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 ai…
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 : /
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 : /