<p>"
The article notes that in one school, the results of a fourth-grade writing test found that in the co-ed classes, 57 percent of girls and 37 percent of boys passed. But in the single-sex classes of the same school, 75 percent of the girls and 86 percent of the boys passed."</p>
<p>I seem to remember NYC tried to start a single sex public school and weren't allowed to because it was sex discrimination. :-(</p>
<p>Last time I heard NY suceeded.</p>
<p>How much oversight do the "independent" Charter schools have from the state?</p>
<p>Also, how do people feel about single sex classrooms? Doesn't that first require people to admit that boys and girls, that men and women are different?</p>
<p>ok yea.. single sex classrooms may improve performance in single sex situations but what about in the real world.... think about all the lost time in the development of social skills and all the lack of experience interacting with the other sex, what happens when these people are sent into the real world... I personally know many kids that go to all boys schools and many of them are very very socially awkward and the ones that arent awkward are mostly the athletes who have a lot of interaction with females from the "sister" school or whatever</p>
<p>Drab:</p>
<p>I went to a single sex lyc</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Beginning in middle school, members of the other sect are an enormous distraction.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Marite--I had an image in my brain of adherents to kooky religions!</p>
<p>religious training=sect education?</p>
<p>Oh dear! It was late in the night, and I had religion on the brain! I need an editor. Can we talk of individuals of the "male persuasion" and the "female persuasion," you know, as in the movie 'The Friendly Persuasion?"</p>
<p>DRab, regarding oversight:
Our charter is reviewed annually, & it's up to the State to renew us or not. If we can't show academic health, we are in danger of losing our funding for the following year, meaning we would fold, of course, & we would not be an approved public school. (Our results are measured by the State against the declarations in our charter.) Traditional site schools don't need to show academic health in order to continue being funded. As long as they can show a critical mass of a.d.a. (warm seats), & there is no structural impediment to the physical plant, they remain open. People (taxpayers) tend to get upset when underperforming schools remain open year after year without improvement (or with decline, when that's possible).</p>
<p>That's the minimum <em>State</em> oversight. Beyond that, each charter school can decide how rigorous they want to be within their own boundaires; that provides the internal oversight, but the 2 are linked. (Because the charter specifies how much internal oversight there will be; also, if the mechanics or range of that oversight are not sufficient for the State, that can be a reason for closure.) We have found that underperforming charter schools tend to self-destruct sooner rather than later. In our case, in addition to an alert Board of Directors (many of whom initiated the school) , we have in addition to our academic staff, a Business Head who functions somewhat as a CEO would. She's the "big picture" person & also relieves the principal of much of the administration, so that the academics can be the focus. Further, our administrative staff (unlike traditional publics in our State) is bare-bones. We do not consider ourselves social workers, and so do not supply the amazing range of social services that exist within the traditional system as a whole, as it has evolved in our State, anyway.</p>
<p>I perhaps have not stressed enough the population aspect. One has to look at this honestly. The charter works only as well as the people within it, which is a function of both motivation and ability. Students in our school can be compromised by the same factors that reduce achievement in traditional schools, the starting point being the educational level of the parents. Parents with the equivalent of a 3rd-grade education -- whether from another country or whether from the U.S. -- will generally not see their children excel as much as better-educated parents will. And in fact, of the families who have left our school this year, virtually all of them left because the parents were not capable of keeping up with the oversight we asked of them, although they wanted to. Yes, we've all heard of "famous people" in the recent & distant past, who have made it on their own despite illiterate parents, etc. These are the extreme exceptions to the rule. The reality is that most students are severely limited by under-educated, under-literate parents. People do not understand how much peripheral but <em>critical</em> education occurs in the home. The people who understand this the least are often us, the most educated, who take educated parents for granted.</p>
<p>Therefore, the educational achievement in underperforming States will not be appreciably improved without at least some attention to adult education & literacy. This should be a banner headline every morning in your local newspaper.</p>
<p>Mathmom,</p>
<p>Sure, instituting change is going to be very tough, but a lot can still be done by the UC schools like working to improve under-performing high schools that serve mostly URMs, using successful black alumni to recruit smart black students, creating a close-knit mentorship program at the various UCs, improving financial aid, establishing strong black alumni networking organizations, and partnering with historically black colleges (which the University of Nebraska is doing with UVA & Virginia Commonwealth University to increase the number of black health professionals) all of which are not tied to affirmative action.</p>
<p>I think improving under-performing schools would be great, but it's hard for me to feel that's a university's job. Though perhaps it would be good for a university's education department to get involved in. </p>
<p>I've seen that it can be done with some caveats. The town of Mt. Vernon in New York (where the schools are majority African American and at least one is 100% low income and 98% African American) was able to improve its 4th grade test score from something like 20 or 30 percent performing at grade level to more like 90%. The trouble is those incredible gains which they gotten at the elementary school level don't seem to be translating to gains at the middle school or high school level - at least not yet.</p>
<p>epiphany:</p>
<p>I think you've put your finger on what makes schools successful, whether they be charter or public: a high degree of parental involvement and the willingness of the school administrators to be involved. Unfortunately, as a recipe for improving the performance of some groups of students, it has some deficiencies.</p>
<p>Let me give the example of my kids' school. They attended school after our district adopted controlled choice. This meant that students could be bused to the school of their choice within the context of racial and gender balance (that was before racial quotas were struck down). Their school was a heavily chosen one and the parents either allowed their children to be bused or brought them to school themselves. They were heavily involed in the school council, in the classrooms, served as reading volunteers, raised funds, donated books to the library, helped their students prepare for performances, helped with class projects, served on hiring committees, etc... Although individual parents and teachers did not always see eye to eye, parental involvement was very welcome. The school was one of the best performing schools in the district.<br>
The school shared a building with another school. The building was located in a low-income area with lots of non-English speaking immigrants. The other school was largely a neighborhood school, chosen mostly because the kids could walk there. But despite the vicinity, few famlies ever attended school meetings (one meeting about whether the school should move or merge had two parents attending; our school had an overflow in the auditorium). The parents tended to rely on teachers to know best either because they were not highly educated or because they were unfamiliar with the American school system, or because their English was poor, or, very often, because they worked two jobs and had to take turn minding the children. I am also assuming that the children from the two schools had very different educational support at home. Whatever the case, there was a lack of parental involvement and the school performed much worse than ours.
The charter school which is currently failing is overwhelmingly minority. The parents who started it were concerned that the public school system was not serving their children well. But once their flurry of activity resulted in the charter school, their involvement dwindled noticeably. </p>
<p>In the case of your charter school, parental involvement has been key to its success, just as in the case of our public school. So parental involvement in their children's education both at home and within the school is key, rather than the status of the school per se. We do have a great deal of school autonomy in our district. Perhaps yours is not as flexible.</p>
<p>Two things I always hear about better performing schools and kids are: Parental Involvement and Educational support at home - a bottoms up continuous process.</p>
<p>There is no magic. </p>
<p>No amount of 'tweaking' by the System - mentoring, University/Private Enterprise out-reach programs or better $ offers will improve the inner city school system where most URMs reside. Once in a while step processes.</p>
<p>In terms of total numbers, there are far more poor whites in this nation than poor blacks.</p>
<p>Two things I always hear about better performing schools and kids are: Parental Involvement and Educational support at home - a bottoms up continuous process.
which is why I would like to see more emphasis on birth control- parental responsiblity-what is actually entailed in being a parent.
No I do not think that having children is a right- but having parents who can make sure you are educated- fed and clothed is.</p>
<p>kono,
I doubt that the majority of which you speak is composed of Anglo Caucasians. I would think that "poor whites" includes Latinos, since the latter are Caucasian. Poor whites of European ancestry are most definitely not populating our own State's public school system in any significant numbers. Our public schools are currently bifurcated along 2 lines: the high-rents and the low-rents; there is less & less of a middle, as these are taking on charter roles, private schools, non-charter homeschool (homeschooling has either option), & leaving the State.</p>
<p>The low-rents are mostly populated by immigrants (Anglos, poorer Asians, MiddleEasterners together are the majority population) and by African Americans.</p>
<p>And mathmom, the early gains in our own State are not translating to higher levels because of the greater degree of parental literacy, again, required at those levels to ensure greater advancement.</p>
<p>ummm... Reading my post again, I did not mean that the combination of parental involvement and school flexibility is deficient, just that it has limited applicability. In some cases, the problem may be administrative obstacles and lack of welcome of parental involvement; in other cases, it may be the difficulty of eliciting parental involvement.</p>
<p>I think parental involvement is the number one determining factor for how well a student will do in school. It's more important than the school system, than the socio-economic status, and the race. It's proven itself time and time again.</p>
<p>In programs aimed at targeting minority students in our area- Hispanics are included
Example
The Gates Millenium Scholarship is for African American, American Indian/Alaska Natives, Asian Pacific Islander Americans, and Hispanic American undergraduate students in all disciplines and graduate students studying mathematics, science, engineering, education, or library science. Applications are no longer being accepted.</p>
<p>Does anybody ever claim that a lack of racial diversity makes it tough to get a good education at Howard or Morehouse?</p>