<p>-Allmusic-, I don’t think that most of us are saying that “it’s a parenting problem.” Most of us are saying that these are institutional problems, but that the level of parental education + level of parental involvement & awareness can play a factor, depending on what those levels are. Even then, that is not necessarily a “blame” situation.</p>
<p>Also, being a good parent (providing the maximum positive influence one can, given one’s own available resources) is one thing. Having an excellent formal education is something else.</p>
<p>I’ve agreed with you in the past, & will agree in the present, that gifted children (not high-achieving children necessarily, but gifted children) are Special Needs children, and they are being neglected & have been for about 30 years. I don’t want to derail the thread by talking about the state of Special Ed, but I will say in general that much of what you see (and I see) in what you call the “search for professionals” is legimate & essential, but only because the educational establishment has agreed to take on the additional non-educational roles that blossom & I have enumerated. Thus, the administrations & teachers are overwhelmed & not providing appropriate Special Ed testing where it is called for. It has caused parents of identifiable special ed students to double and triple their efforts for public services, while parents of gifted students are not exerting similar efforts – because the latter know, as you do, that the political atmosphere does not favor them but rather encourages by default the neglect of gifted students.</p>
<p>Some parent will take care of children with a high level of special needs thus saving the district significant amounts of money. And in this vein, an educated parent can be a benefit towards the education of their child while not presenting a burden to other children.</p>
<p>Epiphany and AllMusic-I agree philosophically with both of you. At a practical level though, I am less bothered by the huge shift in funding to a tiny population of kids whose parents game the system which screws the Gifted, than I am the evisceration of day to day instruction for the average kid.</p>
<p>And agree with Epiphay that Wussiness needs its own special prize. The WSJ published an excellent article a few years ago describing the role the teacher’s unions have played in the destruction of teaching as a profession to further their own political and economic interests. I wish I could find it, but one of the findings that has stuck with me is that at the margins, no research has proven that class size is a key determinant of school quality (I’m not talking about the difference between 15 kids and 45 kids… but the marginal differences). Despite this, the unions continue to lobby vigorously for reduction in class size. Why? smaller classes, more teachers, more union dues. </p>
<p>Epiphany for president! (I’ll take over ATF, thank you very much).</p>
<p>I read somewhere a while back that the old military base schools were incredibly successful in educating a very wide range of SES kids. One interesting aspect of these schools was that the parent’s superior officers would always receive a copy of the kids’ report cards. So parents’ employers essentially knew how their kids were doing in school. When you think about it – that’s a huge incentive to get your kid paying attention, not getting F’s in behavior, etc.</p>
<p>I often wonder why we don’t institute some sort of tax incentive to make parents care more about their kids’ behavior in school. The troublemaker kids eat up most of the school resources in terms of teacher time, disciplinary programs, remedial efforts. So essentially these kids eat up most of our tax dollars that we contribute to fund the schools. Why not somehow allow schools to report on the kids squandering our tax dollars . . . and impose some sort of surcharge on their parents in the form of extra property taxes, welfare payments, or whatever. Or perhaps reward parents with kids not abusing the system with tax credits?</p>
<p>I know, I know. I’m probably insane. But we all know that bad parenting is the real source of pain in our education mess. I think these parents will never clean up their act until they feel some impact financially.</p>
<p>And to Bay – I respect your defense of your own public education experience. There are districts in my own community where the public system is outstanding and where I would very gladly send my kids. But for those who are in deteriorating school districts, it is a very different matter.</p>
<p>Post 63: I agree with paragraph one, even though I am an advocate for the gifted and have a special training in teaching the gifted. I am more concerned, overall, with the enormous local & national effect of the condition of public education for the large, non-segmented group.</p>
<p>As to paragraph three, I know you’re joking, but I have thought about running for Superintendent of Education in my state. That fantasy lasted about 15 seconds, when the light bulb flashed that, given my views, I would not be electable, and it is an elected position.</p>
<p>However, a colleague has just quit his job teaching math at the high school level because he is overwhelmed at the poor pre-high school mathematics education he has seen in his students. He is going for a higher degree & wants to return to the state “to be a policy wonk.” I’d like to join him; it’s a possibility. Whether it will happen, I don’t know.</p>
<p>mammall, when parents receive report cards directly (they do in my district) they don’t necessarily know the source/reason for the problem (if there is one), nor how to correct it. They may assume it’s just this year’s teacher, just their child’s motivation, etc. They may be great & concerned parents but unschooled in how to navigate the system or where to go to correct disparities. </p>
<p>Overall, though, I agree that students with chronic & unmanagable behavior problems do not belong mainstreamed in schools which lack disciplinary teeth. Again, this is symptomatic of “Heck, we’ll be parents & police officers & social service agencies, too.” There are actually parents who have or have had such children who cheerfully put them in charter schools which are long on discipline, short on tolerance (permission). Often such students are turned around in those charter schools (one of which, in my location, is a military style school). When they’re not completely turned around, they are at least in those locations not allowed to dictate the atmosphere & derail the learning in the classroom: they are, in a word, contained.</p>
<p>Epiphany, go for it and I am not joking. I am convinced that meaningful health care reform in this country won’t be possible until the Dr’s get out of the way, and I’m equally convinced that the current Ed administration may not be the problem but they’re certainly not the solution. (and if you doubt the state of the health care crises, read yesterday’s NYT’s analysis of how Dr’s prescribe cancer medications of dubious value, which cost up to 100K per year (most of which is paid for by insurer’s or the government) since “We don’t know if these drugs are efficacious but it would be a shame not to try since they’re available”. These are scientists? These people have actually taken a class on statistics or data interpretation and they prescribe drugs based on pressure from patient’s families to “do everything possible” even when they know the patient is terminal???</p>
<p>So Epiphany, to quote Hillel, the famous educator and sage, “if not now, when?”</p>
<p>Superintendent is a tough, tough job and a very high paying one to compensate. You have to work a regular day job and be available for school committee meetings or other meetings at night. You are the face of the school district and you lose some amount of personal privacy. You get complaints from parents and the school committee and you have to keep up with educational law. One thing that I see in New England is attempts to poach superintendents from other districts when one leaves.</p>
<p>BCEagle, I was actually talking about the state position, not the local district superintendents. There is also probably a residency requirement for the local positions (I never looked into that), and I would never work for my local district, ever.</p>
<p>blossom,
“If not now, when?” is what impelled me to begin my career in my 20’s and what nudged me to return to it later after a hiatus.<br>
I’ll think about your suggestion, but I think I’d need a significant support group to endeavor doing battle with probably the most powerful teachers’ union in the country.</p>
<p>I am not in favor of mainstreaming explosive or behaviorally challenged children who are a danger to themselves or others (including the teacher), or who are simply so disruptive that the class balance is ruined.</p>
<p>However, many of these children are taken out of regular schools and placed in 766 schools at immensely expensive district cost.</p>
<p>I don’t particularly like either option. </p>
<p>Go for it, Epiphany! Nothing like a new career at this point in your life! BCEagle, I know about the recycled superintendents too, and the principals, many of whom have retired, are on a pension, and then are “rehired” to fill in for a few years, while receiving a full salary…plus the pension!).</p>
<p>There are many books, reports, and articles on the role of teachers’ unions. I think that the WSJ might be an opinion piece by Mr. Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, and a professor of political science at Stanford. </p>
<p>A key critic of the relation between cost and smaller classes is Eric Hanushek, also a Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He has argued that the scientific support for reduced class sizes is weak to nonexistent. His website offers an extensive library of research and studies supporting his findings. See [Home[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Anyone making a case about the nefarious role of the unions in education in the past 50 years should have few problems locating volumes of supporting scholarly research.</p>
<p>Why can we not come up with economic metrics for education and family allotments of education? Simply divide a districts teaching budget by enrolled students or something equally crude. Then measure and track the costs kids are imposing on the system. If the family exceeds their allotment, they should have to pay into the system to cover what they are costing other kids, other families. I think we are moving toward something likes this with the consumer driven health care accounts. I admit I hated the concept at first but after two years, I am completely sold on it. I think we need this sort of model in education. Of course, this means a complete and total over haul of the status quo - out with the ridiculous teacher’s union for starters.</p>
<p>I think families need to be viewed and view themselves as education consumers who do not have a blank check to abuse the system.</p>
<p>I think business should pay for the total cost of worker training. If they think they need a high school graduate, they should pay for it. College graduate, the same. Pretty soon it will be discovered that 80% of the jobs in America don’t really require either.</p>
<p>Ah Mini, how wrong you are. My company would happily pay for HS and college level training ( we do anyway under the guise of “professional development”). It’s finding people who have passed Mrs. Riley’s 4th grade English composition class or can multiply that stymies us…</p>
<p>We readily concede that we recruit at Yale just so we get entry level workers who can write. We’re not looking for Faulkner or Tolstoy by the way… just grammatical, edited, concise writing. A Yale senior who has completed a senior essay may be lacking in many of the things we will end up teaching him/her… but at least they won’t need someone reviewing their emails for typos.</p>
<p>Well, let them pay, then. There is nothing that prevents them from setting up their own charter schools, their own fourth grade composition class, or their own multiplication training program. </p>
<p>As for typos, that’s what they used to pay secretaries for. So if your company was really concerned, they could hire some. (I suspect they don’t care).</p>
<p>(My job is basically to write English sentences. There are 98 employees, all highly trained in what they do. But they only need one of me.)</p>
<p>I think that the state of public education often has less to do with the quality of the schools/faculty that the attitudes which families and students bring to the endeavor of education.</p>
<p>In most underperforming schools taking school seriously is a trait derided by peers. </p>
<p>And while athletics and academic achievement are not mutually exclusive, even in our suburban hs district athletics trumps music/arts ec’s in terms of funding and public exposure. This sends a clear message to students about the priority most adults have toward these things. And extend that attitude to university where the football stadium or hockey rink are the venues that most alumni flock to when returning to campus. </p>
<p>So while I love my OSU football and Dukies love their b’ball, it would probably not be a bad thing if hs/university sport were relegated to club status so as to put academics/athletics in their proper perspective.</p>
<p>In post 76 I would substitute “sometimes” for “often.” Peer attitudes, derived from parents & the culture at large, contributes a portion, but is not as significant as the other factors I mentioned in my earlier posts. I say this from my vantage point of overseeing education on many levels, many venues. In fact I would tend to put more weight on post 76 without the “parents” part. That is, you would not believe the number of parents I meet in (agreed, suburban) districts who come to us out of desperation because they feel helpless to counteract some of the dominating influences of culture – such as the “instant” illusion of the internet & the immense flow of information, as if information per se defines education. (It doesn’t, of course.) It’s a cyber world out there, in more ways than one – as if the internet has become a separate authority figure, with power to direct & legitimacy of its own. However, teachers are surrendering to the culture in their style & classroom requirements, catering to the implicit demand for stimulation, and assuming that students will have little patience for performance that demonstrates deeper & more complex understanding. Textbook publishers and district administrators are doing the same. </p>
<p>While there remain underperforming whole schools in urban areas especially, the newer phenomenon is the underperformance of students in better suburban areas with employed, educated parents & intact households.</p>
<p>It’s all part of the same syndrome which I have mentioned repeatedly over the last few years on CC: a failure of the educational establishment to lead.</p>
<p>My hope is for the newer generation of teachers to seize the culture creatively and make it a force for good in their teaching, instead of letting the culture define (and limit) education.</p>
<p>epiphany, you make a good point about the perception that acquisition of information be it from the internet is the same thing as education. You would love Cliff Stoll who makes this point persuasively though in an odd ball kind of way.</p>
<p>He relates the conversation he had with a father of a 5th grader who was bursting with pride about the research paper his daughter did about some sort of tropical animal by googling info over the internet. Cliff gingerly told the father that she would have been far better off observing the family cat, searching for bugs in her backyard or putting up a birdfeeder and trying to identify which birds came to it.</p>
<p>I actually thought our school did a good job of incorporating experiential learning with challenging classroom work and i stress the word challenging. I think the parents of most highly touted hs districts would have been up in arms over our son’s APCalc class where only two students recieved an A(our son was not one of them) and nore than that recieved C’s. If the discussions here are any indication, teachers seem to be under a lot of parental pressure to water down classed so that high gpa’s can be maintained for college admissions purposes. Our son has his hs scrapbooks now but I recall that his unweighted gpa in academic courses was in between 3.3 and 3.4 but put him in the top 5% of the graduating class. Again, many parents of students in highly touted districts would be horrified if their student had such a challenging curriculum. By comparison our son just graduated from RPI with a 3.75 gpa, about 0.4 higher than his hs gpa!!!</p>
<p>This is very true … but isn’t one of the tenet of PUBLIC education in our country that it should serve as the greatest equalizer. The government and the people it entrusted centuries ago seized our education from the private sector because the promised they could better than parents, families, and small organizations.</p>
<p>How fair is it for the public school system to blame its inability to perform to a lack of parental involvement when they started by removing it? </p>
<p>Are parents really NOT that interested in the education of their children? Is this something that does not happen in our innercities? Or could we also see that the PRESENT system is not a system that invites the participation of parents and their families in a … meaningful way. Parents WANT to be heard and WANT changes. Telling are the examples of parents in Milwaukee who desperately want to leave their designated school despite that it would cost them more money, efforts, and aggravation. Yet, the “government” has been fighting such moves with passion as they think it is better to continue to offer a failing system that swallows funding without end in sight. Do they listen to parents? </p>
<p>If parents are truly that uninterested why not let competing systems trying to find a better way to get parents involved? Fwiw, that seems to be the message of charter schools. Of course, we all know that charter schools only exist as a deterrent to the real solution of a truly competitive system that has access to equal funding for each student. </p>
<p>Public education is a broken promise: it can’t address the needs of the gifted and has abandoned the less capable and those unable to help themselves. The only solution is to give back education to the families and let them make the choice they approve. In turn, a MUCH smaller system of public schools directed and funded by the government might start addressing the probems of their abject failures. A good start would be in the large urban districts that cannot seem to graduate 50% of the class. Let public education handle what they can and deserve to handle: the only schools that THE PEOPLE allow them to have!</p>