I somehow have the impression that our K-12 education does not favor elitism – you could argue this is good or bad, depending on what you value, I think.
At least in the first half of my child’s education before college (elementary school and a part of middle school), they are against “gifted and talented”, “accelerated or academically advanced track.” All children are gifted, in their own way.
That’s not always necessarily the case as in the case of Japan and several East Asian countries I know of, the campus academic culture for undergrads is actually much more laid back than most US colleges…especially the elite ones.
A friend who attended Waseda(#3-4 in Japan) after boarding school in the UK remarked at how the colleges/Profs allocate classroom space which could accommodate only around 25% of registered students because that’s around how many would actually show up to class outside of quizzes, midterms, and final exams. Basically, outside those times…most students would often not bother to show up and instead would engage in ECs which take them away from campus…such as the popularized cultural phenomenon of undergrads taking long road trips while classes are in session. When the day for those three exceptions came, the classrooms were so limited most students took quizzes, midterms, and finals sitting on every available classroom space like floors and overflow into the hallway areas.
And those undergrads aren’t penalized at all for this as the thinking was the undergrads worked so hard during K-12 to gain admission and the college that “they deserve a break once in college”. Funny enough, many East Asian grad students who did their undergrads back in their countries of origin, especially Japanese have remarked the undergrads they TA seem to work harder and have a higher workload than they remembered even if the average academic level of their undergrad was higher*.
There may be some truth in this. I have never been a fan of “drilling” our young too much before, at least, high school if not before college. It could do “damage” when you work the elementary or preschool kids too hard in a wrong way.
I rarely gave my child those math worksheets – except when he was already in high school. He actually needed some catchup because we de-emphasized the drill aspect of the math too much. (We only asked him to do some Kumo worksheets early in high school - most kids working on the same level were much younger than him – but he caught up fast. He rarely got perfect scores in “simple” tests like SAT math, likely due to the slightly lack of drill. Some drills are still needed IMHO, but this should not be the main focus. The low-level test skills can be picked up in high school, I think.)
My child, who grew up here, may disagree with me that I have NOT drilled him too much though. LOL. (I drilled him not too much as compared to the level at which I was drilled when I was his age. He actually accused me that I gave him too much “work” once in a while. Maybe I have given him too many varieties of drills – writing a video game program using LOGO in elementary school!)
Well, that provides for fun without the decent education (and without the benefit of improving your English).
From what I can see - there are countries with more immigrants per population that us. Some are doing better than us, some aren’t.
Anyone who thinks that we aren’t essentially tracking for college and vocational “college” is kidding themselves.
Oh, Mathmom, you went to sources to make a point. The horror. The horror!
As usual in similar discussions, many prefer to rely on simplistic sound bites. The US does not compare well to the industrialized world because it is … different. It is poorer (and yes that card is played to justify the lower average scores) and the samples are misleading. The Europeans are obfuscating a good chunk of their 15th years old by avoiding sampling from vocational and technical schools. The Europeans have fewer immigrants to deal with and are … richer than the poor US. The tests (such as PISA) are biased. Heck, there was once a question that included (the irrelevant) mention of centimeters. The poor US were thrown off because they expected inches! And the sad litany goes on with more excuses!
Actually, the critics of a comparison tool that relies on objective metrics have it right. We should not look at those international tests. And we should not look at why “our” kids struggle to score over 500 on the verbal parts of the SAT and find most basic questions that test critical reading and … reasoning so challenging all the while doing pretty well on the rote rewarding AP tests. We should not look at any of this.
All what this crowd should do is to download a couple of SAT tests and take them for yourselves. After this, look at the discussions on the SAT forum and evaluate why students find some parts that hard. After that accept the invitations to read a few of the application essays. And, on a final note, realize that the sample of students who visit CC on a regular basis are the chosen ones, the ones who look at the top schools for admissions, and are well beyond your typical Joe Six Pack who will graduate in beer pong and partying with a degree in communications!
Does any of this mean that the Europeans of Asians in Korea or China are better or do better? Not necessarily, but for the amount of money WE spend and the resources at our disposal, we ought to … do better. The story of Finland is not about the unions or the homogeneous population. It is about the courage of having looked at what could reasonably be done, and they started from the ground up, namely by revamping their selection model for the future generations of teachers. With a drastic departure from our MOI, Finland started with the best and demanded that the best be trained properly to become specialists in particular subjects. “We” on the other hand clear the bottom of our academic barrel and fill middling education colleges with the least competitive students in order to supply the “system” with plenty of people who will be happy to start working at the bottom of the pay scales.
As far as the unions, it would give them way too much credit to accuse them of being the main cause of the abysmal state of our education. Better choices are the corrupted politicians and board members who work hand in hand with the equally corrupt union leaders to protect their turf and political funding machines. Union members, and especially teachers, are just as victimized by this system that rewards mediocrity as the students and their families. Good teachers find little incentive to excel as their mediocre counterparts earn just as much and abuse the protection of the unions. Good teachers suffer from the lack of respect that results from interactions with those unmotivated and unprepared teachers who … were simply the students who struggled with basic reading comprehension, reasoning, and basic arithmetic. The “system” gave them healthy doses of pedagogy classes and other subjects that do not translate well beyond K-4, and hoped for the best!
Yes, do not spend much time reading the statistics. You will have very different “appraisals” depending if you read Ravitch or Moe or the OECD experts. Do yourself a favor and read what 15 years old in this country write and listen to what they say. Separate the ones who had parents who spend time or money to plug the holes from the less advantaged ones. And the latter group is the one you need to measure to understand how much of a failure our public system of education truly is. We were a nation at risk almost 30 years ago, and we have exceeded the expectations!
It’s not all about immigrants. It’s about race. And while we don’t have all the data, I bet for whatever race you pick, members of that race in the US do better than members of that race in almost any other country, except possibly for Blacks.
France, the most demographically similar first world country to the US, scores worse than the US overall.
Yea, we track for college and vocational training… without providing decent vocational training!
You really think our closest cousin is France? Do you consider their Muslims to be our Hispanics? Or are they “our” African Americans? Are France’s Asian immigrants comparable to ours?
Why not pick Canada?
Yep, our system does that with planned dropout. Fwiw, the tracking system used in Europe is often misunderstood. No system will ever be perfect, but there are merits to a system to attempts to marry different aptitudes to academic choices. Of course, the question remains about the validity of doing it at the end of the primary years.
We do track, of course. But admitting I do not have first hand experience with other educational systems, it does seem that many districts in the US permit " jumping" tracks, as well as diversions off the track,more than the experience of peers who grew up outside the US.
In our urban school district for example, several schools allow students to take both AP or other advanced work at the same time they are taking regular level or even remedial or " catch up" courses.
Generally limited to K-12, but some universities offer below college level courses also.
I grew up in a first tier suburb, same area as Microsoft headquarters. ( my school years were 1961-1975) District was judged to be excellent at the time.
Comparing my experience to my daughters in an urban district, she had more adults in classroom.More resources in the classroom. Parents as well as student teachers and subject specialists. More art, more music, more dance & drama. ( specialists in my district were itinerant, for art & music & physical education. We would have them once a week for a month, Ds school had those classes at least 3 times a week year round)
Her experience included more experiential hands on learning.
In 6th grade for example, reading in my classroom was SRA reading laboratory cards. No class discussion, everyone picked their own level & moved ahead at their own pace. But they weren’t * books*. They weren’t even articles.
My daughters k-12 school had teacher or parent led book groups of about 6-8 kids, the book choices generally reinforced the era they were studying in history, but each group made their own choices.
Book groups were school wide.
In 5th grade they were studying WWII. Books we read included Number the Stars, Bat six, To kill a mockingbird, Bridge to Terebithia.
My group was mixed reading levels however, which I did not realize for a while(the classroom my daughter was in staffed mainly by rotating subs that year, as the teacher was taking leave to care for her elderly mother. But I blame that circumstance on an inexperienced principal, who could have hired a permanent sub instead)
So I see the point about unions which of course are there for the teachers, not the students, but without them, the ethics and management skills of administrators become much more critical & in a large urban district, I dont trust administrators any farther thsn I can throw them.
Literally.
Basically yes. Large population from middle income countries who don’t speak the language natively. I don’t know if that’s the best argument but it certainly has to be more demographically similar than Canada.
^ Well, with all the news related to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, one might have expected that the origin of the immigrant population in France would be better understood. It might not be a bad idea to check your facts about languages spoken by immigrants in France.
Statistics offer plenty of room for interpretation. For instance, Arabic is the second most spoken language is France (with over 4,000,000 speakers) but only 2 percent of this population relies exclusively to Arabic in its communications. Arabic has generated only 6,000 pupils in the school system. On the other hand, 60 to 75 percent are learning English during the school years.
Immigration in France is fluid and waves have changes from North and Sub-Sahara Africa to Portugal and more recently Turkey. Yet, many have come from countries where French is the official language and widely taught and spoken. Just as English is an equalizer, French offers the go-to language to bridge dialects.
All in all, there is very little comparison between French and US immigration, and surely little in terms of languages transfers. To keep it simple, just think of bilingual education in the US and take a look at France.
HTH
This is going to come out wrong somehow…not feeling well today, but…
The top American universitites have huge endowments. They spend these funds as they see fit, not how some bureaucrat requires.
In contrast, our K-12 system has been hijacked by the testing companies. We spend too much time developing tests, teaching to the tests, administering the tests, analyzing the results of the tests, and changing the tests.
Since Norway was mentioned several times, I must say that they do very little testing, give lots of attention to the arts and music, and offer plenty of down time (anyone remember recess?).
But hey, we make sure our schools are “accountable”.
Also, the average American kid doesn’t understand the value of the free education offered, compared to his or her non-American counterpart.
Still, at the end of the day, I think that a good education can be had by most Americans that truly want one. You can lead a horse to water…
One issue that hasn’t been addressed is that the USA has many immigrant groups - not just one. School districts, especially in urban areas, are trying to teach students with many different native languages, sometimes it is 2, 3 or 10 different languages. Many of these foreign cultures and some of our home grown cultures do not value education. Or the home life does not support education.
I think our public schools are doing a reasonable job when you consider all the jobs we expect of them: feed kids, educate kids, prevent obesity, have sports teams, educate parents about vaccinations, have marching bands, art classes, theater programs, gifted and talented programs, ESL programs, provide technology, etc, etc.
How can any one school or school district do it all? That’s why we need more competition - be it charter schools, religious schools, magnet schools, bilingual schools, sports schools, vocational schools AND why the money should go with the kid!!! We could have the best K-12 education in the world if we would let parents and students decide where to go to school and which schools deserve their tax dollars. I believe this with my whole heart but unfortunately do not have any data to back it up as I know of no education system that uses this model.
@3boystogo, Most of the WORLD teaches not just to the test, but to a whole series of tests. Much harder (and more important in terms of shaping the rest of your education) than those American kids have to take.
@mamalion,
Yeah, private corporations are to blame for the ills of public K-12.
We blame everyone - but ourselves.
Private corporations are to blame in large extent. They don’t want to pay their fair share. It takes money to have good schools, We can blame ourselves for not requiring corporations to help more. Look at the prep schools. They do well because they have lots of money
When school bond levies come up before the voters, I wasn’t aware that “private corporations” got a vote.