Teacher's actual choices, when faced with toxic policy changes from on high, are: to walk away from the students and communities that need good educators (because the most capable have other options than being in classrooms), or to do the best they can within those 'guidelines' without being fired for insubordination.
To this I do not disagree, I concur.
Blaming teachers for the state of education makes just about as much sense as blaming doctors for failing to fix the medical system's runaway costs and inequities. Both groups of professionals largely hate what the modern pressures of their workplaces have done to the profession, by the way.
But doctors are only as strong as their education. Look at it like this: How many US teachers are specifically trained to identify gifted or high potential students?
With all due respect, Edward, why "anything that wasn't public?"
Why not "life in a place where the public schools were higher quality?"
You make a good point again. At the time all I saw anything outside of public as being a better option, but I guess what I really wanted all along was a better public school.
Why not "I wish my parents had made better life choices?" Let me be clear-- I'm not suggesting that your parents had a lot of better choices in front of them, but this would have been a problem anyway.
And what life choices would make the outcome better for students? My parents did the best with what they had, and their control over the public school was limited. You can't fix a whole system, no matter how good you are as a parent.
Why was it that you weren't attending a magnet school? Such institutions have existed since the 1960's and 1970's.
Good question. I simply did not meet any of the criteria. The openings in my area were limited and I did not win the lottery like admission process. That and the fact my school did not see me a gifted- my grades were poor.
Why is it about how awful the public schools were?
I was also publicly educated. I am EG. I could not have received a better education given where I lived, at the time I was being educated, with my parents' somewhat limited options-- not at any other school option, save perhaps homeschooling (which my parents did consider). Even with nearly unlimited financial resources, my educational options would have been only marginally better-- and the reason is that I attended very good public schools. Which my parents chose when they made decisions about where to live.
Well said. While my area has a very broad range of private schools to choose from, in some communities the options for private are not that much better than public. Either because the public is really good, or the private is lack luster. But I do feel I am painting with a broad brush. What is good for one student is poor for another and visa-versa.
What isn't clear to me is why playing a zero sum game that allows some children to 'win' while others simultaneously lose is a good idea. Why isn't it a higher priority to figure out how to fix this for all children without taking anything away from some of them at the same time? Look at Finland again. The top PISA and TIMMS performers are-- surprise, surprise, mostly from collectivist cultures, and those which have decided to get serious about addressing child poverty.
The lottery system says so much about being so wrong. It openly admits we do not have the resources at the moment for all students.
Linda McSpadden McNeill's op-ed about the absurdity of privatization(LMM is a professor at Rice U):
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/c...s-educational-marketplace-concept-absurdSuch an educational "marketplace" is absurd from the start. It is fundamentally undemocratic, turning our children into commodities and their parents into customers, not citizens. We know from our local shops and industries that companies enter and leave markets when it suits their bottom line. Their obligation is to their investors, not to their customers. Evidence from 25 years of charters shows "school" companies are no different. A charter chain may locate a school in a neighborhood, recruit and enroll the children it "chooses," then if the economics don't pan out or the school doesn't produce the advertised educational outcomes, that school may close, sometimes even mid-year.
Where do the children go? To the public school, of course, the school the community has established to educate all our children — a school now under-resourced because of the dollars that went to the charter or the voucher school, tax money that can't be recovered.
She's right about that part of her message. While I understand when individual parents
make a choice to avoid a local public school (we did it too), you are then at the mercy of those market forces, which is basically the equal of having made a bargain with the devil.
I do not flat out dispute her, but look at it like this: what gives better consumer results? A monopoly or capitalism? In theory vouchers for various private schools create a competition between schools forcing each school to strive to out do the other.
However, I am not closed off to the down falls others are aware of.
Again-- parents ALREADY have the choice. ANY parent can homeschool-- from a legal standpoint, I mean. From a functional one, not so much, I know. But that is the same thing as saying that school vouchers and "choice" can work as an option for everyone. No. They can't.
But what if there are plenty of good schools for everyone willing to take those vouchers?
Home school vs public. I know home-school has worked out great for some kids, but does it work for all kids? For some kids home school is no better than public. Yes in home schooling a child can learn at their pace, but social isolation becomes a problem for some. As much as I did not like public, and many times actually wanted solitude in middle and early high school, 2 years before I graduated I actually went (motivation wise) just for social contact. I made a few friends, and it was the small group, but that group probably gave me the most fulfillment out of all the years I attended. It was much needed for my psychological well being- as well as social skills.
Of course please do not assume I am knocking on home schooling- I am not. Rather that for some (like myself) the social contact in public is desired regardless of the educational aspect.
Maybe I am just not a fan of the notion that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, or that the best way to fix a problematic system is to drive it to failure and destroy it before rebuilding it along better lines. In the case of children, commoditizing human beings is just immoral, in my opinion-- the children thus harmed by this exercise will suffer literally irreparable harm in the process.
Considering that public schools also do irreparable harm for some, a radical fix is needed.
We've tried holding schools "accountable" for student performance-- and the only thing that has really emerged form all that data is what educators were saying in 1965, and have never really stopped saying-- that student performance is a great proxy mostly for SES.
What is SES? (sorry lol)
As for accountability, that will never work. And everyone knows it. When I was in high school I got into a lengthy conversation with my school psychologist about it. He simply laughed and said it would never work out because every kid 'has a varying IQ' and 'It simply is not possible to bring every child up to the same academic level.' I myself would further add to the above: some kids simply do not want to be students. I've been in rooms during mandated testing where kids were goofing off and launching crumpled paper with rubber bands despite the emphasis being put on taking such tests seriously. Simply put their are students who cognitively can't score high and another group who could care more about what the teacher is making for dinner.
