education crises in america

[Chad]

Every generation says the same thing about the kids, it's the "uphill to school both ways" bullshit. I have hope and faith in them. I believe in exactly what the Doof is preaching. There have been shitty parents, rotten kids and lazy teachers since the dawn of time. Point them in the right direction, teach them right from wrong and everything will be ok. Maybe I'm naive, but I'm cool with that.

[classtimesailer]

There is no crisis. US public education serves a purpose: Preparing the youth for their future. Expectations have to meet reality with negligible disappointment. There are many possible causes for a child's failures in school and adults argue endlessly about them. The fixes are simple. But what would happen if 99% of children were successful? They would expect to continue on that trajectory--success leading to success. That expectation cannot be met by society's current configuration. A critical mass of frustration coupled with critical thinking and physical health could lead to demands for a dramatic reconfiguration. The "at risk" and failing students who have passed through my classrooms over the last 16 years have one thing in common: They believe that they deserve to fail. They think that they are stupid and they have accepted their lot in life. They will never man the barracades demanding more or different anything because they don't believe that they deserve anything more or different than they currently have. The "crisis" meets the needs of those in a position to end it. Therefore it will not end.
Just a distillation of my observations over the last 16 years of teaching in Los Angeles City schools. It oftentimes illuminates the analysis if you ask, "Who benefits?"
Jeff

[bikinchris]

really?

I think that earlier, I alluded to the quote attributed to George H. W. Bush "Somebody has to do the shit work." If it is someone else's child, so be it as far as he was concerned. I don't think any child is a throw away child. I think that just like the standard bell curve, MOST of the children are very capable of being productive members of society, if we simply:

"To teach each child to the limit of their ability"
This should be the motto inscribed in stone above the door of every school board in the nation. Not every child will become a PHD. But your average plumber makes more than most PHD's do. Our children who are not destined for college are not throw away kids.
No Child Left behind has done more to prove that some people don't value our children getting a good education. Eventually, if NCLB is allowed to run it's course, every single (public) school in the US will be closed.
Did you know that any school that doesn't always show improvement in tests every year has to go into corrective action? So your proverbial kindergarten has genius children who are working at second grade level? Too bad, no improvement? Corrective action. Can't get scores up higher? School closed. If you have a school full of low performing students, you're screwed. Contrary to popular belief, moving students to a defferent school will not produce educational miracles.
8 hours at school compared to 16 hours on the street, getting hungry, beat up, drugged out of their head and banged crosseyed, which do you think has more influence?

[bikinchris]

There is no crisis. US public education serves a purpose: Preparing the youth for their future. Expectations have to meet reality with negligible disappointment. There are many possible causes for a child's failures in school and adults argue endlessly about them. The fixes are simple. But what would happen if 99% of children were successful? They would expect to continue on that trajectory--success leading to success.
--Snip--
It oftentimes illuminates the analysis if you ask, "Who benefits?"
Jeff

Kids who aren't prepared to accept not winning, haven't been prepared well. That's one thing that high school sports is supposed to do. Teach them that even when you prepare to your best, you can still lose. You can't let failure stop you from always trying your best.

As for "who benefits?" The US as a whole does. Look, even if every child is taught to their best, like I posted, they will still conform to a standard bell curve of success. Someone still gets to lose.

[lukasz]

I was reminded of this thread this morning: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/bu...e.html?_r=1&hp

"Most family incomes in Bronxville are in the six and seven figures, ranking the village among the wealthiest enclaves in America. But even an additional $100 to $200 tacked onto property tax bills has met enough resistance to make town officials think twice.

Some residents argue that the town should be more businesslike, cutting other costs to offset the outlay for smaller classes. Peter P. Pulkkinen is one. A 40-year-old investment banker, he and his wife, Sarah, moved here in 2004 from the Upper East Side and their two oldest children are now in the first and third grades. He wants small classes for them. But rather than raise taxes, he would restrict the compensation of existing teachers — particularly their benefits."

I want things, but I don't want to pay for them. Teachers should just work for less, says the investment banker. If anyone was still wondering how our economy got into the shitter, there you go. People in business courses should be forced to read Marx's Capital, or maybe everyone should so we could point out crocks like this when we see them.

[ssjimbo]

I consider myself incredibly lucky and blessed to be a community college teacher. I love teaching but am immensely glad that I don't have to put up with what grade school teachers do.

Recent research has shown that kids who have self control and understand delayed gratification have the most potential to succeed. Our society certainly doesn't value the second of those traits (see just about every commercial on television). And to classtimesailer, the students aren't failing, which is part of the problem. Teachers in grade school aren't allowed to fail large numbers of children regardless of their achievement levels. So the kids think they are doing great, while putting forth minimal effort, until the get smacked in the face. A New York Times article talked about the sheer number of students in community colleges (where I teach) who need remedial course work. They've been passed along and passed along, and now they are told they didn't really learn much, despite having passed these high stakes tests to graduate from high school.

As for tenure, the politicians would like to get rid of it not to get rid of bad teachers, but to get rid of expensive teachers so they can crow about how much they reduced the budget. I know there are bad teachers and there needs to be a system to get rid of them but I don't believe for a minute that the politicians' motivation in the union busting is about improving teaching.

Lastly, I've been a part of a project that is supposed to innovate remedial math at the community college level. It's very exciting and will hopefully lead to more student success, but one part of the project has looked at why the top countries are way above us in math achievement. Research that went into many classrooms in the US, Australia (both poor in math), Japan, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, and the Netherlands (all good in math) noted an important difference. We don't require students to struggle their way to an answer. We give them a problem (say figuring out how to find the area of a triangle for instance) and ask them to work on a way to determine the answer. In all the countries which excel in math, students are forced to struggle (working together) until they come up with some sort of answer, right or wrong. The class then discusses the process and the various answers until the correct one is agreed upon. While the students are working, the teacher doesn't help at all. In the US, in hundreds of classes that were taped, every time the teacher gave this sort of exercise, once students started having difficulty, the teacher helped them. The interesting thing is that it doesn't matter how much of this type of problem is done (Japan does lots, Hong Kong and the Czech Republic just a bit), but what matters is that they teacher makes the students work til they come up with a solution.

Yes parenting is critically important (only parents can teach self control and delayed gratification), but teaching needs to be innovated as well. As long as teachers are told that their job depends on how students perform on tests, innovation is going to take a back seat to teaching to the test.

[bikinchris]

Another teaching problem is that American society doesn't value intelligent people. The smart kid in the class is "in for it" big time. Everyone teases the "geek" until they give in. Intelligence is a talent, just like throwing a football. At a time when the US is slipping in so many areas, we should try to encourage and enrich our smartest kids. Today many of them pretend to not know so they can fit in.

You will know then things are right in the world when the New York Yankees have to hold a bake sale to get equipment and there are signing bonuses for the top teachers.

[dave1215]

Another teaching problem is that American society doesn't value intelligent people. The smart kid in the class is "in for it" big time. Everyone teases the "geek" until they give in. Intelligence is a talent, just like throwing a football. At a time when the US is slipping in so many areas, we should try to encourage and enrich our smartest kids. Today many of them pretend to not know so they can fit in.

parents should find ways to motivate kids to work hard in school, hmmm...

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[JoB]

Another teaching problem is that American society doesn't value intelligent people. The smart kid in the class is "in for it" big time. Everyone teases the "geek" until they give in. Intelligence is a talent, just like throwing a football. At a time when the US is slipping in so many areas, we should try to encourage and enrich our smartest kids. Today many of them pretend to not know so they can fit in.

You will know then things are right in the world when the New York Yankees have to hold a bake sale to get equipment and there are signing bonuses for the top teachers.

I agree with most of what you say. I want to add that I think of my students' confidence first when I want to know why they are not learning. Reading some of Carol Dweck's work has really changed the way I think about teaching and praise - away from 'you're smart' and towards 'you work hard, you will be able to understand these concepts'. Not everybody will get an A or a B, but as far as maximizing individual potential goes, it's hard to beat a student who's interested in and not intimidated by a subject.

check it out: The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids -- New York Magazine

Also, there was a recent article somewhere (Wash Post?) about the school system in Finland- amazing to read how valued teachers are there, and how proud they are of their profession.

[HSTFixed]

along with the dark side of american culture
including ubiquitous hip hop and rap videos
celebrating drop outs and rebellious behavior

This is borderline offensive and totally off the mark. Seriously how can anyone think this is a cause of any of our problems??? This is a symptom of how fucked our world is.

[dang]

I was reminded of this thread this morning: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/bu...e.html?_r=1&hp

"Most family incomes in Bronxville are in the six and seven figures, ranking the village among the wealthiest enclaves in America. But even an additional $100 to $200 tacked onto property tax bills has met enough resistance to make town officials think twice.

Some residents argue that the town should be more businesslike, cutting other costs to offset the outlay for smaller classes. Peter P. Pulkkinen is one. A 40-year-old investment banker, he and his wife, Sarah, moved here in 2004 from the Upper East Side and their two oldest children are now in the first and third grades. He wants small classes for them. But rather than raise taxes, he would restrict the compensation of existing teachers — particularly their benefits."

I want things, but I don't want to pay for them. Teachers should just work for less, says the investment banker. If anyone was still wondering how our economy got into the shitter, there you go. People in business courses should be forced to read Marx's Capital, or maybe everyone should so we could point out crocks like this when we see them.

Well, I dunno. I mean, right, at least through the lens of the representatives folks around the country actually choose -- local, state, and the other one -- there seems to be an appetite for a level of expenditures that exceeds the level of indifference to the cost of those expenditures. But on this particular thing . . . I started to read the article and it seems crazy . . . an investment banker (maybe 7 figure compensation maybe six -- we don't really know where he is in that pile) in a 7 figure home doesn't want to pay an extra 100 or 200 bucks to maintain the quality of the public schools his own children attend? 200 bucks wouldn't pay for a decent hotel for those folks if they sent the kids to Choate and paid a weekend visit in which they actually stayed overnight. But I also read that the typical home in the community has a 43k annual property tax bill and that they've seen a 34% increase in a five year period in which inflation has been negligible and real incomes for most Americans -- including most American professionals -- has seen no such increase. Maybe he is cheap as hell -- maybe they all are -- but is it really crazy that there's a point at which they ask whether enough is enough, or how one might slow the increase? We're told that some of what he wants to cut are things like the accumulation of sick days (which can add up to ridiculous totals in my own very different line of work). We're told that the Bronxville teachers are very well paid, for teachers, but not what their salaries are relative to teachers in surrounding communities, and not what the benefits packages cost relative to those in surrounding communities. I'm not saying that those teachers are overpaid. I don't even know what they get paid. I'm just suggesting that the story might be richer if there were a bit more information and that I'm wondering about my own initial reaction. I've been pretty fortunate in all sorts of ways, and I make a nice living (not an IB-type living, but a very nice living compared to most), and . . . well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I'd be looking to sell and move if I were facing a 43k annual property tax bill. Pronto.

I really don't think I'm anti-teacher. My own inner (DC area) burb spends more on public schools, per kid, than most, and I've voted for every school board bond request they've put forth, including some that seemed a little padded with luxuries to me (did the new W&L pool have to be so amazing, really?) My mom taught grade school, my dad spent about half his career teaching (university teaching); and I've spent maybe half my adult working years in university teaching myself, although it's not what I do now. Tenure? I sure as heck understand the desire for security and I don't think that treating teachers as true at-risk employees makes for a stable system. On the other hand, I think that most tenure systems grant too much (and too soon), at great cost to the labor market and, not incidentally, many teachers.

I'm not sure what this exemplifies. It's not a pretty picture, but I'm going to venture a wild guess: for all the myriad problems facing education and educators, and whatever character defects we might find if we looked into the souls of others, most parents in a place like Bronxville will invest a considerable amount of time and money in the education of their children.

[Ecrevisse]

just saw "waiting for superman"
trailer ... quite poignant movie, slams tenure for public school teachers, have you seen it?
what's your take on why we're paying so much and getting so little?

I don't buy blaming the teachers for the failure of the kids. Parents who take no interest in their child's education are the problem. In most cases the difference between a good student and a poor student is the parental involvement and / or expectation the parent has of their child..

[Tom]

Like I always say to the people where I work, and get dumb stares in return: "If your kid's an idiot, it isn't the teacher's fault. It's genetics.'

[lukasz]

Since this thread popped back up, I thought those that aren't tuned into the issue might want to know that at least two of the "Waiting for Superman" performance driven education proponents have gotten into hot water for artificially inflating performance numbers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/ed...20fraud&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/us/08hall.html

IMHO this is exactly where this performance driven rhetoric leads. You either put up the cash for education or you can play hocus-pocus with numbers. Everything comes down to funding.

[giordana93]

Since this thread popped back up, I thought those that aren't tuned into the issue might want to know that at least two of the "Waiting for Superman" performance driven education proponents have gotten into hot water for artificially inflating performance numbers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/ed...20fraud&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/us/08hall.html

IMHO this is exactly where this performance driven rhetoric leads. You either put up the cash for education or you can play hocus-pocus with numbers. Everything comes down to funding.

not to mention that "teaching to the test" and teaching test-taking skills that these standards-based metrics demand become more important than deeper, more complex learning processes. If you don't think we are in a crisis, you should look at how the us stacks up internationally. even at the university levels where some mistakenly believe we still have an edge. flame on. (since, yes, this was a "quick reply")

[giordana93]

IMHO this is exactly where this performance driven rhetoric leads. You either put up the cash for education or you can play hocus-pocus with numbers. Everything comes down to funding.

ok, so I answered too quickly. I mostly agree with you I think, but the problem is so complex that I don't think any amounts of cash or funding would go directly to the heart of the problem. There are just so many cultural issues at play, from macro to micro. from the home environment and its host of socio-economic factors, to a completely absent federal, country-wide sense of community, i.e. common good, common goals, and common means to get there. the sense of radical individualism (me, me, me, mine, mine, mine) destroying any sense of commonality and shared destiny (as if they could be sepate). it's my kid in my neighborhood, my property taxes paying for my schools--too bad if the kids in your district have such crummy circumstances that 3 years of remedial work wouldn't be enough for them to catch up to the privileged few. aw, I better shut up now, and close with something that I think I mentioned above: if teaching were such an easy, well-paying gig that people make it out to be, why the high turnover, why don't the best pre-med, pre-law, pre-business students do it instead? why does that ethos--valuing all the other "professions" above teaching--prevail? why does someone who can fix your broken hand bone earn 1000% higher income than someone trying to fix/form young minds, or someone at Goldman Sachs pay more in income tax in one year than some educators will earn in income in a lifetime? yep, no crisis here. I got mine.

[bikinchris]

Like I always say to the people where I work, and get dumb stares in return: "If your kid's an idiot, it isn't the teacher's fault. It's genetics.'

We say it differently "The apple never falls far from the tree."

All of the test numbers aren't my issue. LEARNING is not what's important anymore. Taking tests is. Learning based education has been displaced with making sure the students become good at taking that particular kind of test.That's my issue.

When I grew up, you got your butt whipped for bringing home an F (and sometimes a D) on your report card. Today, parents call the school and say that you are picking on their kid. But you can't get elected telling these same parents that they are not motivatng their kids to learn.

[lukasz]

Hey giordana93, I think that we agree. All I'm saying is that education funding is continuously being cut, while at the same time quality is expected to go up. It isn't just money, but more than anything it is money.

I had an interesting political science professor once. Now I'm not a poli. sci. guy so maybe this is a nuts and bolts kind of thing, but he basically said that whoever can raise the most money come election time in a given presidential election cycle will be elected. Since I took that class, I don't think that he has been wrong--and he's won some friendly bets based on that assumption as well. I think that in education the correlation between funding and results is far more clear. It is about enticing good people, about training, motivation--and obvious things like having facilities, chalk, smaller classes... I could go on and on.

Here's a personal anecdote: I had been trying to get an adjunct position at one of the CUNY schools for this fall. Despite the terrible pay it proved impossible, because of the number of classes that were cut and merged to forum so-called "jumbo" sections of 100+ students each. I've previously assisted in teaching one of these courses, and it is a total nightmare. The only way you can get feedback from a class like that is with short quizzes, which are completely dull and mindless. I don't care how good of an educator you are. A student will not get the same kind of education in a class like that as a course with even 1/3 of that number. What would a poor teacher have to be doing in a smaller course to make it as bad as sitting in an auditorium with 100+ kids trying to interact with one person? Forget performance, tenure, and analyzing test scores. What is important are the fundamentals--and those cost money.

Damn, that's what a double shot of espresso at 5 pm does to you. I'm going to go do something productive....

[King Of Dirk]

I don't buy blaming the teachers for the failure of the kids. Parents who take no interest in their child's education are the problem. In most cases the difference between a good student and a poor student is the parental involvement and / or expectation the parent has of their child..

I agree. What can/should a teacher do about this? How does funding change this?

Not trying to piss anyone off - I'm not a teacher, and have no children. I'm only asking because I'm curious and I'd like to be better informed on this issue.

[ashwa64]

having done research in india on basic education (among other things) for the last 3.5 years, i would certainly not say the public education system in the u.s. is in a crisis (in terms of opportunity to receive an education as opposed to some argument about inefficiencies). i did not see the clip, but i often find myself thinking that people in the u.s. don't know how good they've got it (and not just in terms of education). also, i didn't read the whole thread, but saw this mentioned in the beginning and agree -- parents matter and aspiration/drive of the student matters (often related to parents). are there inequalities in the system? of course. still -- if you have the desire and ability, i believe there is reasonable opportunity.