If testing and measuring makes for better schools, why are the Obama girls in a school that doesn’t agree?
The Obamas opted for a pricey private school for their daughters. (AP Photo)
In a powerful essay in Education Week, retired educator Alan Jones of Illinois shares his experience accompanying his daughter to look at schools for his grandson.
Jones talks about today’s test-driven education classrooms, codified through No Child Left Behind and incentivized through Race to the Top. He compares schools that measure students almost entirely by test scores to the holistic approach of the Sidwell School attended by President Obama’s girls, saying. “When President Obama talks about good schools, he is talking about schools for other people’s children, not his own.”
Jones makes great points, although comparisons between public and private schools are not necessarily instructive in view of the wide gap in costs. The best private schools in metro Atlanta cost $18,000 to $22,000 a year — and that does not count books and fees — while the average per-pupil spending in public schools in Georgia is around $9,600.
And Atlanta is a bargain compared to private school prices in New York and Washington. Tuition at Sidwell is more than $32,000 per year. (While quality may certainly be the prime reason that U.S. presidents, including Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, enroll their children in Sidwell, a desire to keep their kids out of the public eye is probably another. )
But Jones makes searing points about how a daily diet of drill and test has turned school into an uninspired and unappetizing gruel.
Here is an excerpt but take a look at his full piece in Ed Week:
Nothing could have prepared me for the mindlessness of the hallways, classrooms, and main offices I observed in the coming weeks. I reviewed curriculum with no art or music and only sporadic attempts at teaching science. I followed a school schedule heavily focused on basic literacy skills. I found kindergarten programs with no recess. I observed classrooms where students were required to repeat state standards written on the chalkboard and spend hours completing mountains of worksheets designed to make children more test-savvy.
The schooling landscape worsened when I questioned administrators and teachers about their schools’ instructional programs. What I heard was a form of pseudo-educational jargon that made no sense. The new foreign language of schooling was an incomprehensible mix of educational alphabet soup (RTI, ELL, AYP, LD, BD, ADHD), business metaphors (data-driven, performance-based, TGM), and an urgent plea for more time to prepare students for the state test in March.
Worn out by what I was observing in schools in my community, I wondered what kind of school the president’s children attended… Sidwell students, it seemed, experienced an instructional program that allocated appropriate time for each discipline to be taught well; engaged in instructional activities that were problem-based and interdisciplinary; participated in a rich extracurricular program; and were supervised by administrators and teachers who place children’s social and emotional development on an equal footing with their intellectual growth.
Under this new government-driven regime of testing and accountability, schools are no longer the schools I attended, taught in, or led. This new breed of accountability-driven schools is more interested in reaching some number at the end of the school year than with my grandson’s deep—and untestable—need to be known, respected, and educated.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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137 comments Add your comment
d
February 3rd, 2013
10:53 am
10:10 – if it weren’t for gerrymandering, Republicans wouldn’t have the lock on the legislatures that they do (and we would have a Democratic majority in the House), but that’s not the point of this conversation.
Here’s my problem with the testing madness – the tests come too late to do anything useful with the data other than point fingers at teachers and say it’s all our fault. Take EOCT. My fall semester scores came back on January 7. I won’t see those children again to help if they needed it (or figure out if they just blew it off because they didn’t care). If they did not score higher, however, than they did on a test from a completely unrelated subject, heck, that makes me ineffective, right? Forget the fact that they had never been exposed to the materials in my subject in their entire high school career.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
10:55 am
Kind of like Obama comes from the street-gun murder capital of the USA and now is riding herd over “gun control” for autonomous citizens while none of his agenda makers are mentioning lack of public mental health care. Read somewhere that a person declared that they were sick and wanted to kill themselves and went to the local hospital, which would do nothing for them and referred them to four organizations that would do nothing for them and gave them five telephone numbers to call that went nowhere. This was all written up in someone’s weblog. I wish I had the link.
A modern philosopher once said to beware of single-idea “solutions.”
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
10:59 am
“Testing” is just feeding money to test companies and making a redirect from the lack of teaching materials. Like the evaluation fetish, it is a redirect away from what would show dereliction of duty to the real tools to get the job done. It’s a strange situation and people should stop so readily accepting it. Those teachers in Portland were right to object.
Pride and Joy
February 3rd, 2013
10:59 am
Standardized testing EQUALS accountability.
The people who don’t want standardized testing (teachers, schools and administrators) don’t want to be held acccountable for the work we tax payers pay through the nose for them to do.
It’s that simple.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
11:00 am
The new news is that Obamacare when put into play will cost $20k per year per family.
Atllaw191
February 3rd, 2013
11:00 am
Having graduated from high school in the late ’60’s, we didn’t have “testing” as schools have instituted now. BUT, our grading system was far better – 96-100 (A), 90-95 (B), 85-89 (C), (80-84 (D) and anything under 80 was an automatic (F), which was FAR BETTER as an indicator of whether or not we were college material, or not. We were “integrated” at the end of my schooling in HS and did not seem to notice (or I didn’t, because I’d grown up believing that anyone who wanted an education should HAVE ONE, regardless of color, creed, whatever).
Having said that, I don’t believe “testing” in and of itself is the end-all to knowing what your child knows. Their grades should reflect what they know, their teachers should teach critical thinking instead of just rote “memorization” and they should have “pop” quizzes at all times to ensure they’re not just memorizing the material but are THINKERS!
The “testing” professionals are in it for the money it generates, not the knowledge children have. There are GREAT teachers out there and there are teachers who rely on tests to do their jobs. These are the same people who won’t sit up all night grading papers, regardless of the salaries and who believe that cheating our children equals their (teachers) success. It is not so.
Before I quit, it must be said that children’s education should not / cannot be the teacher’s fault alone. Parents MUST know what their children are doing at all times – its called “parenting”, and they are just as much at fault as the teachers for blaming the system instead of themselves/their children for not doing the WORK.
It matters less whether the school defends/does not do the testing. It matters what students learn and how they learn is by holding the parents/children and teachers accountable for what/how children are learning. Critical thinking, people! Believe what you believe and be able to back it up with FACTS, not rhetoric, and “creative falsehoods.”
Julia
February 3rd, 2013
11:15 am
Teachers do what they are told to do. Therefore, according to IDEA, I teach an academic curriculum (i.e., calculus) to students with an IQ of 35 and a mental age of 17 months.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
11:15 am
I once had a business partner who knew their trade, but when I went out of town they spent half the money in the business checking account. Point is, if money and resources are precious, why spend them on testing and worker evaluation emphasis? I recently read in a business magazine through some 10 brief interviews with successful business innovators. I was completely stunned. For example, the fellow who started Twitter, his doctrine for success is to “do less.”
Pride and Joy
February 3rd, 2013
11:29 am
To ATL Parent,
You don’t know about every private school in Georgia. My child’s private school has extremely tight discipline and a sensible curriculume of reading, writing and arithmetic.
For you to make sweeping statements about ALL private schools, which you cannot possibly validate, negates your argument.
Pride and Joy
February 3rd, 2013
11:32 am
Private Citizen says “had a business partner who knew their trade, but when I went out of town they spent half the money in the business checking account.”
You are very foolish, PC, for not having any procedures in place to stop your business partner from spending half the money.
You were foolish.
You should have known better and put procedures in place from preventing it and that proves you are not very bright…and you were once a public school teacher. It figures.
Pride and Joy
February 3rd, 2013
11:41 am
bootney farnsworth, a so-called educator writes “Slick Willy has never been known to have anybodies best interests (outside of his own) at heart.”
Bootney the word is “anybody’s” not “anybodies.” “anybodies” is not even a word.
See? You call yourself an educator? You call yourself educated? THIS is why parents like me get sick and tired of people like you clamoring for more money. When you cannot even write a simple sentence, we cannot take you seriously.
AnnieAD
February 3rd, 2013
11:50 am
Private Citizen, you summed it perfectly. Policy is made on the federal level and state level by legislators for “other people’s children.”. It would be interesting to see how many Georgia legislators send their children to private schools who have no accountability or requirements to mandate the state laws for public schools that they continue to pass.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
12:04 pm
AnnieAD, Yes, it would be interesting to see on a local / state level. One work-around in Georgia are the application-required academy schools paid for with public money and used to make a private school environment to serve the political class, ugh huh. Someone recently told me a report about the admittance procedures of these schools, “List A” of the kids who are already predetermined to be in, and “List B” of the kids who must go through the interview / portfolio review / applications process. Hey, it’s not anyone ever investigates anything in Georgia, either.
_________
On a separate note, for government teachers in the regulated / scripted environments, teaching has become about as real as modern film-making. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7HHdIOdoC4 Like the actors, the teachers do not have a choice in how it is done. But maybe someone knows the difference in disposable movies and art.
KIM
February 3rd, 2013
12:07 pm
Testing and measuring to the extent we are doing is so that the poorer students who come from an economically disadvantaged environment will get the education and support they need. The problem is, we have a huge percent of American children who are not economically disadvantaged and they are subjected to the same controlled instruction and evaluation. Children who are exceptional 9no matter their socio economic status) do not need to be measured continuously to the same extent. Well prepared educators differentiate for them and expose them to enriching experiences. The problem is one size does not fit all.
Lee
February 3rd, 2013
12:08 pm
I really do not care where Obama, Clinton, Carter, or Nixon sent their children to school – provided, of course, that my taxes do not pay for their private schooling. If the government denies me vouchers or even a simple tax credit for sending my kids to private, then the president should pay for his offspring as well.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
12:09 pm
To clarify, point is, in the trailer, this is now movies are made now, making digital video of the actors on a stage with x’s on the floor for the computer graphic alignment. If in the finished movie they’re in a tea house or the sky is blue, or driving in a car, everything else is imported via computer animation. When they’re out in Gandolf’s woodland, or whatever, there is no fresh air and sunshine. It’s made in the way shown on the trailer.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
12:16 pm
The other thing is that at these government “academy” schools they do not destabilise the staff, whereas in the general education schools, what I have seen is that they are pretty merciless with bouncing people around and theming and then re-theming the faculty and schools, i.e. the amount of required indoctrination rituals and such. I still think a significant study could be made of amount of faculty movement / displacement. When you get these cuckoo-clock dysfunctional activist school districts, the power-driven nitwits running things seem to take a particular joy in displacing and moving around other people. It is a technique to make certain no one has the slightest amount of power, much less dignity.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
12:20 pm
And then there’s the politically connected general ed. teachers who work the system like a plantation. Anchoring the general ed. schools, while “my child goes to…” (the membership academy school). So there is a loop, they take care of the political class and the political class takes care of them.
teacher&mom
February 3rd, 2013
12:21 pm
I’ve cruised around Sidwell’s web site. Their course offerings are impressive. They proudly advertise small class sizes. Students have state of the art technology, a strong fine arts program, incredible field trips, etc. Sidwell is an amazing school.
Do I fault the Obama family for sending their children to Sidwell? Absolutely not. If I had the financial means, my children would go to a school with the same mission and purpose as Sidwell.
However, I fault President Obama for embracing reforms and initiatives that are polar opposites to what his daughters’ are exposed to every day. He is clueless about improving education. He is not alone. It is hard to find a political leader who can see beyond the Gates/Broad/Walton brand of education reform.
bu2
February 3rd, 2013
12:30 pm
Dekalb elementary schools spend from around 7.5k for the non-Title I schools to around 11.5k for the Title I schools according to their figures. That would be just a little higher than Maureen’s figures on average. However, I don’t believe that includes an allocation of headquarters overhead.
On the other hand, private schools often rely on donations to cover part of their costs, beyond just the tuition.
paulo977
February 3rd, 2013
12:37 pm
“When President Obama talks about good schools, he is talking about schools for other people’s children, not his own.”
___________________________________________________________
Oh agree …….He ought to come out strongly against what Duncan is doing!!!
bootney farnsworth
February 3rd, 2013
12:48 pm
@ maureen
I make a comment some considered racist -it wasn’t- and I was moderated, blocked, and censored six ways to Sunday
10;10 insults me and my family directly, and this is OK with the AJC rules?
can you walk me thru this logic?
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
12:55 pm
hey bootney, Give it a break for a moment. You make excellent points and have done the good work. I think you make a lot of insightful points / unique voice based on experience.
Hey check this out: One report of “How Washington works.” Senator demands for a journalist to be fired for asking him a question. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osg0RYAP2cs
bootney farnsworth
February 3rd, 2013
12:58 pm
@ private citizen
I’ve never thought of it that way before, but your point about (paraphrasing) the educational plantation system is very provocative.
it does seem the administrative and political systems of education have a primary task of offering just enough education to make a person serviceable in society, but not excel. the only way things like RTTT make any sense is if you view them from the perspective of obstructing learning. not promoting it
bootney farnsworth
February 3rd, 2013
1:03 pm
@ PC
while I appreciate the thoughts, there is no way on earth I’m gonna allow someone to call or even infer racism on my part without contesting it.
while I KNOW what’s in my heart -and could produce a long list of people who would make hash out of stupidity of the allegation, if you allow that kind of slander to stand without opposition in today’s
society you de facto are admitting to it.
“racism” is the political equalivent of accusing someone of rape.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
1:04 pm
Yep. And if you work to make the underclass learn-ed, seems to be not what “they” want. Sometimes I have thought the last thing a local power structure wants is for a bunch of poor kids to go off and get law degrees and come back home.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
1:08 pm
Morgan Freeman said the best way to stop racism is to stop talking about it. It’s a brilliant insight. Sometimes maybe better not to react. As you know, in online forums, this is called being “trolled” when someone delivers an upsetting zinger, usually in a one or two sentence post. Don’t feed the troll, the saying goes.
TheGoldenRam
February 3rd, 2013
1:08 pm
Public schools have had an impossible mandate forced upon them by our government, that being to ‘fix’ poverty. The tragic irony is that this has happened over the same period of time that most other government institutions have changed their focus to the ‘maintenance’ of poverty. This creates profoundly different expectations and accountability measures between various entities that are all presumably focused on that same problem.
Again, I’ll use The Memphis Commercial Appeal as an example. Cities like Memphis, Detroit & Chicago make great examples because they are far enough down the path to illustrate how these issues play out in regards to public education. Memphis is the poorest big city in America. It’s one of the most violent cities in America. The illegitimate birth rate is astounding. The college readiness rate for Memphis City Schools is about 4%. Of all of the schools identified by the State of Tennessee as ‘failing’, almost all of them are in Memphis. The fairly liberal Commercial Appeal routinely points out that poverty is the primary cause of the massive problems associated with Memphis schools. They also recently published an amazing series of stories that highlighted how Poverty, Inc. is now the largest growth industry in the city. Billions upon billions of dollars spent over the decades and the poverty rate continues to rise. No indication that poverty is being ‘fixed’, only that it is being ‘maintained’. The Commercial Appeal has also now become a vocal advocate for charter schools, vouchers and now, parent trigger laws.
Traditional public schools have already lost the war over school choice. What we are seeing now are battles and skirmishes being fought as the defeated fall back from the encroaching lines. When dealing with something as massive as the traditional public schools model, there is no such thing as an overnight victory. It’s a war of attrition. Parent trigger laws won’t fix the problem, but it is another ideological breach in the line. Charter schools will increasingly weaken public schools and the inevitable onset of vouchers will finish them off.
I say all of this as someone who supports the concept of public schools and will be very sorry to see them go. However, too many school systems have already been irreversibly damaged. Middle-class parents will not concede to sending their children to schools that increasingly work under a poverty-centric model that are then held accountable by draconian testing requirements. They won’t support school districts that do not or will not offer differentiated educational opportunities for students based on merit, ability and compliance with reasonable discipline policies. They are going to continue to support legislation that is an alternative to this unacceptable status quo, even if the true consequences of new models are yet to be known. Motivated and engaged lower-class parents, who have for decades borne the brunt of public schools’ misguided policies will be the first ones out the door.
I have to give credit to another poster that once said that public schools will become the ‘Medicaid option’. That’s an exceptional analogy that I now use and exactly what I think will happen.
Public schools, in their traditional form, are not equipped to adapt to the changes occurring in our society. A reasonable person can imagine how they could, but would also have to concede that they won’t.
living in an outdated ed system
February 3rd, 2013
1:12 pm
@Maureen, I think you best remind everyone that the comments need to be on topic and not personal or hostile. A few folks on here are not sticking to the topic. No one deserves to be thrown under the bus on here.
Having said that, I think it that Jones crossed a red line with his assault on Obama and Sidwell Friends, and let me tell you why.
1. Sidwell Friends may be a very high quality private school, but it is MOST important that in this day and age, the children of a sitting president be kept out of the public eye and in an environment that can protect them at all times.
2. You cannot compare public and private schools for a myriad of reasons. Private schools are not “scalable” – they are community specific and have their own policies. They are able to do many innovative things because they are not held to public policies and are community-driven. Large school districts have bloated infrastructures and have proven time and time again they are mismanaged and poorly governed. Take Dekalb Schools as an extreme example here.
3. The problem with public education is that anytime you are using taxpayer dollars, you must be held accountable. But see, the problem is how you measure “accountability.” We can absolutely reduce the number of high stakes tests that students receive, but formal assessments will always exist. The more critical question is HOW we assess, which should NOT be about memorizing facts without context, and doing more multiple choice questions which is nonsensical.
I do NOT think it is appropriate to throw private education under the bus. Do not fault upper class citizens who can afford to send their children to private schools. The PROBLEM is that your average American family doesn’t really have a public choice, and they should. I am actually going to quote @Bootney who makes an excellent point. “It does seem the administrative and political systems of education have a primary task of offering just enough education to make a person serviceable in society.” This was how education existed during the factory-style, mass-standardization approach conceived during the Industrial Revolution. And it needs to change because it is outdated. The manifesto “Stop Stealing Dreams” addresses much of this, in a very direct way that some people will object to, despite the author making a lot of strategic sense.
Claudia Stucke
February 3rd, 2013
1:25 pm
Both my kids went to public schools, K-12, and were accepted into the colleges of their choice, one with a sizable academic scholarship. Both graduated with honors, and one is now in grad school on a fellowship. Although they went to public school in a good system, I think they could have gone to just about any public school in DeKalb County and received a decent education, with the same results. We have some good schools and some excellent, dedicated teachers. My kids were fortunate enough to have well-educated parents who were involved in our children’s lives without being helicopter parents. They had access to books, computer/Internet, emotional support, good nutrition, and good healthcare. When I taught in public school in DeKalb County, I saw firsthand that not all children have these basic advantages (and some who did had the disadvantage of micro-managing parents).
To address another feature of private schools: The door is not open to everyone, even people with fat checkbooks. Students still have to qualify academically in most cases, taking an entrance exam and going through an interview process; and, unlike public schools, private schools have the option to expel students who don’t meet their academic standards. Also students in private schools must adhere to more rigorous discipline codes–no second or third or fourth chances after infractions.
Despite seeing some truly devastating situations in public school, I remain a firm believer in public education. We must have an educated populace. I tried to work from the inside and failed, but I still believe that our public schools can and must succeed.
M.E.
February 3rd, 2013
1:54 pm
My children have had inspiring teachers in the public system. They’ve also had teachers whose ways we’ve had to challenge or just give up on. Every school/teacher is different. But my children have also decided to forgo the senior year at the public school and move on to college early. They not only surpassed what could be taught in their public school, they could no longer stand the prison-like atmosphere and violence/bullying among the student population.
living in an outdated ed system
February 3rd, 2013
1:55 pm
@Claudia, excellent post! Thank you.
Teacher2
February 3rd, 2013
2:00 pm
@Jerry Eads 10:45 am
“Those are the fortunate ones. Inner city and rural districts must not only address the requirements of special education (in higher proportion than the high-income districts) but also address the needs of much higher proportions of disadvantaged kids”
This is the truth that supporters of computing student test scores as a component of teacher evaluations either refuse to acknowledge or are woefully ignorant of this reality.
“Because their pass rates on the worthless state minimum competency tests are lower, we assume that the schools are “worse” when in fact they really have a very different job and most certainly aren’t starting with the same population. (I won’t even start on the issue of “value-added” testing. It’s a nice concept but our tests aren’t good enough to do it well or fairly.)”
I believe that in order to fully understand your above quote one must experience the role of teachers in Title 1 schools in both the inner city and rural areas. It is ridiculous to expect the same results and inflict the same consequence and reward for an affluent school and a poverty stricken school. The reality is that a poverty stricken school has a greater risk for consequence with a lower chance for reward. It is the completely opposite at an affluent school. It is easier to ignore this fact than address the disparity that exist better affluent school and Title 1 schools. The questions will soon become: Who will be willing to teach in Title 1 schools? What will be the average years of teaching experience in Title 1 schools when teacher evaluations and salary are tied to test scores? I will offer that the average teaching experience will be 4 year or less as a result of penalties imposed on teachers at Title 1 schools. It is the poor that has suffered and will continue to suffer the most under NCLB, RTTT and the obsession with penalty testing.
“The problem has been infinitely exacerbated by the criminal negligence of NCLB and RT3 – forcing the schools with higher proportions of disadvantaged kids to devote every cent and minute toward getting kids to pass a test that forces schools to do nothing but mind-numbing repetitive “drill and kill” memorization.”….”What it did, as much of the public and legislators don’t care, is make public education for many a dreadful hell-hole of repetitive day-in and day-out never-ending memorization.”
It is criminal negligence. The current educational system removes their desire to learn through the constant testing and test taking skill drills. The pacing does not provide for mastery and students are limited to the specific bits of information that are on the test. The students are simply being prepared as test takers rather than being educated.
10:10 am
February 3rd, 2013
2:08 pm
Maureen, if Private Citizen—and paragon of civility bootney farnsworth—will rest their keyboards long enough for you to get a word in … by all means DO address bootney’s self-pitying lament of 12:48 pm.
I’d love to see it.
Teacher2
February 3rd, 2013
2:09 pm
Correction- It is easier to ignore this fact than address the disparity that exist “between” affluent school and Title 1 schools.
More Furloughs
February 3rd, 2013
2:25 pm
Most of the legislators who make these laws do not have children in Public schools, they would be beneath them.
Mary Elizabeth
February 3rd, 2013
2:38 pm
“Sidwell students, it seemed, experienced an instructional program that allocated appropriate time for each discipline to be taught well; engaged in instructional activities that were problem-based and interdisciplinary; participated in a rich extracurricular program; and were supervised by administrators and teachers who place children’s social and emotional development on an equal footing with their intellectual growth.”
==================================================
The words, above, reflect an exemplary plan for educating all students. I do not perceive that this type of instructional plan will, in any way, negate diagnostic testing to ascertain where each student is functioning. Both the creative and the diagnostic can co-exist in harmony. Public education must educate the masses of students within the state. We cannot continue to sustain a public educational model whereby nearly one-third of the masses of students in Georgia do not graduate with their peers, many of whom simply drop out of school.
However, ensuring that a reasonable amount of time is spent in diagnostic testing, for precise instructional placement and instruction for each student, should not equate with testing as a punitive or evaluative device to assess schools and teachers. The stress is too great upon school personnel with that punitive testing rationale, and that harsh approach for test purposes will only ensure that less creativity, as demonstrated in the Sidwell School model, will occur in the instructional model of schools throughout our state and nation. The testing of students should be done for diagnostic purposes of students’ functioning levels whatever their grade levels. Teacher should be trained in how to utilize those diagnostic test results for their instruction, and teachers should be made a part of that improvement process, by having their input valued, so that they do not feel unduely threatened in regard to their salary or job security because of test results primarily. Administrators from the lowest to the highest levels of educational arenas should encourage creativity in instruction, as well as encourage teachers to focus upon the development of the whole child, such as occurs at Sidwell School.
Traditional public schools must change from within to reflect the model that I have just described. Every student must be properly placed at all times within school systems. Creative, relaxed, and professional school and classroom environments, as well as encouragement to foster the development of the whole child must be a priorities. A “prison-like atmosphere and violence/bullying among the student population” must never be tolerated.
Traditional public schools must change from within if we, in Georgia, who value public education which is not designed for profit, is sustained and improved throughout our state. Moreover, Georgia’s legislators must, once again, believe in and affirm public education which is not designed for profit, and they must fund it, and the teachers who work within it, adequately.
Starik
February 3rd, 2013
2:44 pm
Testing is extremely useful for judging schools; not necessarily the individual student, or even the quality of the teachers. Schools are the sum of the parents+students+teachers, and you want to choose a neighborhood to live where the schools produce educated kids. That’s why DeKalb is declining as a county, dragged down by the decline of the school system.
HS Math Teacher
February 3rd, 2013
2:52 pm
Teacher2: Good post, and concern about the evaluation tool – comparing Title 1 schools with north of the golden bagel schools. All this “anti-social promotion” and “anti-one size fits all” stuff I’ve been posting is embedded with the problems you clearly stated. I’m a caustic critic of our leadership and policy decision makers (DOE eggheads & idiot advisors), because it’s clear that they’ve been sitting in their cushy little offices too long, with soft-playing Muzak piped-in over the office sound system, with their little ficus trees in the corner, Mahogony book cases and credenzas, ad nauseum…. These folks have not had to encounter the difficulties that they have created (in kind words). Let them teach a 9th grade class out in the boonies, or … one of those repeater Math 3 classes, filled full (30+ in a room) who are the REAL DEAL …. gym rats, gangstas, special ed kids, etc. HAVE THEM DO IT FOR A YEAR, and I’ll guarn-damned-tee you they’d be a nervous, frazzled, freaking wreck, and would get their asses back to Atlanta to undo the mess they have foisted upon us.
Guest
February 3rd, 2013
3:43 pm
Jones overlooks the fact that Sidwell applicants are required to take a standardized test (the ISEE or SSAT) just to be considered for admission, and less than 20 percent of them are accepted. This pre-screening process renders further “testing and measuring” unnecessary and is a luxury most public schools don’t have. Students must demonstrate a baseline knowledge of math and language before they can benefit from a holistic education.
JamVet is an idiot
February 3rd, 2013
4:00 pm
“Republicans hold 30 of 50 governorships nationwide. And the party has a lock on more state legislatures than do the Democrats.”
Most of that is recent. Blaming the GOP for failed blue states is stupid.
JamVet is an idiot
February 3rd, 2013
4:01 pm
“Morgan Freeman said the best way to stop racism is to stop talking about it.”
Then how else would Democrats get elected?
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
4:08 pm
best comment award: access to books, computer/Internet, emotional support, good nutrition, and good healthcare. When I taught in public school in DeKalb County, I saw firsthand that not all children have these basic advantages
Obama claims to have solved healthcare. Saw an interview video of him, “Problem fixed. Done.” but people are saying that “Obamacare” will cost $20k per family per year. Seems his healthcare fix is a fantasy? The only sensible way to make it work is to morph it into single payer system or something. Anyway, yes basic living conditions are determinant to kids’ performance in schooling, something the USA, and in particular the formula educrats, tend to play make-believe and ignore. Telling everybody to make the underclass perform well with USA being the odd one out on social services, well, it won’t work. And meanwhile, many people in Georgia are stuck in “I’m not paying for someone else” approach to efficient civilised universal health care and such. It will be interesting to see how the promise of “Obamacare” plays out in reality. My guess is that the cost of private insurance, that mandates paying the existent insurance/hospital administration/pharmaco profit structure will not be doable for much of the populace.
bob from account temps
February 3rd, 2013
4:20 pm
the obama’s will leave multi-millions behind to their kids. they don’t even need to go to school
bootney farnsworth
February 3rd, 2013
4:27 pm
@ 10:10
as would I.
I’m curious. did it make you feel better or smarter, or feel your points would somehow become more cogent by making commentary about my mother?
did it get you a date? overcome some deep shame?
the difference between the two of us is simple: I try to deal with the points made, and rarely go after a person intentionally – and almost always after they initiated it. you seem unable to do anything but troll and attack from behind your keyboard. and dealing with actual issues appears coincidental.
I actually feel really sorry for you
Hokum
February 3rd, 2013
4:29 pm
“Blaming the GOP for failed blue states is stupid.”
Exactly which blue states have failed? Last time I checked, their federal income taxes were subsidizing the likes of AZ, KY, TN, MS, AL, SC, etc., who take more revenue than they contribute. If the U.S. were a company, it’d have shut down these failing “units” years ago.
bootney farnsworth
February 3rd, 2013
4:41 pm
@ claudia,
I think it was Pogo who said we met the enemy, and dey is us.
it really boils down to simple thing. schools and school systems will be a good or bad as the populace they serve demands.
because the professional administrators gain little from a successful system, its an uphill climb for a
motivated school, it damn near impossible in an unmotivated district. but it can happen. back in the early 70s Decatur and its schools were a scary place to avoid at all costs. by the 90s they were a rising star, and by the 2000s the model of what you wanted from a school system
bootney farnsworth
February 3rd, 2013
4:42 pm
@ hokum
looked at California lately? or Michigan?
Pride and Joy
February 3rd, 2013
4:44 pm
Truth in Moderation — homeschooling is the MOST expensive method to teach children.
A stay at home mom is outrageously expensive.
I wish I could be a stay at home mom and homeschool my children but that would mean I would have to be married to a man who made enough money to support our whole family. Mine doesn’t. Two working parentrs are the norm in American society because it is a necessity.
So, count your blessings. You have many, many blessings. You must have a man educated enough and lucky enough to earn a salary and benefits that allow him to pay for his entire family with a wife that can stay at home and care for and educate his kids. You are living my dream life.
Hokum
February 3rd, 2013
5:08 pm
@ bootney
Both CA and MI contribute more federal taxes than they receive. CA is home to the film industry, Silicon Valley, 53 Fortune 500 companies, and the best public university system in the U.S.; Michigan boasts 20 Fortune 500 companies, as well as the fourth best public college (University of Michigan) and the sixth highest SAT scores nationally.