If testing and measuring makes for better schools, why are the Obama girls in a school that doesn’t agree?

Maureen, your blog continues to be one of the most interesting anywhere.

Of course, excellent education costs money, a lot of money. I agree with the other side that the education funding that exists is squandered on administrative positions that provide little or no real value. The superintendent’s staff in Fulton offers a case study of money wasted, as do many of the people working in the multiple levels of central office administration. This also holds at the school level where there are far too many six-figure assistant principals who, truly, contribute nothing to education, but do manage to cause multiple headaches for teachers in their misguided attempts to impose standards of customer service on educators.

However, the cure of for-profit charter schools is worse than the disease and will result in much greater emphasis on looking good on paper (something they are indeed good at doing) and a great decline in education across the board. It seems to me that parents hear “charter” and think “private school without tuition,” but that is a false metonymy, as shall soon be evident. The market cannot cure the ills of education.

I gave up, threw in the towel, and fled. My children are receiving an excellent education in an internationally recognized private school. What about yours?

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Maybe the federally placed “Race to the Top” is in reality using political interference to create systematic destabilization, or as John Taylor Gatto would say, an agenda of incoherence. This would explain why no state leader, teacher or administrator can seem to grasp the tiger by the tail. It may be impossible to do so.

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I taught at a very expensive private school for three years. I was floored by how disorganized everything was. There were no standards or set curriculum, no emphasis on problem solving, and most of the teachers had no idea what a curriculum map was. The entire school was years behind their public counterparts however the parents were paying to keep their kids out of the “evil” public schools and to say “My child goes to ___________________ Academy.”

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simple. the same reason the Clintons did it. the rules are for the little people, not “them” congress routinely makes laws they exempt themselves from, and Obama routinely ignores the constitution and congress.

why should education be any different

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Ever notice how all male teachers at public schools are coaches. There is no budget for a basic physics class yet the athletic programs are fully staffed.

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and btw my wife is one of those really outstanding “ex teachers”…and if her skills and contributions were rewarded and recognized, she’d likely still be teaching, and inspiring students. It wasn’t the lack of money that drove her out, it was watching teachers who were awful, make the same or more money with zero penalty for how they were damaging kids lives.

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Why are the Obama girls in a school that doesn’t agree?
The answer is OBVIOUS.
Because the traditional public schools in D.C. are some of the WORST in the country.
The Obamas are great examples of good parents everywhere.
It would be politically correct of the Obamas to throw their girls in a public school in D.C. but…
The children are MORE IMPORTANT than being politically correct. They chose the very best school they could reasonably commute to while living in the White House.
Their daughters are top priority.
Many, many, many middle class parents feel exactly like the Obamas. It is exactly how I feel.
I am considering selling my home and taking a loss on my house just to get out of Dekalb and APS and moving to get into Decatur City schools.
I want my children to have the best education I can possibly afford.
If I had the money, I would have put my kids in Woodward, Lovett or Paidea. I just don’t have that much tuition money. As it is, I have spent my retirement funds to put my children in an affordable private school this year.
Yes, Obama is a politician but even HE recognizes that his daughters are too important to play politics with…
and that should tell you all you need to know.
Most traditional public schools in this country are not worth the money. Most traditional public schools in this country are failing and most families in this country WANT OUT of the failing traditional public schools.

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Public education is a disgrace and Obama’s inability to understand how hypocritical he is happens to be a direct result from not being held accountable by a sycophantic press. Nero is fiddling…

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This is what I see in public high schools – after 10+ years of NCLB and now the continuation of more of the same in RttT, we have students that don’t want to think. They want you to pass out the sheet/quiz/test and they want to go ahead and fill in the bubbles and get it over with as quickly as possible. The good bubble-fillers love the fact that it’s so easy and the bad bubble-fillers are just marking time. Very hard to get students to form their own opinions and thoughts because they’re not used to doing that! They’ve never been rewarded for that type of thinking. Not to blame elementary and middle school teachers – they’re just doing what they’ve been told to do. I think as a non-academic teacher, I see this even more than teachers of other subjects – students WANT the multiple choice option and one right answer even in subjects where it just doesn’t happen.

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I heartily agree with Jones’ premise, for it shows something of the impact of all this data-driven (sic) madness and testing dementia.
I would also note that I just did a quick search online and discovered that in addition to Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, the children of George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter all spent part or much of their school years in private schools (although Amy Carter attended DC public schools during her father’s term in the White House, only attending a private school in Atlanta her senior year 1984).

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@Pride and Joy,
Another quickie search–DeKalb spends less than half that on our kids. So, maybe Maureen is right in seeking a state average.

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“If testing and measuring makes for better schools,”

Testing and measuring do not automatically make better schools, it only tells you how your school is REALLY doing (unless everyone cheats, of course). It USED to be that testing was not necessary, because teachers’ grades were indicative of learning, but that is no longer the case (grade inflation, no F’s or zeros, ADMINISTRATORS changing grades or forcing teachers to change grades).

To make better schools, you have to address the basics of education: discipline, attendance, student (and parent) apathy. You also must have teachers who actually know the subject matter and can practice it in front of students (NO bad grammar from teachers, even if they are not English teachers).

Your comments about the cost of SPED students is right on the MONEY, Maureen! How can you afford to educate REGULAR students when all your money gets spent on SPED students?

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“PUBLIC school in ATLANTA costs $14K!
YES! and the private school my children attend costs MUCH LESS than the public schools in Atlanta.”

Pride an Joy – The figure you quote is the AVERAGE cost of APS. To school YOUR child (if they were qualified to get into a private school) would probably cost the APS system around $4000. The amounts are highly skewed in public schools. If your child were a SPED student then APS might spend $22000 on him/her (see Maureen’s quote). But your child would not be eligible to go to a private school.

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Maureen, you forgot home schooling. It’s much cheaper than private or public. One of mine, who home schooled through high school, was unable to attend a traditional four year college because of a learning disability (ADHD, one of the main reasons I home schooled him). He was able to get a job while still finishing up high school, and then began working full time and working towards a two year technical degree, WHICH HE PAID FOR HIMSELF. Today, at 25, he makes $50,000/year, drives a new car, lives in a 6 bedroom home, and has over $20,000 in an IRA. Home schooling works……especially for those with DISABILITIES.

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Sorry, in the posting above, my first sentence should have said,”I am not an educator.” I have no clue why IPad changed it?

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I guess that kids who go to private schools aren’t in the arena of concern; it’s the kids in poor inner-city, and small, rural schools. Also, there’s another demographic – race. The achievement gap is more pronounced in public schools.

I’m not against testing and measuring; I think there should be objective measurement of academic performance on an annual basis. I do believe teachers should be held accountable for student progress, but in a fair way. Where I have a problem is trying to fit together a k-8 public system where promotion is not merit-based to a high school system where advancement is merit-based. You can’t take 10th grade math until you’ve passed 9th grade math. It’s a mess.

If the state leadership wants all kids to take Math 1 – 4, then it needs to find a way to fix this social promotion madness in k-8. Enforce certain requirements instead of issuing “guidelines”. If you don’t fix this mess, then offer a less-rigourous, but meaningful alternate pathway that ensures that students learn the essentials of all the subjects in an applied sense. Bring back VICA – bring real-world relavence to the classroom, without insisting that every student has to be able to pass pre-calculus. Too many can’t and/or won’t.

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“Of course, excellent education costs money, a lot of money. ”

You are right, an EXCELLENT education shoud be available for $14,000 – $22,000 per year. An ADEQUATE education (which is what the Georgia Constitution requires) should only cost around $4000 per year. But you cannot do that if you spend all your money on ADMINISTRATORS, and not only that, ADMISTRATORS that don’t do their primary jobs (handle discipline, address attendance, etc.), Plus then you have the federally mandated (but not paid for) SPED students whose parents sue the school if they are not “included” in regular classrooms with their own private nurse/tutors.

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As an elementary school teacher, I completely agree with this essay. My Title I school has to put extra time into remediating each day (per county guidelines). The result is that we lose time that would have been dedicated to social studies and science. We have one 40ish minute a day period to teach both (not each). We do have science lab as one of our daily enrichment periods, but it just isn’t enough time. Fifth grade social studies covers history, economics, geography, and civics. Our kids have to know specific people, places, and events starting with the Missouri Compromise (1820), through the present day. In addition, they need to know the Bill of Rights (amendments 1-10), 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 23, 24, and 26 amendments and how to find similarities and differences between them. Several of the geographic locations they are expected to know are random and have no link to the history portion of the curriculum. They need to to know economic concepts such as functions of banks, consumers, businesses, opportunity cost, technology’s impact on the economy, and the list goes on:

https://www.georgiastandards.org/standards/Georgia%20Performance%20Standards/Gr5%20Social%20Studies%20Stds%202009-2010%205-27-09.pdf

The information they are expected to know is tested on details, not broad understandings. There is no way to allow for project based or interest based learning because everybody has to have the same base of knowledge. Many children would develop an interest in the material if they were allowed to delve into the aspects of a unit of study that interested them. Example: study the Civil War, but allow students to spend time on projects that interest them, such as medicine of the era, or women’s roles, or technology of the time, or food, or slavery, or abolition. Get them hooked and they might want to learn more and be more receptive to the content when they are in high school. Now they have to learn more than many of us did in high school, and they’re 10 and 11 years old! They are bored to tears and overwhelmed by what they must memorize.

Elementary school should be for building skills and a desire to learn. Now, it’s just an exercise in force feeding facts. In the time that my school allocates to a subject like social studies, there is just no way to make it meaningful and cover all the “facts” that students must be prepared to regurgitate.

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Amy Carter went to public school in D.C. while her father was president.

And for what it’s worth, Chelsea Clinton went to public school in Little Rock while her father was governor.

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Jimmy sent Amy to DC public to make a statement that his kid wasn’t too good for hanging with the poor and underprivleged. with the secret service around that was the safest public school in the nation.

Slick Willy has never been known to have anybodies best interests (outside of his own) at heart.

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if I were president, I sure as hell wouldn’t send my kids to DC public schools

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To answer the question, Obama’s girls are in a private school because A) the Obama’s CARE about the quality of their children’s education, and B) can AFFORD the best.

The bottom line is that those who can afford the best education for their children (presidents, senators, congressmen, i.e., those making the rules) don’t give a rat’s ass about the state of public education. As a matter of fact, the advantages of private school are even MORE valuable when public education is in disarray.

As several others have pointed out, ADA and SPED policy have hijacked spending in public schools, at the expense of the average student.

At the risk of sounding cynical, I’m with Fled. Like it or not, you mostly get what you pay for in this country. Capitalism works (mostly), but it doesn’t really care about justice, fairness and equity.

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a moment to introduce logic into this mess:

disclaimer: I didn’t vote for Obama, I never would vote for Obama, I never will vote for Obama. I would vote for Louis Farriakan before voting for Obama.

for anyone ragging on Obama for sending his kids to a private school…..enough already.
POTUS (let me know if I need to explain this) is both a symbol and a target. so are his kids. the nation requires they be as safe as possible, and most public schools are anything but…..especially in DC.

and the kids in DC public schools deserve the lack of insanity which comes with Obama’s kids attending.

if something ever happened to those kids it would paralyze the nation.

if you want to make a point about the inequities of education, fine. if you’re just looking to make stupid political points, take it over to Hannity

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@blabney Feignsworth:

Republicans hold 30 of 50 governorships nationwide. And the party has a lock on more state legislatures than do the Democrats.

Plus, if your mother made something of herself in life then the basement you’re posting from is probably situated in a Republican-run county.

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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.

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“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.

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The new news is that Obamacare when put into play will cost $20k per year per family.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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!!!

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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

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@ 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.

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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.

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@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.

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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.

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@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.

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Correction- It is easier to ignore this fact than address the disparity that exist “between” affluent school and Title 1 schools.

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“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.”
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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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@ 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

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@ 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

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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.

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@bootney farnsworth

February 3rd, 2013
10:45 am

Why do you need the disclaimer to qualify a logical statement? Dude, you’re posting under an assumed moniker. We don’t know who you really are, and we certainly do not care with or without a disclaimer.

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On Obama’s choice of Sidwell, I think the “conservative complaint” is that the President simultaneously cut the D.C. voucher program that enabled poor, but smart-and-work-willing AfAm kids to escape D.C.’s dreck schools. Security for Sasha and Mahlia was not a concern, as Secret Service would have totally securitized whatever D.C. public schools the Obama girls attended, which would have made the schools safer for these public schools.

The Obamas weren’t interested in helping other black people’s children. But BO wanted public-employees’ election campaign contributions. You can knock Korean-American Michelle Rhee’s superintendency, but she had productive ideas. Poor girl, she didn’t know what the game was. She thought there were honest help-young-Americans-advance goals setting the agenda in public education.

Alfie Kohn has presented great ideas, not his own, but collecting others’ other ideas and re-posting them. Unfortunately, the crux of these, empirically practiced by Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner, are not easily implemented in high-student/teacher-ratio public schools. Alfie also suffers from earning his degrees from Robber-Baron-extraordinaire JD Rockefeller-endowed/guided schools (Brown, Chicago).

Most public school teachers have never been told that their (region-of-state-named, city-named) state universities were originally “normal schools” for 13-14 year old girls, who were sent out to teach 5-13 year olds, and then these “normal schools” became “teachers’ colleges”, a title adopted from Rockefeller’s Columbia-University-affiliated “Teachers College”. Most teachers are ignorant of the fact that their state universities’ Colleges of Education/ Schools of Education, that trained them, had, in the early 20th century, deans and faculty who were graduates of Columbia-affiliated Teachers College.

A good piece to read, for people who do their own thinking, is

http://homeedmag.com/HEM/192/magatto.php

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I have seen what my homeschooled neices are doing…and after having taught comparable ages in public school…..I am amazed by what they do daily and by how much more they do. I have taught is some wonderful schools and crappy schools….but…hen I read a 20 page allegory written by a seventh grader…..unbelievable.

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Mary E ….”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,
______________________________________________________________
Of course . Unfortunately testing has ‘taken over’ much of the school’s curriculum and is now used , by state education officials to assess the depth of EDUCATION in a school and to what extent the WHOLE CHILD is being considered

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The “Golden Era” of public schools occurred post WW2 until maybe the 70s. Why? Because during that time, public schools were much like privates! They demanded that students do their work or get zeros and fail; students were expected to be well-behaved or were EXPELLED, and students were expected to participate in school activities, whether it be sports, debate, drama, etc. Schools offered multitudes of arts, vocational classes and required at least 3 years of physical education. Parents willingly supported teachers school policies, participated in PTAs, and cared deeply about their kid’s scholastic lives because of a core American belief that each generation can live better with a better education. And you know what? We baby boomers reaped the benefits. Well, fast forward to now, and guess what? The Sidwell Friends of the world continue this! Granted, the elite private schools have always been the exclusive enclave of the upper class, and have a large “hidden curriculum” that deals with class, social mores and pathways to power, but the academic side still does it right! The only exception to this is that public schools still need to offer much more vocational ed.

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@Paulo977, 9:02 pm

Paulo, I agree with you. Although testing can assess the correct placement for instruction, testing cannot assess the “depth of education” that is occurring on all levels of a student’s development, nor can testing assess “to what extent the whole child is being considered.”

Teaching is both an art and a science. Those at the top levels of educational decision-making must design educational models that will better allow the “art” of teaching to bloom within the classroom and within each child. That model, then, must include an appropriate amount of autonomy for teachers to exercise their professional judgment with the students under their care. The emphasis should be on teacher training, and not on teacher demoralization.

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Enter your comments here
Sadly, I do not think schools will get any better in this generation. Work ethics, respect for others, personnel responsibility and other human traits which are historically associated with success is lacking with many of our current students and for that matter, parents. Our values have changed greatly. Reality T.V. Programs such as one called ( babies Mimas) which was canceled, was about a man who had 11 children by 10 different women. This is the new us. This is what our society has become. When all Americans decide an or realize that the future of our great nation is at stake maybe things will change. Or, maybe they want…..

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[...] If testing and measuring makes for better schools, why are the Obama girls in a school that doesn’… [...]

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The premise stated is spurious to begin with. Testing and measuring is not needed in the same type and quantity to “make for better schools” when a school is already excellent. A school wouldn’t be excellent if its leadership didn’t already examine all aspects of the school comprehensively, take stock regularly, then develop an action plan to achieve the goals of the governing body and the staff. In a private school, the parents provide a powerful quality control mechanism in the form of voting with their pocketbooks. In public school districts where there is no intra- or inter-district, or any other school choice, there is no similar quality control mechanism unless the families residing in the district can afford private school tuition.

The Obamas are exercising the purest form of school choice, and they are able to afford to do so. Families of means have always had school choice. They shouldn’t be excoriated for simple good luck and/or hard work. They are, however, to be envied by those truly in need and unable to imitate them in choosing the best schools for their children. If I lived in Washington, DC, with school-age children and could afford a school like Sidwell Friends, I’d send them with NO APOLOGY rather than warehouse them in failing district schools.

ZIP code school assignment to public schools enslaves families who cannot afford private school tuition. It perpetuates the monopoly of local boards of education. Thank God that families in this state have finally achieved the ability to make some choices in public education.

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I have looked through the Georgia Code and I do not find any Georgia Law that says that students can only be retained once. I am beginning to believe that I have fallen victim to a pile of BS.

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This guy doesn’t even obey the constitution or care about international law. Why would anyone actually think he cares about the rest of america or the education of its children? Not that Bush was any better.

The real question is just how much longer are you going to subject your children to the government prison system they call schools? Today on WSB they are doing a report on whether the claims of bullet-proof backpacks stand up to real-world testing. SERIOUSLY??? The schools have become so dangerous now that kids need to wear bulletproof backpacks? If you are married or have a partner living under the same roof, why are you not sitting down and seriously taking stock of your finances to try and figure out a way for one of you to stay home and homeschool your children?? Maybe you can’t afford a private school, but can you really afford to continue to do this to your kids?

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@ John Konop, 7:43 am

I agree with you that, for given students, more development of, and value given to, vocational education would help solve many problems within public education. Developing a more vibrant and vital vocational education program, earlier, is part of the attention to individual variances among students that I have long supported.

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Monica, you missed the point. I brought the piece to Maureen’s attention because I thought it did a wonderfully heartfelt job of decrying that Mr. Obama could send his kids to what a school should be while forcing the “schools for everyone else” to be crushingly depressing hell-holes of test prep for reading and math factoids with no joy of the arts or, for that matter, even recess.

Seems to me we as citizens owe our society good public schools. The very survival of our culture depends on it. I enjoyed the MadMax flicks but I have no desire to live there. Not everyone can afford to run away from their responsibility through “choice.” I have every respect for those who can choose their kids’ schooling (including buying a house near (for example) Parkview or Brookwood). That does not absolve us of our civic responsibility to work toward better schools for everyone.

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“If testing and measuring makes for better schools, why are the Obama girls in a school that doesn’t agree?”

“If diet sodas have no calories, why do I always see fat people drinking them?”

Dr. Monica hit the nail on the head: good schools don’t need testing.

LOUSY schools need testing to quantify the extent of their lousiness and provide measurable goals for improvement. Dumping testing in these schools returns us to the time when said schools were able to practice, as George W. Bush so aptly described it, ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations.’

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@HS Math Teacher,
Sadly, I still remember taking the “regents exam” as a college freshman hear in Georgia. Translation “Yes, we know you passed freshman english composition, but we’re still not sure if you know how to write. Take this test so that we can be sure.”

On a more current note, of course even today students who graduate with a bachelor’s degree in some sort of education from an accredited state university STILL have to take some GACE exams to get their teaching certificates. This may be necessary, but it speaks voiumes about how confident our government is in the competence and/or integrity of said state universities.

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Progressive Humanist,
I agree with you, completely. You don’t have to attend a top flight school to teach. You do have to attend a top-flight school and earn an A or A- GPA to teach college-preparatory courses, and write effective rec letters. If you attended a university that didn’t require rec letters, you should wonder why. But, even absent this, if your university’s teachers program didn’t effectively require a 3.5+ hs GPA, at least one passing AP-test score (3+), and a 1240+ SAT/ 27+ ACT, it basically said, “You aren’t smart or hard-working, you are perfect for evaluating OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, IN ACADEMIC SUBJECTS.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. How about teaching vocational courses?

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Jerry Eads post’d, “Mr. Obama could send his kids to what a school should be while forcing the ’schools for everyone else’ to be crushingly depressing hell-holes of test prep for reading and math factoids with no joy of the arts or, for that matter, even recess.”

Jerry, President Obama is not “forcing” anything on the “schools for everyone else.” The federal contribution to the public education budget in this country is less than 10% of total dollars. Other than IDEA, homeless education, and English Language Learner spending, there is NO federal requirement placed on the states with regard to public education, unless the state elects to receive Title I funds for low-income students. That is where No Child Left Behind began to impose accountability testing–if you take the money, then you must demonstrate what results from your expenditure thereof.

Race to the Top funding is in the form of competitive grants designed to spur innovation. No state is required to apply for RTTT funds.

It is simply disingenuous to pin the failure of those short-sighted local district and building administrators who ARE the ones forcing their schools into hellhole-dom on the feds. Not every principal behaves like a shortsighted idiot. Not every public school is a test-prep hellhole. Those that are have fools for leaders, and that’s a local issue, not a state or federal one.

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@ Progressive Humanist. Don’t insult English majors by assuming that Home Tutoring Parent was telling the truth by claiming to be one.

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