Rank of Nation's Top High Schools

Parents Forum
121

<p>
[quote]

A math class interrupted by rats.</p>

<h1>Classrooms so hot that students faint.</h1>

<h1>Students who go years without being able to take a textbook home to study.</h1>

<h1>Classes that continue for an entire year without ever being assigned a teacher.

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</h1>

<p>I am not disagreeing that CA has bad schools but schools cost money and the squeaky wheel gets fixed first.
I don't think that these instances above are that unusual, my own daughter has experienced them all unfortunately.( ok not the rats but there are rats in building whether they were brought in and escaped or if they are the indigenous population I don't know)
Schools don't have money to issue textbooks to take home when they are repeatedly "lost" and threats to withhold diplomas or records don't always work, even with the parents.
If you qualify for IDEA however, you can make them give you a textbook if it is in your IEP: I have been looking online and buying them used, replacing the photocopies that my daughter has from her LA class. ( it isnt sequential and it's hard to follow)
She had several classes that were taught by rotating subs all year( for several years) some who shouldnt have even been teaching let alone in a state with such high testing requirements for graduation.
Her 5th grade teacher was gone for entire year on "personal leave" and some days they didn't have a teacher, they had to share one with another class.
In one of her classes last year, the school ran out of money so the teacher quit and a high school student "taught' the class. actually however they did pretty well on their own! maybe when there aren't any adults they behave better!
I am surprised that the CA union allowed 65 kids per teacher, but I think what we need is a parents union, we have one for the principals and the teachers, but who speaks out for the kids?</p>

122

<p>Don't you think you are blaming the victim? There have been marches on schools. Marches on schoolboards. Mini-riots. An $8 billion dollar lawsuit (just settled for $1 billion), in 46 different school districts. </p>

<p>The squeaky wheel DOESN'T get the grease - the one that can deposit "grease" in a politician's campaign fund does.</p>

<p>You need to remember that to get to the current condition required 2-3 generations of unequal funding/practices. To get back simply to equality, would essentially require defunding of rich folks' schools for 2-3 generations.</p>

123

<p>This is a very depressing thread. Until our society respects education, teachers, and our youth in general, I see no end to this dilemma.</p>

124

<p>
[quote]
The squeaky wheel DOESN'T get the grease - the one that can deposit "grease" in a politician's campaign fund does.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>In seattle the board members are elected, many of them are "new" school and have a more progressive agenda than the old guard.
Still the group that attends the most meetings and is the most visible ( parents of the "gifted students" get their voices heard more often than parents of the "special ed" &/or ESL students who don't have such snappy suits or lingo.</p>

<p>I don't know anything about CA schools I just know about the Seattle district and I was relating my experience.
I wasn't blaming the victim, did I say it was our fault that my daughter didn't have a teacher that taught her long division despite graduating 8th grade with a 3.6?
It wasn't our fault she didn't have a teacher, I was in the school pretty much everyday, and I didn't know everything that was going on, parents who expected the school to do the expected, had no idea, the class didn't have a teacher until the end of the 1st semester.
I agree it is really depressing and frustrating, but while it is agonizing to have to take baby steps to improve your childs schools, I don'thave a better idea.</p>

125

<p>Sice school district and house prices are interrealted, this will not happen that there will be equity. In addition, do not blame the lack of funding alone for school problems. The culture in america values sports over education. Till we will not stop humilating geeks, and ask our kids to focus on education as well as sports, it will not be change. On top of it teachers are busy discipling the kids, instead of focusing on education. However, education here is still better than third world countries.</p>

126

<p>" However, education here is still better than third world countries."</p>

<p>Not my experience of our "third world schools". And, if it's worth anything, on the Third International Math and Science Study-Repeat-Benchmarking study, students from schools in districts with lowest per capita income -- Chicago, Rochester NY, Jersey City, and Miami-Dade, among others, ranked lower than students in Tunisia, Macedonia, Turkey, Jordan, and about three dozen other Third World countries. (All of southeast Asia without exception scores higher....except for Borneo.)</p>

127

<p>Mini:</p>

<p>Throwing money to solve a problem is not the solution as resources are finite "In these lowest per capita income -- Chicago, Rochester NY, Jersey City, and Miami-Dade, among others, " if you ask the kid or even parents, they do not care for education value. They rather make 5 bucks and spend on it on their whims and girld friends. They beleive in an instant gratification. There are places in third world countires where kids even do not go to school. so compare aplles to apples. Take the best school in America and compare that to third world countries best school. Take our worst performing school and compare it to their worst performing school. I am basing my opinion based on first hand kowledge.</p>

128

<p>You will be surprised to know that in my undergrad college a very well respected institution I shared my subject books with five other kids. And this problem still exist. Think this happens in unversities where four to five kids have one book to share and read. What will happen in schools. If people have to share thier books here, they will be screaming et alone going their way to get educated. We all want best eduaction but are not willing to put best effort as we are waiting for the day when all people will be equal. Read the novels by AYN RANd. We do not want all things equal. that will be end of civilzation.</p>

129

<p>Mini:</p>

<p>Arthur Hu wrote about California's schools and its students. Please read the following carefully.</p>

<p>"California's 1994 CLAS (California Learning Assessment System) test introduced massive multiculturalism and had several questions for which more than one answer was counted as correct. Yet nobody noticed that elementary-school blacks and Hispanics did just as poorly in predominantly minority areas of Oakland, East Palo Alto, and Alum Rock as in legally integrated San Francisco. At Grade 10, only 10 to 15 per cent of black students got 3 or better in math whether they went to integrated San Francisco, the segregated communities of Contra Costa County, Oakland, or Silicon Valley's Santa Clara County. Asians continue to stampede into Cupertino, home of the founders of Apple Computers, because of its excellent schools. But US News (April 21, 1997) highlighted the poor performance of blacks there, and they lagged the state average on the CLAS." </p>

<p>"Meanwhile, the Asians of the Chinatown ghettos in San Francisco scored as well as children of affluent engineers in Santa Clara County. Asians in Santa Clara County scored as well as whites in posh San Ramon Valley or Cupertino. Asians in Cupertino scored as well as whites in Palo Alto, the best district in the Bay Area. Blacks in San Ramon Valley scored no better than state average for all races, while Asians there outscored every other race and community." </p>

<p>Again, good schools are not all about money, but about the CULTURE and RESPECT FOR LEARNING of the STUDENTS THEMSELVES, their parents and their teachers. Certain students may have to change their culture in order to be successful. No amount of money will do this, no matter how rich the school is.</p>

130

<p>Mini:</p>

<p>Increasing misdirected funds without accountability to these underperforming and underachieving school districts solves and fixes NOTHING. This has already been done for decades. Remember, "you could still obtain a good education under a tree".</p>

131

<p>Chinaman said,</p>

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<p>I wholeheartedly agree with Chinamen.</p>

<p>Mini, why don't you address the following, instead of towing the POLICTICALLY CORRECT LINE. </p>

<p>Washington DC spends the most money in the nation on public education and their schools per student and ranks at the BOTTOM in student academic achievement. The same is true of Newark, NJ which has the highest spending per student with the lowest academic achievement per student in NJ. Putting more money in these sink holes or money pits solves nothing. This bleeding of funds does not solve the problem of underperformance of blacks or close the racial gaps in education. This only provides jobs for the flaming liberals who make a living on this by soothing their white guilt feelings for previous wrongs against Afro-Americans without solving the roots of the problem of the racial gaps in education. This has caused a tremendous disservice for American blacks.</p>

<p>Again, good schools are not all about money, but mostly about the CULTURE and RESPECT FOR LEARNING of the STUDENTS THEMSELVES, their parents and their teachers. Certain students may have to change their culture in order to be successful. No amount of money will do this, no matter how rich the school is.</p>

<p>In the black community, where out-of-wedlock births are as high as 90% in Harlem, and where there is self-destructive behavior with drug abuse, black on black crime, dysfunctional families or the lack of family units without the values of respect for education and studying hard, and generations of dependancy on government assistance, there needs to be a change of the CULTURE for blacks.</p>

<p>However, to ask a blacks to change their culture, is to bring charges of racism from the flaming liberals and advocates for these misdirected increasing economic interventions without accountability. This only serves to give a good living for these advocates, including the predominately white self-serving teacher's unions, while causing a disservice and harm to blacks."</p>

132

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<p>I second the motion on this one. The answer is not all about MONEY. You are foolish if you believe this.</p>

133

<p>Chinaman also said,</p>

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<p>I wholeheartedly agree again. Simple, but to the point. Mini, why don't you respond to Chinaman's SPECIFIC points? Please respond to rattle's points.</p>

<p>Mini, advocates for these misdirected increasing economic interventions without accountability, only serves to give a good living for these advocates, including the predominately white self-serving teacher's unions and the flaming guilt-ridden whites over their previous wrongs against blacks perpetrated by whites, while causing a disservice and tremendous harm to blacks.</p>

134

<p>"Mini:</p>

<p>Throwing money to solve a problem is not the solution as resources are finite "In these lowest per capita income -- Chicago, Rochester NY, Jersey City, and Miami-Dade, among others, " if you ask the kid or even parents, they do not care for education value. They rather make 5 bucks and spend on it on their whims and girld friends. They beleive in an instant gratification. There are places in third world countires where kids even do not go to school. so compare aplles to apples. Take the best school in America and compare that to third world countries best school. Take our worst performing school and compare it to their worst performing school. I am basing my opinion based on first hand kowledge."</p>

<p>Excuse me, but throwing money, and throwing it for 3 generations steadily to the same places ARE the answer. Real estate values in Tacoma, Long Beach, etc. dropped not because people didn't take care of their homes or because they didn't value them. They sent their kids to schools - good schools, and valued education. But then the U.S. military pulled out, taking the jobs with them, and the U.S. government created the largest welfare program in world history for white folks. In other words, they THREW money at them (us) - I know, not only from the data, but because my father was the beneficiary of virtually all of them. He was a high school dropout. He received 5 years of college benefits (but failed his major twice), subdizidized mortgages in an all-white suburb built by all-white construction unions, subsidized transportation in the form of highways and ring roads and suburban railroads, and preferential hiring in jobs. </p>

<p>Anyway, your hypothesis is testable. Take the money from Marin County spent on education (reduce it to the level of Long Beach) and give it to Long Beach for the next three generations. At the end of the three generations, measure the educational quality and the results. This assumes - as you do - that resources are finite. Once the results are in, we can find out whether "throwing money at a problem" works. Of, if you prefer simply a personal test of your hypothesis, why don't you send your own kids to a school with 30 chairs and 65 students in a classroom, where there is no drinking water and no heat, where the electrical systems are dangerous, and the bathrooms and wet and smell of human waste? I mean, your kids don't need money thrown at them, do they?</p>

<p>(What's the endowment of the college you want to send your kids to?)</p>

135

<p>Mini said, </p>

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<p>Really, do you have any research or data backing up your assertions and presumptions??</p>

<p>There is much data, for the reverse situation. Blacks attending schools in the most affluent suburbs from the richest black families with parents having graduate degrees underperform and underachieve when compared to the POOREST Asians and whites with parents with less than a high school diploma attending the poorest and most deficient schools in the country.</p>

<p>Please explain this. Why is this so?? Do you really think that this problem of underperformance by the most affluent blacks is solved by infusing more money? You have not identified the root causes of the racial gaps in academic achievement yet, and we all know that these causes are not eliminated by the senseless infusion of more money without accountability, enriching those who peddle the concept of black victimization to sooth the feelings of guilt-ridden whites, who are also flaming liberals.</p>

<p>Regarding Seattle and Washington State's schools, Arthur Hu, of Kirkland, Washington, said:</p>

<p>[The Seattle Times annually slams Seattle's math scores (just the 50th-percentile for Washington as a whole) compared to suburban Bellevue's 67th-percentile performance, and highlights the race gap as an urban problem. But broken down by race, whites score at about 67 in either city, but blacks score worse in Bellevue, at 34 compared to 40 for Seattle. Seattle has an "African-American Academy,'' but its test scores are virtually indistinguishable from the city average. Suburban inequality is much the same at nearby Issaquah (41) and Redmond (35), even though there are no minority ghettos in the suburbs, and there has never been any news coverage of racial differences in performance there.]</p>

<p>"Seattle is one of the few cities where Asians are so poor and white parents so highly educated that white students score better even in math. But Asians still have the highest grade-point average in the city. In the suburbs, Asian 8th-graders score 74 in 59th-percentile blue-collar Renton, hopping rungs over whites in 67th-percentile Bellevue. Asians in Bellevue score 82, equal to top-ranked Mercer Island's 83. Asians in Mercer Island score an astounding 90, not far below the average at the best Lakeside private school." </p>

<p>"In short, predominantly minority schools have low test scores because minorities have lower test scores regardless of the segregation factor, not the other way around. And American schools would match Asian schools if they were dominated by Asian students. Perhaps that chilling reality is the reason that every newspaper I have contacted has chosen to ignore these data." </p>

<p>Mini. again you are from Olympia, Washington, with intimate knowledge of its public schools. Please explain these facts, as pointed out by Arthur Hu. Do you deny them or are you in disbelief?? I think the forum would appreciate it if you can address the facts from Mr. Hu.</p>

136

<p>Mini asked,</p>

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<p>The endowment of the college that the poor Eastern European Jewish immigrants and later poor Asian immigrants sent their kids to at the City College of New York, in the early 1990s, was ZILCH, ZERO. You know what?, these poor Jewish immigrants and later Asian immigrants, from their deficient public k-12 schools and CCNY, produced MORE graduates who obtain more PhDs per capita and in absolute numbers than any of your Reeds, Smiths, or Oberlins. Any do you know what?, these students from CCNY also won more Nobel Prizes in the sciences, medicine and literature than your graduates of Reed, and the like.</p>

137

<p>Mini also said,</p>

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<p>Many poor Asian immigrants do send their kids to the very schools which you have mentioned, simply because they have no choice. The difference is that to be successful, they work hard and value education, despite deficient conitions. Asian Americans live in every black ghetto in America and attend the same k-12 schools with their black neighbors. The dark secret that the flaming white liberals refuse to acknowledge is that these poorest of Asian Americans, attending the poorest of schools, under the same conditions, out perform their fellow black students in exactly the SAME schools. Just check the NYC Report Cards for each of NYC's public k-12 schools which report on test scores, and graduation rates disaggregated by race. These poor Asian Americans, in the poorest of NYC's schools, outperform academically, not only blacks and latinos in the same schools, but they outperform black students in the most affluent suburbs, which is the DARK SECRET that the politically correct flaming liberals refuse to acknowledge, because these facts totally destroy their arguments. An even DARKER SECRET, is that these poor Asian Americans outperform many affluent whites in richer districts. So then, please check out the facts before making unfounded assertions and groundless presumptions.</p>

<p>Arthur Hu also said,</p>

<p>"Economic and race-based interventions have never been shown to achieve the equality that was set as their justification in the first place. After all, the numbers that matter are not the percentage of blacks on the staff or in the classroom, but grade point average, reading and math test scores, and hours spent on homework and attendance. As Thomas Sowell and Lawrence Steinberg observe, if students of all races worked equally hard, their disparate rates of success and failure would plausibly lead to explanations based on, on the one hand, racism and poverty, or, on the other hand, innate superiority or inferiority. When they differ on every measure of effort, what else would you expect?"</p>

<p>Mini, please address Mr. Hu's point, if you can. Much thanks in advance. We are waiting for your answers in anxious anticipation.</p>

138

<p>I was listening to ( i will look it up later) who has been doing research on communities and education among other things and he suggested that if we spent our efforts on getting more parents rather than the money stopping at the buildings we would see greater success rate of the students.
But how to do that?
Even in what supposedly was a good school, where parents chose to send their kids, we had little parent involvement. This was not necessarily an income issue. It was an attitude of expecting the school to do everything, and all the parents had to do was sign the report card.</p>

<p>maybe I should do that next time, let someone else do all the work at the school, then I can work longer hours so my kids can have a cellphone and TheNorthFace down jacket too!</p>

139

<p>I think it's both--the funding for the school AND the family. How can a kid learn when s/he is hungry and cold and doesn't have a book? Why would a kid learn when a parent buys a bumper sticker that says "My kid can beat up your honor roll kid" or, "My kid sells drugs to your honor roll kid"?</p>

140

<p>Arthur Hu also said, </p>

<p>"It is widely accepted that test scores increase with family income. However, SAT breakdowns for 1995 show that even the most affluent blacks, from families with incomes over $70,000, have average scores of 426, lagging behind whites or Asians from families with incomes under $10,000. But Asians from families with incomes under $10,000 have average scores of 482, ranking them with whites from families making $40,000. And it is not just test scores. Oakland's poor school system highlighted its low 1.8 black GPA to justify Ebonics. But GPAs aren't any better in integrated Seattle or San Francisco." </p>

<p>"Data books and health surveys all show that even in cities like Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco where the per-capita incomes of Asians are no higher than that of blacks, it is Asians, not whites, who have the best outcomes. The omission of Asians from the local news stories is probably deliberate because their statistics don't support the thesis that racism and poverty are the reasons for poor outcomes. As much as the activists continue to deplore the model-minority ``myth,'' except in the most distressed Asian refugee communities, Asians generally have the best grades and test scores; the lowest rates of special and remedial education, dropouts, and expulsion; the highest rates of attendance; and the lowest rates of arrest, teen pregnancy, AIDS, and substance abuse." </p>

<p>[With little fanfare, Lawrence Steinberg, B. Bradford Brown, and Sanford Dornbusch released a new book, Beyond the Classroom that offered a very different explanation from the standard <code>racism and poverty'' for why different groups perform differently in school.</code>Of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity is the most important . . . In terms of school achievement, it is more advantageous to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time.'' They found that no matter which school they looked at, Asians got the best grades and test scores, and blacks and Hispanics the worst. The problem was not the schools, but the attitudes and habits of the students themselves. The underachievers didn't fear failure, didn't study as hard, skipped class more often, and blamed their failures on racism. The overachievers didn't tolerate failure, hung out with overachievers, spent the most time studying, and attributed their success to individual effort.]</p>