:

The problem with teacher pay based on progress as it really penalizes the teachers in lower income areas.  They are often facing many additional challenges that teachers in richer districts don't face....poverty, drug/alcohol exposure for kids and addict parents, kids who might not be eating regular meals, sleeping in safe housing, etc.  Those kids are starting out way behind through no fault of their own.

Exactly.  We had a number of kids who spoke English as a second language, and while they were "behind," I didn't worry about them much.  A lot of times they were coming from poverty, but it was "social poverty."  They had parents who cared about them, who interacted with them, who took them places, etc.  I DID worry about the kids who not only didn't speak English but who weren't fluent in ANY language, who were developmentally very behind, whose parents really did not interact with them at all.  The only word I really had to describe some of those kids was feral.  Kids who were not just poor but had spent extended time in early childhood not eating regularly.  Those kids were almost impossible to catch up.  The best teaching in the world isn't going to make up for that.

And the effects of trauma, of drug exposure, of urban poverty and no present adults....that was HARD to overcome.  Those kids start out not just behind but incredibly behind.  And kids who have missed out on early childhood development, often are not in great situations even now.  Their brains have literally been stunted and damaged.  The kid who comes to kindergarten not speaking ANY language fluently is already profoundly damaged in a way that will make it almost impossible to overcome with even the best teaching, because that early sensitive window for language learning has been missed.  

[Bluegoat]

3 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

 

Don't we typically talk of economies of scale, where larger organizations tend to require less staff, proportionately, than smaller ones?

 

Well, we talk about it.

In practice, it's one of those things that doesn't always pan out according to the theory.

[Arcadia]

2 hours ago, kdsuomi said:

I had teachers in high school who told us they wouldn't have been able to pass the California High School Exit Exam back when they first tried to institute it. I made me wonder why they thought they could teach us then since I passed the test in 9th Grade. 

 

A friend’s child failed the CAHSEE and was able to get a high school diploma because the requirement to pass the CAHSEE was suspended effective January 1, 2016.

[Bluegoat]

I've recently started working in a school, and I'm not convinced it has much to do with funding, though smaller classes would help.

But the classes are completely disorganised, and the children aren't really being taught any basic skills.  No one reads to them.  They can't string a narrative together.  They read based on the first letter in the word and picture clues.  They can't pay attention, they don't know how to form letters so they find writing difficult.  Many of the books in the classroom are comic books, or as they say graphic novels.  There is no time to practice any basic skills.

They do spend time watching movies, farting around, at group activities to promote social causes, and playing computer games.

Kids who can do the work are either the ones who would have learned anyway or whose parents teach them after school.

[KungFuPanda]

This is why I have a very strong opinion that we should treat teachers like professionals and the admin workers like their assistants.  Teacher's shouldn't have to move to admin to advance in their careers.  It should work the other way around.  Put teacher pay at the top of the pecking order and let them have a secretary and a class assistant.  Can you imagine a doctor's office where the office manager makes more money than the doctor?  There is so little respect for teachers that I'm not surprised there is a shortage.  You pay just as much for school as anyone else but end up making minimum wage once you factor in all the extra hours and responsibilities.  Sure, you'll still need a principal, but a bloated central office staff and an army of administrative assistants for people not connected to a classroom doesn't really help kids learn.  

Meanwhile in my town there is nothing but obsessive whining about upcoming redistricting.  People are terrified that their kid will be sent to the "bad schools."  The "bad schools" still have an over 90% graduation rate and the EXACT SAME curriculum and teacher quality as the rest of the county.  But, you know, can't have your kid sitting next to a kid who is poorer, browner, and might have lower test scores because Property Values.  People here are nuts.

[KungFuPanda]

3 hours ago, kdsuomi said:

I had teachers in high school who told us they wouldn't have been able to pass the California High School Exit Exam back when they first tried to institute it. I made me wonder why they thought they could teach us then since I passed the test in 9th Grade. 

i don't know . . .I'm not sure I'd expect an excellent HS English teacher to remember enough Algebra 2 or AP History to ace a test without brushing up a bit.  It can be hard to remember something from 20+ years ago that's not relevant to your field.  Unless this test is very basic knowledge and you're not expected to spit out specific dates or do speed math, this might be an odd metric for judging someone who specializes in one subject.

[Frances]

5 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

Isn't tax structure part of the problem? Insisting on relatively local funding of schools?

It may be in Detroit and many other places, but in my state the majority of education funding comes from the state general fund and schools actually get more money for serving English language learners, students living in poverty, special needs students, etc. Still, there is great inequality in outcomes within school districts, one of the worst high school grade rates in the country, and mediocre to poor standardized test scores across the board, but especially for minority students and students living in poverty.

[Arcadia]

4 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:

i don't know . . .I'm not sure I'd expect an excellent HS English teacher to remember enough Algebra 2 or AP History to ace a test without brushing up a bit.

CAHSEE is about SAT level in coverage but less tricky. It’s only English and Math, just like SAT. 

The K-5 school we were re-zoned for was so bad that the 5th grade Science fair posters had lots of spelling and grammar errors. So does all the work samples outside the classroom. Parents transfer their kids out after a few weeks to private schools or they (renters) would rent somewhere else. The school my kids originally attended already had teachers who can’t teach math, we don’t need to have our kids go to the re-zoned school where both Math and English passing rates are way below average.

“The CAHSEE had two parts: English–language arts (ELA) and mathematics. The ELA part addressed state content standards through grade ten. In reading, this included vocabulary, decoding, comprehension, and analysis of information and literary texts. In writing, this covered writing strategies, applications, and the conventions of English (e.g., grammar, spelling, and punctuation). The mathematics part of the CAHSEE addressed state standards in grades six and seven and Algebra I. The exam included statistics, data analysis and probability, number sense, measurement and geometry, mathematical reasoning, and algebra. Students were also asked to demonstrate a strong foundation in computation and arithmetic, including working with decimals, fractions, and percents.” https://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/

[KungFuPanda]

4 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

CAHSEE is about SAT level in coverage but less tricky. It’s only English and Math, just like SAT. 

The K-5 school we were re-zoned for was so bad that the 5th grade Science fair posters had lots of spelling and grammar errors. So does all the work samples outside the classroom. Parents transfer their kids out after a few weeks to private schools or they (renters) would rent somewhere else. The school my kids originally attended already had teachers who can’t teach math, we don’t need to have our kids go to the re-zoned school where both Math and English passing rates are way below average.

“The CAHSEE had two parts: English–language arts (ELA) and mathematics. The ELA part addressed state content standards through grade ten. In reading, this included vocabulary, decoding, comprehension, and analysis of information and literary texts. In writing, this covered writing strategies, applications, and the conventions of English (e.g., grammar, spelling, and punctuation). The mathematics part of the CAHSEE addressed state standards in grades six and seven and Algebra I. The exam included statistics, data analysis and probability, number sense, measurement and geometry, mathematical reasoning, and algebra. Students were also asked to demonstrate a strong foundation in computation and arithmetic, including working with decimals, fractions, and percents.” https://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/

 

Yeah, OK.  That's bad.  All of it.

[Frances]

31 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:

This is why I have a very strong opinion that we should treat teachers like professionals and the admin workers like their assistants.  Teacher's shouldn't have to move to admin to advance in their careers.  It should work the other way around.  Put teacher pay at the top of the pecking order and let them have a secretary and a class assistant.  Can you imagine a doctor's office where the office manager makes more money than the doctor?  There is so little respect for teachers that I'm not surprised there is a shortage.  You pay just as much for school as anyone else but end up making minimum wage once you factor in all the extra hours and responsibilities.  Sure, you'll still need a principal, but a bloated central office staff and an army of administrative assistants for people not connected to a classroom doesn't really help kids learn.  

Except for the superintendent, my small rural school district in the Midwest did not have a single administrator who was only an administrator. Our elementary principle was also a full-time classroom teacher, another principal served the middle school and another elementary school and still taught one class at the middle school (all sixty of us took social studies together and he was the teacher), and the high school principal was also the athletic director and occasionally filled in for missing teachers in the classroom. But we had music, art, and PE every week through middle school, PE all four years in high school, free private music lessons starting in third grade (including over the summer), and bussing for absolutely every practice, rehearsal, activity, etc. Granted we didn’t have AP or honors classes with only 250 students, but I felt quite well prepared for college. Only one of my high school classmates had a parent with a college degree (unless you count nursing school, then you can add a few more), but more than half of my classmates went to four year colleges and I don’t know anyone who dropped out or did not earn their degree. Several others earned one or two year technical or associates degrees.

I was appalled when we moved here and found out that the nearby highly ranked elementary (not the one we were zoned for) in a very wealthy part of the city where many parents in our neighborhood sent their kids had a full-time principal for a K-2 school with fever than 75 students. Fortunately, it was eventually closed and the building is now a Head Start Center.

[Frances]

1 hour ago, Bluegoat said:

I've recently started working in a school, and I'm not convinced it has much to do with funding, though smaller classes would help.

But the classes are completely disorganised, and the children aren't really being taught any basic skills.  No one reads to them.  They can't string a narrative together.  They read based on the first letter in the word and picture clues.  They can't pay attention, they don't know how to form letters so they find writing difficult.  Many of the books in the classroom are comic books, or as they say graphic novels.  There is no time to practice any basic skills.

They do spend time watching movies, farting around, at group activities to promote social causes, and playing computer games.

Kids who can do the work are either the ones who would have learned anyway or whose parents teach them after school.

My son went to one semester of public school at a very highly ranked charter school, and outside of math and foreign language (taught by the same teacher), I never figured out what they actually did in the other core classes, except for lots and lots of group activities. As far as I could tell, they did virtually no reading for social studies or English (with the exception of one book they chose on their own), no writing (except for a book report on the aforementioned book), no grammar, absolutely no real science at all, and had no books or textbooks for any of their classes, just occasional handouts. After the first few weeks of adjustment, he finished all HW in his last period study hall. The music, art, and drama programs were good. I came to the conclusion that their ranking, based on test scores, must be almost entirely due to the population of students whose parents entered the lottery and provided transportation.

[Ottakee]

My plan (when I become insanely independently wealthy) is to open a school for at risk kids.  K will have 1 teacher, 1 aide and 10 kids.  1st, 1 teacher and 1 aide and 12 kids, 2nd a teacher and an aide and 15 kids, by third a teacher and an aide and up to 20 kids.  PHONICS will be taught from K on.  LOTS of language rich activities. 

Very little seat work in K....maybe 10 minutes each of math, writing, and phonics work.  The rest of the day will be science experiments, reading great literature, outdoor exploration with dirt piles, logs, and lots of materials for creative play, etc.  Music, Art, PE at least 3 days a week.  Slowly in 1st and 2nd grade the desk work portion will increase to 20 then maybe up to 30  minutes a day per core subject.

I think that if I could do this with good, creative teachers that are allowed to teach kids (not teach the test) that by the end of 3rd grade these kiddos will be performing above "traditional" classrooms of kids where K students are expected to write paragraphs, and sit in desk much of the day.  For those kids that do read and write early, there will be enrichment activities for them and opportunities for them to expand those skills but the other kids will get solid phonics based reading, Apples and Pears Spelling, and a solid math program.

[Happy2BaMom]

5 hours ago, Terabith said:

I recently got my elementary certification.  There were a bunch of classes on teaching reading, but there was NO instruction about phonics.  I had professors ridiculing it, using the example of working with a six year old who was trying to read the sentence, "The kite will fly high."  The professor said the child was trying to sound it out, but that was why phonics was ridiculous and we needed to teach kids to use picture clues.  I raised my hand and said, "Or, wouldn't it be much simpler to teach the child the phonogram igh says /long i/?"  The professor was dumbfounded.  She had a ph.d in teaching reading but didn't know basic phonograms.  There were tons of examples like this, both in the literacy classes and in the teaching math classes.  I learned WAY more homeschooling my children than I did in teacher education classes.  

 

I finished my teaching certification about 7 years ago. I had *a ton* of instruction in phonics, including one whole (required) class, plus I had to pass a reading instruction exam that included phonics & how to teach them, so I think a lot depends on where you get your education.

[Happy2BaMom]

8 hours ago, Arctic Mama said:

Oh isn’t it just infuriating and heart breaking?  I know I posted about this or a similar case a few years ago, but it remains that students really should be able to sue for gross educational neglect, when they don’t even have a chance to be exposed to grass appropriate materials they are cognitively able to handle.

 

 

If such a precedent was established, I wonder if homeschool students who experience(d) gross educational neglect - or who think they have - might also sue their parents?

(I'm not trying to be snarky, just wondering how far out the ripples might flow.)

[ktgrok]

6 hours ago, Terabith said:

I recently got my elementary certification.  There were a bunch of classes on teaching reading, but there was NO instruction about phonics.  I had professors ridiculing it, using the example of working with a six year old who was trying to read the sentence, "The kite will fly high."  The professor said the child was trying to sound it out, but that was why phonics was ridiculous and we needed to teach kids to use picture clues.  I raised my hand and said, "Or, wouldn't it be much simpler to teach the child the phonogram igh says /long i/?"  The professor was dumbfounded.  She had a ph.d in teaching reading but didn't know basic phonograms.  There were tons of examples like this, both in the literacy classes and in the teaching math classes.  I learned WAY more homeschooling my children than I did in teacher education classes.  

The educational psychologist for our district told me not to even try to teach my dyslexic student phonics because it was "too hard" and she should just memorize the shapes of words. 

At the high school level my son's writing "instruction" consisted solely of going to a computer lab and practicing writing responses for short essay questions to prep for the state standardized test. Except...after they finished the timed writing they just deleted it and left. No one ever looked it over, corrected it, gave ideas for improvement or even graded it. Nothing. It seems the theory was that if you just did enough writing, no matter how poorly, you would get better? My son was so frustrated that after finishing writing an essay he was rather proud of he hacked into the computer system to save it and email it to himself before deleting it as instructed.

[Corraleno]

On November 4, 2019 at 7:56 PM, Ktgrok said:

The educational psychologist for our district told me not to even try to teach my dyslexic student phonics because it was "too hard" and she should just memorize the shapes of words. 

The SpEd coordinator for our district said the same thing to me. She also said to just get DS an electronic spell checker ("dyslexics never learn to spell right so don't waste your time teaching spelling"), that he could just turn in "mind map diagrams" instead of writing essays and papers, and that he would be exempt from foreign language requirements because foreign language is "impossible" for dyslexics. This is a kid who went on to excel in Greek and Latin, with gold medals and perfect scores on the NLE & NGE, scored perfect 36s in English & Reading on the ACT, and is now a linguistics major who's gotten high As on every college paper he's written. It breaks my heart to think about what happens to kids whose parents believe the bullshit the idiot SpEd coordinator tells them and who leave their kids in PS with those absurdly low expectations.