There are NO bad schools unless we are talking about schools
that are falling apart, because they are starving for funds to repair and
update the infrastructure
Americans believe a lack of financial support
is the biggest problem currently facing public schools, according to the 44th
annual Phil Delta Kappa International/Gallup poll of public attitudes toward
public schools released Wednesday, but they also say that balancing the
federal budget is more important than improving the quality of education. -Governing.com
·
There are NO FAILING schools except when VAM is used to measure
them and VAM has been proven to be misleading and does NOT work.
As is the case in every profession that
requires complex practice and judgments, precision and perfection in the
evaluation of teachers will never be possible. Evaluators may find it useful to
take student test score information into account in their evaluations of
teachers, provided such information is embedded in a more comprehensive
approach. What is now necessary is a comprehensive system that gives teachers
the guidance and feedback, supportive leadership, and working conditions to
improve their performance, and that permits schools to remove persistently
ineffective teachers without distorting the entire instructional program by
imposing a flawed system of standardized quantification of teacher quality. -
Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers from
the Economic Policy Institute
·
There is poverty and very little is being done to deal with it
The negative effects of poverty on all levels
of school success have been widely demonstrated and accepted; the critical
question for us as a caring society is, can these effects be prevented or
reversed? A variety of data are relevant to this question, and recent research
gives us reason to be both positive and proactive. The impact of poverty on
educational outcomes for children, U.S. National Library of Medicine
Some families are dysfunctional
·
Most public school teachers work 60+ hours a week teaching,
correcting, planning, prepping and calling parents
Annual teaching hours by education level, 2010
among OECD nations. The U.S. ranked 3rd place for most hours worked by teachers
behind Argentina in 1st place and Chile for 2nd place. - Figure 4.7
The average number of teaching hours in public
primary schools is 782 hours per year in OECD countries but ranges from fewer
than 600 hours in Greece and Poland to over 1,000 hours in Chile and the United
States. … Teaching time is defined as the number of hours per year that a
full-time teacher teaches a group or class of students. … Working time refers
to the normal working hours of a full-time teacher and includes time directly
associated with teaching as well as the hours devoted to teaching-related
activities, such as preparing lessons, counselling students, correcting
assignments and tests, and meeting with parents and other staff. Data are from
the 2011 OECD-INES Survey on Teachers and the Curriculum and refer to the
2009-10. How much time do teachers spend
teaching? OECD
·
There are children who learn and children who don’t learn—for
whatever reason—that has little or nothing to do with the quality of teaching,
and the children who don’t learn are causing the low VAM scores
>Just because a teacher teaches, that
doesn’t mean a child will make the effort to learn and the parent or parents
will support the learning process so learning takes place
·
There is an overwhelming avalanche of evidence that there are
MANY crooks and liars in the corporate supported public education reform
movement using VAM scores to drive their goals toward more wealth and profit
that has nothing to do with the learning of the most at risk and difficult to
teach children, the children who cause the low VAM scores in the first place.
There's been a flood of local news stories in
recent months about FBI raids on charter schools all over the country. FBI Tracks Charter Schools
A compilation of news
articles about charter schools which have been charged with, or are highly
suspected of, tampering with admissions, grades, attendance and testing; misuse
of funds and embezzlement; engaging in nepotism and conflicts of interest;
engaging in complicated and shady real estate deals; and/or have been engaging
in other questionable, unethical, borderline-legal, or illegal activities. This
is also a record of charter school instability and other unsavory
tidbits. Charter School
Scandals
In conclusion, the case for public school success in the United
States:
The average high
school graduation rate, ages 24 – 65, for all OECD countries—including the
United States—is 75%.
The high school
graduation rate for the United States, by itself, ages 24 – 65, is 90%
The 4-year+ average
graduation rate among all OECD countries—including the United States—is 37.7%.
The 4-year+ college
graduation rate in the United States is 42%—the 4th highest in
the world, but the U.S. has about 3 college graduates for every job that
requires a college degree.
Among major English
speaking countries, the United States is ranked 2nd for
functional literacy.
1. In the United Kingdom, the child poverty rate is
17% and the adult functional literacy rate is 80%
2. In the United States, the child poverty rate
is 22%, and the adult functional literacy rate is 65%
3. In New Zealand, the child poverty rate is 22%,
and the adult functional literacy rate is 55%
4. In Australia, the child poverty rate is 10.9%,
and the adult functional literacy rate is 53.6%
5. In Canada, the child poverty rate is 14.3%,
and the adult functional literacy rate is 51.5%
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