Accepted Assumptions that are Wrong: Our public schools are failing

[texshelters]

Accepted Assumptions that are Wrong: Our public schools are failing

Our public schools serve millions of students each year and millions of those students graduate or advance to the designate grade level. Their success rate with students is much higher than the rate of successful mortgages, yet we don’t want to close all the mortgage brokers and make them public, do we.

By most measures, except for the high stakes testing measures that are used to punish schools and teachers, our schools do a decent job. Can schools do better? Yes. Are there students that are not learning the skills that might serve them later? Yes. But when you take a harder look at the reasons students drop out, it has less to do with the school than the economic circumstances of the children and a family that is unable to support the students with their schooling because of difficult financial and demographic reasons. How many students in two parent upper middle class families in well off school districts need school “reform”? A robust economy fuels student achievement; a sick economy hurts school achievement.

“...we should understand that student achievement -- how much students actually learn in school -- is less the cause of economic growth than its consequence. It is not student achievement that drives the economy but the economy that drives student achievement.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/11-3

Read the complete article here:
http://texshelters.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/accepted-assumptions-that-are-wrong-our-public-schools-are-failing/

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. The truth

Graduation rates are UP

Dropout rates are DOWN

Test scores are UP

But we are lied to and told our schools are failing.

Good piece. Thanks for posting.

[mistertrickster]

2. Hi, Kansan. Fellow KSn here . . . You are right.

SAT/ACT scores are also UP. Math is back up to early 1970's levels, despite the fact that a much larger population (that is, more average group) is taking the tests now.

When the scores went down in the 70's, 80's, early 90's, it of course was completely the SCHOOL'S FAULT.

Now that they've gone up for about 15 years?

Silence . . .

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. You might be interested in this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x626972

[mistertrickster]

4. Interesting. I rec-ed it. nt

[texshelters]

6. Those facts don't support the rights goals of

privatization and union busting.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[Taitertots]

5. They are not failing, they are just unacceptably poor compared to other developed nations

There is a huge gap between failing and good. We are stuck somewhere between them.

[texshelters]

7. What critieria

are you using to say the schools in the U.S. are not good?

Many are good, some are not so good. Did you know that just 12% of the schools produce 50% of the dropouts?

"Approximately two thousand high schools (about 12 percent of American high schools) produce more than half of the nation‘s dropouts. In these ―dropout factories,‖ the number of seniors enrolled is routinely 60 percent or less than the number of freshmen three years earlier.4 Eighty percent of the high schools that produce the most dropouts can be found in a subset of just fifteen states."
http://www.all4ed.org/files/GraduationRates_FactSheet.pdf

So yes, some schools are doing poorly, but what is the real cause and what can be done? Randomly firing teachers based on tests is not the answer and we all know.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[greymattermom]

8. First rate students recently

The medical students at KUMC have been very well prepared and professional for several years now. They are mostly Kansas K-12 and Kansas College grads. Wonderful students. The days of whining are over.