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<p>Same for Norway, I believe. And yes, it does make a difference. Teachers there are very well respected, as they are in China.</p>
<p>When I went into my credentialing program, it happened to be a special program in which they cherry-picked entrants You had to have graduated from a very selective U and done particularly well as an undergrad. It made a huge difference in the success of the program, and it formed my framework thereafter: I have always expected excellence among my colleagues and tolerate only high standards. OTOH, naturally that has entailed some disillusion in the post-Union era of teaching, which has admitted a mixture of brilliant and incompetent.</p>
<p>I haven’t yet read through all of the thread, but I will. So far, what I have read is that some posters lament the reality that parents make a difference in their children’s education, and that supposedly that fact is “unfair” because it results in unequal opportunity. What were you thinking? That the State can parent children? Were you thinking that those students without proper parenting or “dysfunctional issues” should come home with their teachers, who will indeed provide the proper afterschool educational setting? Because I am telling you that even if the supposedly “clueless” parents were able out of sheer luck to get their kids into the high-performing charters, performance demands exceed classroom time. </p>
<p>I do know how to get results from my students: damn right I do. I teach, one might say, “relentlessly,” “mercilessly,” in that I don’t let up. Any truly committed teacher does, because the passion runs in the blood. But I am no fool. While I do not second-guess my own efforts, the reality is that the students who are in 11th grade but writing like 5th graders are students without much literacy immersion anywhere outside my classroom, which is the opposite way that I and my credentialing classmates were raised, and probably the opposite that most CC parents were raised. Now, when they’re finished with me, they write more like 8th graders within a few months, but that will be difficult to sustain on their own once they leave my classroom, without my expectations and demands.</p>
<p>Education is beyond the building walls, folks. Even without college admissions concerns. It may or may not “take a village” to raise a child, but it definitely takes a village to educate a child. So if child does not get it at home, he or she will be exceptional if he or she seeks & finds resources independently, despite home environment. This is why the better charter chains (such as KIPP) select particularly motivated students to recommend to east coast boarding schools, because these charters totally get it that immersion is the key, and that a peer culture of academics is pivotal in sustaining motivation, especially among adolescents.</p>
<p>Even if every credentialing program were to return to the model I was privileged to have, that in itself would be insufficient to result in a sustained turn-around from what you saw in the movie mentioned. Add to that, removal of teachers’ unions, and again one could not predict sustained improvement. When the local culture and the wider culture, both, are at best ambivalent about academics (vs. say, professional sports, vs. recreation, vs. a focus on shallow “celebrity,” vs. an entertainment and low-attention-span mindset), then what is happening is a culture war. Add to that, parents who may not be functionally literate themselves and/or feel ambivalent themselves about the long-term value of education (or show it in their lifestyle & choices), and you have neither the elements nor the climate to shape your product.</p>
<p>There was a pilot program in the teaching of reading to rural Mississippi kids, about 10 years ago, I believe – maybe 7. I may have already discussed this on CC, but it bears repeating. This was a crack team. Every teacher, every administrator knew exactly what he, and she, were doing. They taped the lessons, which were also televised (I saw them); they interviewed teachers & administrators, some of whom had sacrificed about a year of their own lives to come and do this. (They were recruited from as far away as Chicago.) What they found is that minuscule gains were made. First of all, it took enormous work and repetition to make very small gains, in the most receptive and fast-growing of all ages: the primary-age child. No more than tiny gains were ever made, because, they discovered, nothing was happening at home. It was at that point that they realized it was more efficient to divert the funds to adult literacy. That was 1-2 years after Drosselmeier and I had a conversation about community learning centers (I had called them Family Learning Centers, I think), how I believed that was a better use of money in many environments. I don’t want to brag or anything (;)), but have you noticed that the Prez has been encouraging the same? And in my region, in the very low-literacy areas, this is finally what I also see beginning to happen, just now.</p>
<p>I went mostly to publics, growing up. They were fine publics, very fine. But like most public schools (even then), there were good teachers and bad teachers. Quality was uneven. What was not uneven, though, for almost all of us students, was that we could count on there being literacy at home – anywhere from just okay to really outstanding. So the home environment evened out variables in teacher performance. Because that is the model that the public school is built on.</p>
<p>Since the home enviornment is hugely unequal in our country, the only way to reduce the educational gap any time in the near future is to provide immediate boarding opportunities (with extended days and extended academic stimulation) to academically disadvantaged kids. I don’t see that as being a very politically viable concept right now, with money so tight. </p>
<p>KIPP provides a longer day, with doubling up on english, reading, and math (I’ve taught in them). That in itself is a kind of mini-immersion. There’s huge talk of college (which may not be mentioned at home). But the other thing that KIPP, LPS, and some others provide is consequences for behavior. The non-charter site school is loathe to do that: rarely does anyone get suspended; even rarer does anyone get expelled. Consequences at KIPP are swift, and enforced. For example, a student who misbehaved in class or didn’t turn in homework for several days can typically miss a desired field trip such as a whole-class outing, a whole-class retreat, etc.</p>
<p>As to “waiting several generations,” I know of no stand-alone Charter school that has been born in the last 5-6 years that isn’t required to meet numeric goals within a short time-frame. Sometimes that’s as short as one year, but rarely more than three years. If goals are not met, the charter may be cancelled. (And often this happens.)</p>
<p>I would agree that chartering is a path, both (now partly) intended and (originally)unintended, toward traditional public school dissolution – or least dismantling of the Central Office (particularly the State office). I see that as a good thing, if that’s a result and IF the replacement model can address a society very different than the society I was schooled in.</p>