The author makes a good case of the primary issue with disparate quality in public education, which is the "local" aspect of it, and of course the "localized" funding that controls it and creates these disparities, in favor of making some vague hand wave that perhaps public schools need to go back to being nominally Protestant Christian …
The author makes a good case of the primary issue with disparate quality in public education, which is the "local" aspect of it, and of course the "localized" funding that controls it and creates these disparities, in favor of making some vague hand wave that perhaps public schools need to go back to being nominally Protestant Christian dominated outlets ??
A "fix" for public schools should include an elimination of "zip code" funding and enrollment. Truly "public schools" would receive an equivalent amount of funding and resources, irrespective of zip code. We should have an excellently equipped school in every location, not crumbling buildings and overpacked classrooms forced to warehouse a concentration of poverty and dysfunction in one zip code just miles away from green and well outfitted campuses benefiting from wealthy and involved parents in another. Disperse the student population with the funding, suddenly you'll find an investment interest from taxpayers everywhere into funding an overall excellent system rather than just a district or handful of schools. This is the principle that the globally high rated Finnish school systems operate on (let alone, the ban on private education, again, when everyone has a stake in excellence and excellence is available everywhere, the money and investment issues solve themselves).
That, and reforming educational training and programs - along with professionalizing the field. Teachers should be paid and respected as professionals in their field - with the caveat they are delivering results commensurate with that, and trained to do so, along with raising the bar for admittance into the field. Make admittance and certifications/graduation into educational programs on par with those of law and medicine and improve the quality of the field and of those teaching it. Educational training should also focus on learning and the ability to teach disciplines using proven methods, not "theories", fads and attempts to leverage political and cultural ideologies into education .
At the same time, we also need to stop expecting schools and teachers to function as de facto social workers, mental health counselors, police, etc. This does mean there needs to be more holistic community and family interventions where needed that exist outside of the school system. It is unrealistic, and unfair, to expect schools that are functioning as little more than day cares for a student population coming from dysfunctional families and communities to somehow compensate for the background lives of these children, let alone as dumping grounds for special needs students that "choice academies" and private schools can avoid - and punish them for not being able to compete with schools that can avoid these students. Which is also why an "open district" policy, enforced, is necessary. Dispersing the populations of differently prepared children so that not one school is dominated by a single demographic of wealth, class, race, needs, etc would be overall more effective - but requires a much different sort of communal buy in and investment than is traditional in American communities and education, and therefore why it is likely to never happen, and why we'll just settle into being a very disparate system of performance, to our detriment.
Those who champion the dissolution of the public school system have no idea what will likely replace it - but we do have an example: Betsy DeVos's Detroit privatized "charter" system that featured a bunch of fly by night operators opening and closing schools willy nilly, with a host of untrained and unqualified staff, all while raking in significant public funds, while the wealthy continued their retreat untouched. A truly for profit private education system will not deliver high quality results for all income levels in the community - and yes, this includes suburban and working class neighborhoods as well as underfunded rural and urban districts. A privatized system will either concentrate in a few wealthy districts, or will suck out public monies to deliver inferior results - basically, what we have now except more scamming. We are much better off retaining a commitment to public education - but in ways that actually work and are truly "public". If that means upending some of the administrative and union layers along with removing ideological capture in the training, so be it. But that also will necessitate a different approach from the actual "public" as well.
Nebraska just did away with the basic skills test because so many "great' teachers could not pass it. Visit the local public school and you can't tell the custodial staff from the teachers - jeans with holes in them, etc.
1. New Jersey has experimented with equalized funding for well over 40 years. (the poorest ghetto gets state aid so their per-pupil expenditure matches the wealthiest suburb). The experiment has mostly failed. Academic proficiency has barely moved up in the 30 poor districts that received the enhanced state aid. We need to stop saying "more money, more money" - the problems lie elsewhere.
2. The credentialing requirements to become a certified teacher are greater than what's required for law. The latter requires 3 years of post-bachelor's education, two of which are useless) and more importantly, NO practical skills training. Law does not have an equivalent of the student-teaching practicum. Medicine is of course a much different story.
3. Is there any proof that shuffling poor kids off to a "better" suburban school closes the achievement gaps. Do kids learn by osmosis from the kid sitting behind or next to them? We've learned 70 years after Brown that racial integration in and of itself doesn't necessarily improve outcomes. Unfortunately, there are deep family/cultural dynamics that cannot be easily ameliorated by law and public policy.
1. I allude towards equalized funding as well as cross-pollination of school districts, so that not one district comprises a "majority poor" or "majority well off" student population. I think that may be the "secret sauce" in the Finnish model, although I confess to not being an expert. But I do believe the concept of "local schools", even with equalized funding, is that schools that serve a broadly disadvantaged population become warehouses for the dysfunction that a high poverty/dysfunctional community dynamic can be. Dispersing those students across the district/county to where schools have a smaller portion of "disadvantaged" students mixed in with more advantages, I do believe, will deliver benefits in how all students socialize and learn under those circumstances. There was, I believe, an experiment done along similar lines with housing - rather than subsidizing and warehousing low income populations in "projects" and isolated neighborhoods of low income housing, the experiment dispersed them into "Section 8" housing in a variety of communities. The advantages experienced were real - the lower income residents were able to thrive better in communities with less poverty and dysfunction, and dispersing poverty resulted in less dysfunction overall - but I think this was also a limited experiment in Chicago. Point being, it showed promising results, but for "reasons" was shelved to go back to the broken way of doing things when it comes to dealing with the lower income population and housing and schools.
2. Yes - I'm not arguing for teaching programs to exactly mirror that of law and medicine, but to at least, raise the bar of entry into those programs. We should be seeking the best and brightest to teach. And yes, part of that also involves making teaching a financially and culturally rewarding profession to attract those sorts of applicants. A terrible saying that somehow got traction is "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach". It's symbolic of how we, as a society, devalue teaching and its value to our society. This is also something that Finland does right - teaching is culturally valued as highly as medicine and other professions. They are paid commensurately, *and*, crucially, screened and trained properly to deliver results.
3. See # 1. Yes, I think there are advantages to breaking up high poverty/high dysfunction school environments, to learn different behaviors and norms outside of the communities they come from, and ideally, take them back home to spread.
I'll concede, however, that Finland doesn't have as broad income disparity so it becomes less of a social/cultural resistance to "mixing" - so I'll leave it with I think "fixing schooling" involves really raising the floor of poverty in the US as a holistic approach.
At the least - it does seem to require some sort of recognition that perhaps schools dealing with high poverty/high community dysfunction populations require different approaches to how school is administered. There was a movie made about a reformer back in the 80's in I think was Paterson, NJ "Lean on Me" where there was a need for stricter discipline and an elevation of expectations that was successful. Modern educational theories may be doing more harm than good in some respects in excusing failure or lowering the bar for success : /
The author makes a good case of the primary issue with disparate quality in public education, which is the "local" aspect of it, and of course the "localized" funding that controls it and creates these disparities, in favor of making some vague hand wave that perhaps public schools need to go back to being nominally Protestant Christian dominated outlets ??
A "fix" for public schools should include an elimination of "zip code" funding and enrollment. Truly "public schools" would receive an equivalent amount of funding and resources, irrespective of zip code. We should have an excellently equipped school in every location, not crumbling buildings and overpacked classrooms forced to warehouse a concentration of poverty and dysfunction in one zip code just miles away from green and well outfitted campuses benefiting from wealthy and involved parents in another. Disperse the student population with the funding, suddenly you'll find an investment interest from taxpayers everywhere into funding an overall excellent system rather than just a district or handful of schools. This is the principle that the globally high rated Finnish school systems operate on (let alone, the ban on private education, again, when everyone has a stake in excellence and excellence is available everywhere, the money and investment issues solve themselves).
That, and reforming educational training and programs - along with professionalizing the field. Teachers should be paid and respected as professionals in their field - with the caveat they are delivering results commensurate with that, and trained to do so, along with raising the bar for admittance into the field. Make admittance and certifications/graduation into educational programs on par with those of law and medicine and improve the quality of the field and of those teaching it. Educational training should also focus on learning and the ability to teach disciplines using proven methods, not "theories", fads and attempts to leverage political and cultural ideologies into education .
At the same time, we also need to stop expecting schools and teachers to function as de facto social workers, mental health counselors, police, etc. This does mean there needs to be more holistic community and family interventions where needed that exist outside of the school system. It is unrealistic, and unfair, to expect schools that are functioning as little more than day cares for a student population coming from dysfunctional families and communities to somehow compensate for the background lives of these children, let alone as dumping grounds for special needs students that "choice academies" and private schools can avoid - and punish them for not being able to compete with schools that can avoid these students. Which is also why an "open district" policy, enforced, is necessary. Dispersing the populations of differently prepared children so that not one school is dominated by a single demographic of wealth, class, race, needs, etc would be overall more effective - but requires a much different sort of communal buy in and investment than is traditional in American communities and education, and therefore why it is likely to never happen, and why we'll just settle into being a very disparate system of performance, to our detriment.
Those who champion the dissolution of the public school system have no idea what will likely replace it - but we do have an example: Betsy DeVos's Detroit privatized "charter" system that featured a bunch of fly by night operators opening and closing schools willy nilly, with a host of untrained and unqualified staff, all while raking in significant public funds, while the wealthy continued their retreat untouched. A truly for profit private education system will not deliver high quality results for all income levels in the community - and yes, this includes suburban and working class neighborhoods as well as underfunded rural and urban districts. A privatized system will either concentrate in a few wealthy districts, or will suck out public monies to deliver inferior results - basically, what we have now except more scamming. We are much better off retaining a commitment to public education - but in ways that actually work and are truly "public". If that means upending some of the administrative and union layers along with removing ideological capture in the training, so be it. But that also will necessitate a different approach from the actual "public" as well.
Nebraska just did away with the basic skills test because so many "great' teachers could not pass it. Visit the local public school and you can't tell the custodial staff from the teachers - jeans with holes in them, etc.
I'm not privy to all the background about that decision, but yeah, that sounds like the wrong direction to go.
A couple of random thoughts:
1. New Jersey has experimented with equalized funding for well over 40 years. (the poorest ghetto gets state aid so their per-pupil expenditure matches the wealthiest suburb). The experiment has mostly failed. Academic proficiency has barely moved up in the 30 poor districts that received the enhanced state aid. We need to stop saying "more money, more money" - the problems lie elsewhere.
2. The credentialing requirements to become a certified teacher are greater than what's required for law. The latter requires 3 years of post-bachelor's education, two of which are useless) and more importantly, NO practical skills training. Law does not have an equivalent of the student-teaching practicum. Medicine is of course a much different story.
3. Is there any proof that shuffling poor kids off to a "better" suburban school closes the achievement gaps. Do kids learn by osmosis from the kid sitting behind or next to them? We've learned 70 years after Brown that racial integration in and of itself doesn't necessarily improve outcomes. Unfortunately, there are deep family/cultural dynamics that cannot be easily ameliorated by law and public policy.
Thanks for the response :)
1. I allude towards equalized funding as well as cross-pollination of school districts, so that not one district comprises a "majority poor" or "majority well off" student population. I think that may be the "secret sauce" in the Finnish model, although I confess to not being an expert. But I do believe the concept of "local schools", even with equalized funding, is that schools that serve a broadly disadvantaged population become warehouses for the dysfunction that a high poverty/dysfunctional community dynamic can be. Dispersing those students across the district/county to where schools have a smaller portion of "disadvantaged" students mixed in with more advantages, I do believe, will deliver benefits in how all students socialize and learn under those circumstances. There was, I believe, an experiment done along similar lines with housing - rather than subsidizing and warehousing low income populations in "projects" and isolated neighborhoods of low income housing, the experiment dispersed them into "Section 8" housing in a variety of communities. The advantages experienced were real - the lower income residents were able to thrive better in communities with less poverty and dysfunction, and dispersing poverty resulted in less dysfunction overall - but I think this was also a limited experiment in Chicago. Point being, it showed promising results, but for "reasons" was shelved to go back to the broken way of doing things when it comes to dealing with the lower income population and housing and schools.
2. Yes - I'm not arguing for teaching programs to exactly mirror that of law and medicine, but to at least, raise the bar of entry into those programs. We should be seeking the best and brightest to teach. And yes, part of that also involves making teaching a financially and culturally rewarding profession to attract those sorts of applicants. A terrible saying that somehow got traction is "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach". It's symbolic of how we, as a society, devalue teaching and its value to our society. This is also something that Finland does right - teaching is culturally valued as highly as medicine and other professions. They are paid commensurately, *and*, crucially, screened and trained properly to deliver results.
3. See # 1. Yes, I think there are advantages to breaking up high poverty/high dysfunction school environments, to learn different behaviors and norms outside of the communities they come from, and ideally, take them back home to spread.
I'll concede, however, that Finland doesn't have as broad income disparity so it becomes less of a social/cultural resistance to "mixing" - so I'll leave it with I think "fixing schooling" involves really raising the floor of poverty in the US as a holistic approach.
At the least - it does seem to require some sort of recognition that perhaps schools dealing with high poverty/high community dysfunction populations require different approaches to how school is administered. There was a movie made about a reformer back in the 80's in I think was Paterson, NJ "Lean on Me" where there was a need for stricter discipline and an elevation of expectations that was successful. Modern educational theories may be doing more harm than good in some respects in excusing failure or lowering the bar for success : /