Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Ignore ACT Reading and Science scores?

I�ve been off camping for a bit�nice to get away for a bit�..


First, yes, my contributions to this discussion are my experiences and opinions. As this is a forum where many of us come to share our experiences or to react to information, I don't apologize for that. I have been trying to continue to participate in what I think is an important discussion, but we keep falling into a pattern that feels like win/lose rather than what I would hope it would be furthering understanding on both sides.

I recognize that there is a limit to how far my experiences go, but I do think that they have value. I don't believe that I, my schools, colleagues or community are particularly unusual, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about these issues based on my experiences and observations.

I'd like to clarify a couple of comments from my previous post.

First, I wasn't suggesting that private schools have high expulsion rates. Rather, I think that private schools less frequently have to deal with expulsion-worthy behavior. I suspect that parents hold their children more accountable for their behavior when they have taken the steps to enroll their children in a private school, that students in private schools have family support (or would be unlikely to end up in private school) and that the poverty and special education rates in private schools are significantly lower (poverty and certain special education eligibility areas are disproportionately represented in expulsion data in my district.)

When I talked about being able to get students to toe-the-line, I was referring primarily to the advantage of being able to hold students and families accountable for their behavior. When someone knows they can actually be kicked out of the school (for less than it takes to expel a student from a public school) that is itself a deterrent to high levels of behavior.

Contrast that with the situation in my (public) school where we have certain parents who don't come in for "required" re-entrance conferences after a suspension. They know that they can't be compelled to do so and that we can't refuse to allow the child to re-enter. That ties the hands of public schools in a way that I can't imagine occurring in a private school setting. I don't expect that private schools are kicking kids out willy-nilly, but I do expect that they are using the tools available to them to prevent the kind of disruptions that public schools have to endure. The context of my comments in this area was that it impacts the teaching environment and the appeal of each environment to particular teachers.


Re: teacher accountability. I agree that I can hold the college professor accountable if they don't know their subject, but only if that is the case. In a public school the teacher is blamed regardless of what the student does or does not bring to the table. I agree--as I believe I stated in an earlier post--that teachers need to be competent to teach the subjects they teach. My intention here was to speak to the differences in attitude that students and families are likely to bring to each environment. I am working under an assumption that in general, a student who is in a private school has a family invested enough in their education to actively choose (and probably transport to) a specific school. Whereas public schools, while they will have engaged and active families and students, will also have students without that family support. This has a big impact on the teaching conditions, and therefore the job experience. My intent was to respond to your specific question about why someone would teach in a private school, and to point out that someone might choose to work for less compensation in order to work with groups in which most students and families take some responsibility for the students' achievement level.

As far as testing comparisons: I was thinking elementary/middle when I posted. I am admittedly much less knowledgeable about the high school comparisons. In my state, private voucher schools took the NCLB state test for the first time this year. The private voucher schools didn't do quite as well as the public schools, which I think surprised everyone. To my thinking, the scores should be significantly higher since they represent only the scores of students whose families are involved enough to enroll them in a private school. The response that are pro-voucher legislature and governor have had to the test scores has been to remove the testing requirement from private voucher schools again. Thus, public schools will be held up to public scrutiny (as they should be) but private schools will only be held up if they want to be. Again, high school is not my area, so I�m out of my depth on this issue. In our area however, private school participation drops off in high school and the band of students attending these schools narrows considerably (there are multiple private elementary and middle schools; two private high schools�one of which is a very expensive IB program). That said, to my mind, the most notable part of the data in the SAT links you gave has to do with tuition and per pupil spending. It appeared that most per child tuition costs significantly exceeded most per pupil spending in public schools. Unfortunately, the two charts don�t contain the same information, so it is impossible to compare teacher salary or class size. However, I would be shocked if the public school student: teacher ratios looked anything like the private school ones. Even the highest ratios in the private school chart are 8-10 students better than the regular education class sizes in our local high schools�and most of the ratios are significantly below even our elementary school class sizes.

Re: bashing. I was actually trying to separate the discussion here from what is happening in the media, and again my intent was to consider what it would take to attract the kind of candidates you mention to a career in public education. I do consider it bashing, and not honest criticism, when I read diatribe after diatribe about how teachers are greedy-lazy-stupid-selfish etc... Those words are not critiques: they are personal, insulting statements and too often accompanied by statements that reveal a real lack of understanding about what teachers do. It does not make teaching an attractive profession and will not help to attract bright adults who have other options.

I realize that people trash talk other professions as well, but it has become constant when it comes to teaching, and it is not a well compensated enough profession to expect people to just keep taking it on the chin. Ironically, I think that it hurts the best teachers the most. For the record, I dislike personal attacks directed at any profession. I do not only feel this way when it comes to education.

Finally, I think anecdotal contributions are important. Studies are funded to ask specific questions, and too often, by people with specific agendas. They do not ask every question, thus do not provide a complete picture. Test scores tell only part of any story and need to be fleshed out with the real experiences that people have had. I don�t see the difference between individuals stating on this forum that merit pay would not enhance their professional experience or motivation, and the assertion that �many� talented people don�t go into teaching because of lack of merit pay. Personally, I don�t see merit pay making a difference in test scores or overall outcomes.