The shame of the nation. What, public teachers’ unions don’t improve educational outcomes? You don’t say.
5 thoughts on “Blue State Schools”
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The shame of the nation. What, public teachers’ unions don’t improve educational outcomes? You don’t say.
Comments are closed.
I hate unions and the blue social model generally, but I don’t think this study says what you think it says.
All the “best” schools on these lists are magnet schools. What that tells me is that they are skimming the best students off of a large pool of children, so of course these kids (who are naturally smart, have been instilled with a study ethic, come from good homes, etc.) have good graduation rates, high SAT scores, etc. Texas and Florida have an advantage in that the school districts are larger (county based), and thus have a deeper pool of potential students to draw on.
The metrics I want to see (and which are not on offer anywhere) are which schools take in kids at any given level of promise and elevates them the most relative to their competitor schools. If you can take inner city kids and make Ivy League scholars of them (or even 10% of them), then you’ve got something.
You might want to look at this. The numbers are from the 4th- and 8th-grade tests administered nationally by the National Assessment of Educational Progress as part of No Child Left Behind mandates. I have no link to comparably race-normed SAT/ACT results for the same states, but I suspect they would show similar results. If you’re looking for schools that routinely turn ghetto-dwellers into Ivy Leaguers, though, you need to look outside public schools except for a few charters like KIPP.
Yes, the assumption is always that it’s the teachers who make or break a child’s educational success, but as the husband of a long-time teacher, I’d say the family and community are more important. Teachers today need to be part educator, part disciplinarian, part administrator and part motivational speaker. In disadvantaged communities you do your very best but you can only reach and motivate a small fraction of the students whose lives you touch. Most of the rest remain hostile to authority and quite happy to fail. They are not getting an education, they’re just doin’ time.
I second the KIPP recommendation.
Brock,
it was my understanding, when my kids were still in school, that the Magnet School idea originally came from the blue states! And I know that some of those states still have them too. So, doesn’t that level the field?
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Red magnets vs Blue Magnets?
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Bill H,
first, thanks to your wife, she does a tough job.
I don’t think any one blames singular teachers. It’s the ‘group think’ of the teaching unions, who seemingly talk about teaching and making things better, but never do. I think people are angry, at the unions who say we need to spend more money ‘for the children’, but then ask for a raise, because of the new school bond referendum putting more money into the pot. No, I don’t begrudge them a raise.
But when EVERYONE has less money, 8% or 9% of the populace is sans ANY job and the tax collection funds are down, and the bond referendum was for NEW school buildings ONLY, you don’t ask for a raise!
(my wife is a state employee, I’m on disability, we’ve not had a raise in 3 years, I get it)
I don’t know you or your wife, so I don’t know your politics or what you do to help make it better. But on the ‘better schools’ thing, as with all of life, you’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem. I know several teachers who aren’t union members, who just keep their mouths shut, don’t make waves, an then they complain, to us at picnics or at church, about the system ‘they’ have to deal with.
IMHO, they are part of the problem.