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City seeks to extend school day at all schools by an hour, tie teacher evaluations to student test scores
By adamg on Tue, 08/24/2010 - 4:58pm
The Globe reports on initial contract considerations by School Superintendent Carol Johnson. The city recently won a $22-million state grant to extend the school day by an hour at ten underperforming schools - most of the money will go to pay teachers for the extra daily time.
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Comments
Thank Charter Schools
Competition is a wonderful thing. If the BTU doesn't step up - they will become an afterthought as more and more students migrate to charters which in general have (no surprise here) - longer school days and longer school years and (somewhat surprisingly) lower paid and shorter tenured teachers - maybe that's part of the success of their model - younger teachers that go on to other careers after 5-10 years?
Compete on fair ground
Charter schools get to pick and choose who learns there. The district schools don't have that luxury. The end result is that the competition is heavily weighted in favor of charter schools putting up great numbers on tests and public schools...not so much.
Then take a look outside of Boston. There are numerous examples of charters full of corruption. Florida is rife with it. In NYC recently, a charter tried to oust a program for autistic kids so it could expand itself into their space. Schools shouldn't be in it for themselves. Corporations don't care about the kids, they care about their bottom lines. Education doesn't need the free market, it needs serious reform for *everyone's* benefit, not those who get to go to charter schools.
Damnit...
...where's that "Like" button everyone's been talking about?? I'm going to press it a few hundred times.
+1
We're stuck with +1, or in the case of that post, i'll say +11.
Okay but you support Latin right?
How far are you willng to take that argument? Should we close down the exam schools like Latin since they drain so many of the best kids? Should we eliminate any choice parents have in schools so we don't end up with schools like the Burke that are filled with kids who have had problems at other schools or whose parents don't know or care enough to send them anywhere better?
False equivalence
Latin is inside the public school system. Charter schools are not.
Really?
1) Charters don't pick their students - the students pick them - like any public school it's a lottery and they are open to the public (actually even more "public" because there are no reserved walk-to seats that I've heard of)
2) The charters are the ones fighting uphill - they have to raise a large percentage of their own budgets - and the publics still spend about 50% more per student and are still often less effective (granted, that does include special ed - but check the stats - it's not as big as many would have you believe - most of that "extra" consists of pensions, amazing healthcare plans and overhead - I think only about 30-35% of the school budget actually goes to teacher salaries in BPS)
3) So a few bad apples spoils the bunch - even if they are in a different orchard? shame on the schools in NY and FL - but this is somehow morally inferior to the BTU keeping the cap on charters for years depriving tens of thousands of students right here in our own back yard of a chance at a better education and a better life? It's their life - it's not even a matter of money - let the kids and their parents choose - not idealistic or selfish bureaucrats that want a one size fits all policy.
4) Charters are non-profits - not corporations (although some contract at various levels with the private sector-not sure how prevalent this is in Mass).
5) This is public money - not the free market - with enormous checks and balances, accountability and regulation built in (more than even the public schools in many cases) - this IS reform for "everyone's" benefit - everyone now can make their choice - public, pilot, private or charter. Going forward kids can choose public - instead of being force fed - but only if the kids and their parents want that.
Stevil Has it Right
Charters can't pick and choose. In fact, of the ten or so families that I know that have a child in a charter school, at least eight put their kid there because the public school system jerked them around for years and screwed their kids over repeatedly in order to cheap out on special education services. They picked charters with specific programs that met their kids needs.
Funny thing is, the local school admin people keep braying some idiotic party line about "parents putting kids in charters are stealing from public schools". They shut up and change the subject every time I ask them how many of the kids that are in charters are on IEPs, and why haven't they surveyed the parents to see what their reasons are so the public schools can countermarket? The reason they don't is they don't want people seeing how many people flee the system due to special educational issues - even though these students are more expensive to educate than that average dollar figure that goes to the charters. They don't want to meet those needs, and they don't want the evidence of neglect being dragged into court (actually, a friend of mine subpeoned that information for a court case).
How do you know 8 people with
How do you know 8 people with kids in Special Education? Is there an epidemic?
Um, what?
I know several hundred families with children with special needs. Your point?
I believe that you're a
I believe that you're a social worker.
I'm just remembering back to my childhood, when every kid learned enough to pass each grade. I think there was one kid in the entire K-8 school who got separate tutoring. It was predominantly lower-middle-class, and in the city.
But I look around and I'm wondering whether there's a new epidemics of "special needs", and if so, what is the cause?
I am not a social worker
Two reasons:
1) When I was in elementary school ('80s), kids with any sort of special needs were in a separate classroom. Kids who had anything beyond, say, Down syndrome or high-functioning autism were in a separate building. Many of these kids were in state boarding schools. Now, kids with Down's and whatnot are in mainstream classrooms and get their therapies either as pullout or drop-in, kids with autism etc. who have severely decreased skills are in separate classrooms in regular public schools, and only kids with severe/profound multiple disabilities are in separate schools. In districts like Boston, the severe/profound kids are in regular schools and are bused to the couple of schools that have these programs. Kids in districts where they might be the only child with severe/profound needs have their town pay to send them either to a bigger district or to a private school. Some kids also have private placements due to very specific needs, like Perkins School for the Blind or Walker Home and School.
2) Medical advances are such that every year, kids survive being more and more premature and/or with more severe medical issues. Every public school in Boston has kids who were born at 24 or 25 weeks, and many have kids on ventilators, kids full of shunts and who've had tons of surgeries, kids on tons of meds. These kids just weren't living past infancy (if that) a decade or so ago. I interned at a school for kids with severe/profound multiple medical issues. My supervisor told me that when she started in the '80s, the school was made up of kids with uncomplicated Down's syndrome, kids with high-functioning forms of autism, wheelchair users who had a decent amount of speech, etc. When I was there in 2000, almost all the kids were nonverbal and there were maybe two children who could speak in age-appropriate sentences, more than half were nonambulatory, tons used ventilators and all sorts of medical equipment. These kids just didn't exist in the '80s, or if they did, they were very fragile and no one would think of letting them go to school outside a hospital.
2a) We're recognizing and diagnosing a lot more learning disabilities now. This is generally a good thing (other than PDD-NOS being handed out like candy by some clinicians...), but we really need to move toward all kids being assessed and being taught how to work within their particular learning style, rather than labeling some kids as learning "normally" and other kids as "not normally." This should not extend to sugar-coating and pretending that people with significant disabilities don't have them, but if half of the kids have LD according to our teaching methods, then we should be teaching in a way that reaches and includes more of them.
And if the kid's a flop out?
So a screw-up somehow finds his way into the charter lottery and makes it into a charter school. The first semester he's thrown out for incomplete school work and fighting with the other students. Guess how short of a leash he's on before they decide to eject him from the charter school? VERY short. Then, where does he go if not the charter school? Right, the public system again.
It's still self-selection for the charter school. It's just that the sieve is after a semester or two as kids shake out and end up back in the public system as opposed to getting screened out upon submission instead. Then, the public system gets to deal with ALL of the problem kids...plus those kids who might excel if they were given the chance, but didn't win a charter lottery and/or have parents who aren't giving them the best chance at an education. Those kids then get dragged down by all of the behavioral problems of the other kids taking all of the time of the public teacher (read as: disciplinarian)...who then doesn't teach as much during their limited time with the kids...it's a forward-feeding issue.
The charter schools' students keep getting selected for the best to remain and the teachers can actually teach. The public schools' students keep pulling each other down and the teaching staff down with them.
thrown out?
They have to follow the same rules as any other school when it comes to expulsion. Repeat a grade for poor performance, yes. Discuss alternative situations for the student, including other schools, yes, but not expulsion.
And it's all a joke because
And it's all a joke because the average Bostonian is still an illiterate and petty simpleton, as evidenced by the quality of voting, civic discourse, and driving.
While it's true that they
While it's true that they don't pick and choose, they still benefit from motivated families and the ability to require parental involvement. I don't oppose charter schools, but let's be sure to recognize that they serve a vastly different population than the district schools.
Oh hey
Didn't see your reply, but yeah!
No question there
The selection factor isn't that charters get to pick and choose, and it isn't that they get to kick people out.
The selection factor is that their parents seek the best opportunity and fit for their kids, and not all parents have the resources and awareness or time or giveashit to make this happen.
This, however, doesn't necessarily select for academic success. The people I know who selected charter schools for their kids who have significant learning disabilities still have to work with them to make even moderate progress. They simply find it easier when there is a more individualized approach, smaller classes, and adaptive learning integrated into their programs (as opposed to pulling them from every class for specialist time, then failing them for not keeping up in those classes).
Tomayto, tomahto
You're right. They don't kick them out. They say "you're never going to graduate here, so you should probably go back to public school if you ever want to get a diploma".
It's easier if they dropout because you can just blame the kid instead of the school for failing him.
What does the charter school care? They claim a high college succession rate point at the test scores of the other kids and get the same result as if they'd expelled the kid for his grades anyways.
Not quite
The kids in charter schools still aren't a random cross-section of kids in public schools; they're kids whose caregivers have their shit together enough to hear about charter schools, critically think about whether they're a good idea, then follow through with everything necessary to get the kid in. So, yes, they're accessible to families without a lot of money, but not really to kids whose parents are extremely uneducated/have severe mental illness/are basically neglectful/etc.
Also, while they do have to honor IEPs for kids with mild LD and such, they don't have to serve kids who can't work at grade level or can't function in an average-sized classroom. So there aren't kids in charter schools who are nonverbal, have significant intellectual impairments, need help with basic safety skills like not wandering outside of the school building, etc. Regular public schools must serve all these kids and do.
Fair observation
but still not an excuse for depriving thousands of kids an opportunity to thrive in an environment that challenges them and rewards their motivation and success. If the kids really come first - the charters work and if our laws/unions whatever prevent BPS from offering a competitive service - I really don't care - as long as the maximum number of kids have the maximum educational opportunity - whatever that is.
I don't get the argument that I regularly hear from seemingly educated, well-intentioned people - "charters don't have to take special ed etc. so we should outlaw them and make everyone go to BPS because that's more equal." Who gives a crap if charters are making a real difference in real kids' lives? it's a failed model that doesn't appear fixable - so let's change the model.
Speaking of "whatever that is" - what's an IEP?
Was that a serious question?
Speaking of "whatever that is" - what's an IEP?
I'm thinking I don't want to engage in debate about the educational system with someone who 1) doesn't know what an IEP is and 2) can't figure out to google it.
Ah, the elitest model
If we can give a perfect education to 20% of the students, fuck the other 80%, right?
The public education system is public for a reason. ALL of our students should be given the best chance to learn. The public school systems served that purpose until we ignored them systemically in this country. Education wasn't given any priority and wiping out taxes made for more votes but meant wiping out school budgets at the same time. By leaving schools to a purely local issue and then not empowering the localities to collect enough money to afford the schools necessary for the population expansion we doomed them to have too many kids and not enough supplies. Too many problems and not enough solutions. Too many kids coming from families expecting the school to raise their kids.
Public education is a fine system when it's supported by the government, the community (do they even HAVE PTAs any more?), and education is considered a virtue (pop and political culture has decimated the idea that getting a good education is beneficial).
elitist?
How is a system open to all by lottery elitist? Especially when the biggest users of the system seem to be poor inner city families with children performing below grade level looking for a solution that can help their kids? (keep in mind the richest communities in the city - Fenway, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Bay Village and West End are deemed unqualified to have a local elementary or middle school-kids on this end of town pretty much have two choices - private school or move to the burbs - where's the ACLU on that one?).
At least for Boston there are giant holes in your argument:
1) Education consumes about 1/3 of Boston's budget (more if you include teacher pensions)- a fairly consistent number even though the number of kids in BPS has shrunk 10% over the past 10 years and thousands of pre-school kids have been added to that number(kids get more expensive to educate as they get older - not a question of priority and early ed is hugely important- simply an educational budgeting reality). Keep in mind that the overall and school budget has increased at TWICE the rate of inflation over the period that the student body has been shrinking and getting younger.
2) Residential property taxes have doubled over that time period not wiped out. We've also increased the sales tax by 25%(read state aid), added an additional meals and hotel tax, added a liquor tax increased all kinds of fees etc.
3) Boston spends more per student than almost every other district in the state except for Cambridge (only about 5% of Cambridge's population attends public school v. about 9% for Boston and an average in the low to mid teens for most communities) - and that includes Newton, Brookline, Wellesley, Hingham, Winchester and a host of extremely wealthy communities.
4) Despite the SMALLER student population - we have built about half a dozen schools while closing none (until perhaps this year or next?). So we can't have too many kids - in fact we have thousands of empty seats - and if we don't have enough supplies with such a massive and steadily growing budget and a shrinking school system - why is that? Where's it all going?
5) Net result (at least as measured by the MCAS) - absolute performance for BPS has improved - but not at a rate greater than the state as a whole - we still rank around the 95th percentile +/-.
Seems the difference had little to do with the money - and a lot with telling the kids that if you don't pass this test you don't get a diploma. Accountability's a bitch.
Eeka - sorry I don't know what an IEP is - too busy figuring out how American educators that know what an IEP is can't seem to figure out that it's basically impossible to send kids to school for about 1000 hours a year and expect them to compete with their foreign counterparts who go to school 1400-1500 hours per year. You and your colleagues might want to google RTDCOTT.
Three results of gibberish
Stevil, there are three results of gibberish for googling RTDCOTT. Any other snappy retorts?
Snap crackle and pop
Try "rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic" and see if that fits- come up with all the IEP's and other professional acronyms you want - you can't accomplish 1500 hours of education in 1000 hours no matter how many programs, techniques and pompous "if you're not an educational expert you have no credibility" comments you want.
You don't have to be an educational expert to recognize that the charter model of no unions, longer days and longer school years works for a large number of kids at lower cost actually leaving MORE resources per student available to BPS - not fewer.
Stevl's best point.
Is that charter schools basically do more good than harm.
But I still would like to see more stats on these schools though. I'd love to know what would happen if every charter had to close and parents had to send their kid to another school. I wonder what percentage of parents would send these kids to Boston public schools and how many would either go to private schools and/or move out of Boston, or go to Latin
Union Charters
One problem with charters not having unions is that they don't attract some of the more experienced teachers, and tend to grind out some of the less experienced teachers of better quality.
That said, I understand the teacher's union has put together a unionized charter. It will be interesting to see what goes on with that.
As for statistics, there is some accountability. Some charters have been closed. All the same, you have to consider the population being served - you can't expect a high school designed around the needs of parenting students or returning drop outs who hold day jobs to get the same results as one designed to serve more typical populations.
How do you know this?
and tend to grind out some of the less experienced teachers of better quality.
The quality part.
See Above
My husband used to teach, and the demands that recruiting charter schools listed were often onerous. We also know several teachers who left the charter system who reported that most people don't make it past two or three years because the pay is low, the hours are long, and it is impossible to buy a house or start a family under those conditions.
Really wasn't much different for private school teaching, either.
Anecdotal - but swrrly's right
The charter that I volunteer at has been open for 10 years (middle school level)- I think either zero or one of their first teachers is still on the faculty and that appears to be typical. Doesn't seem to hurt their performance - I think they were first in math MCAS 2 of the last 3 years and I think 9th last year in English statewide including all the rich suburban districts - and the school is filled with inner city kids of color that come in on average 2 years below grade level most of whom qualify for reduced price lunches.
Their main dirty little secret to success - really long hours, extra math and english classes almost every day and teachers from top schools that apparently come in fresh out of college, work their fool butts off for a few years for very low wages and then move on to other careers. They are trying to scale the model under the new ed reform law - we'll see if they can maintain the quality.
I think they face two huge hurdles - a) getting enough competent teachers to keep the cycle going and b) raising enough outside funds for multiple schools. Two smaller hurdles will be to see if they can find affordable facilities and if the model works with a larger pool of students - per many of the other posts out here.
Ah sorry I misread that.
I thought you meant the teachers were of a better quality.
I understand what you mean.
Pilot school, not charter
If we're talking about the same thing - the Boston Teachers Union school, which opened last year.
Pilot schools are the BPS' answer to charters. They're still very much BPS schools, however (and in this case, just open to kids in JP, Roslindale and West Roxbury, or, hmm, maybe even just Roslindale).
Huh?
BTU pilot school is open to students in the west zone (WR, Ros, JP, Rox).
Simple math
Yeah, sticking to the simple math would probably keep things manageable. Already you have convinced me that 1500 > 1000. It looks like you have convinced the BPS, too, because one extra hour a day gets us to (if my simple math is right) 1,260 hours a year. More than 1,000 and less than 1,500. Are we making progress?
Beyond the understandable argument that more is better than less, and a little embarrassed flailing at being caught out in meaningless hyperbole, your only other item above is union-busting. That kind of makes it look like you're using schools to pursue a political agenda.
In terms of not knowing what an IEP is, though, that isn't some obscure jargon. It's an exceedingly common acronym in today's school system (directly affecting 20% of students) that you would know for sure already if you had any direct involvement in a school as a teacher, counselor, or parent. If you are truly interested in education, you might want to start by educating your own self as to what an IEP is, what FAPE is, and why it is such a big deal in today's schools. Going off about how you don't care really tells us all a lot about you, but not in a way that increases your credibility.
Obviously not simple for you
if you multiply 6*180 - it comes to 1080 (I took off a few hours for snow days, teacher conferences and the other random 7-10 days that qualify as school days in our system that aren't). If you mutiply 7*210 it comes to 1470 (take off roughly the same and you get 1400 - leave them in and it rounds to 1500) - so much for my math v. yours and "meaningless hyperbole".
Union busting because I said charters have no unions? - thou doth read between the lines too much. That's simply a statement of fact that appears to make the model work (just as short tenure in the job seems to somewhat inexplicably be effective). It may ultimately prove to be a problem - but the lack of a union frees the school to do a lot of things you can't do in BPS. BPS seems to be having a very tough time competing with this model as they stand to lose thousands of their students to charters over the next few years which may mean you have to either kill the union or at the very least modify it (and they are experimenting with many of these aspects with apparently mixed results).
Not a parent, educator or counselor so not privy to all the modern acronyms (did teach for two years in Japanese public schools 20+ years ago-thus my continuing general interest in the topic). Called my sister who has two elementary school kids and asked her what an IEP was - said she'd heard of it but didn't know what it was - so my guess is the acronym perhaps isn't as common - or important - as you seem to feel outside of certain circles (and for the record I originally thought it a term used by BPS).
Still fail to see the logic that connects knowledge of this acronym and an opinion/common sense that a crucial part of academic reform is the simple concept of longer school days and school years, especially for inner city kids who need to be fed, provided lots of remedial work to make up for what many of us take for granted, given a safe environment and in many sad cases surrounded more often by caring adults etc. etc. etc. How exactly does the lack of knowledge of an acronym reduce the credibility of common sense - or do you lack that faculty as well as math and reading skills.
Thanks SP - we've learned a lot about you too. Like you make things up to prove your points.
Right
So you're telling us you don't know the very very very basics about federal education laws. Which is fine, but then quit pretending to know anything about what a school ought to do and what resources and parameters they're working with.
Who's pretending
For the last couple of decades, having experienced American education and observed/worked in the Japanese system I have espoused two fundamental beliefs:
1) American students need to spend more time in school if they want to compete with the best the world has to offer - whoosh - fast forward and charter schools prove this simple fact to be correct, even or perhaps especially in the inner city - that you can take kids who are drowning in public schools, give them the resources they need and they can compete with anyone. And thanks to that example, and new laws that make the publics compete on that playing field one of the first things they do is say "lets get the kids in school longer". You don't have to be an expert in federal education laws to figure that one out. Apparently it's an advantage not to be.
2) You need some accountability. Testing is far from perfect. Kind of like democracy, it's the worst system, except for all the other ones. But if you look at why Mass has one of the best educational systems in the country it is because we have a strict curriculum benchmarked with the MCAS and the accountability of passing as a graduation requirement (if memory serves the pass rate skyrocketed with the first class that had to pass the test to get their diplomas). Again you don't have to be a legal expert to get that but again somehow this often seems to escape the grasp of the "experts" in federal education law.
BTW - I am very good friends with a retired director of Special Ed for BPS - we have spent many hours over many lunches discussing the unique needs of an inner city school system from the legal requirements (if they are still the same, Mass law has an even higher standard than federal - I believe it is something along the lines of the right right of a student to achieve maximum educational potential - but he retired 15 years ago so maybe the weaker federal law that appears to be governed by FAPE now takes precedence) to the good, the bad and the ugly of how this gets implemented in the real world with real budgets and real resource constraints. But I'm tired of "professionals" calling the rest of the world "unqualified pretenders" when our solutions, removed from the constraints of BPS magically work with many of the same kids. I'm not blaming BPS - a big part of it is probably separating the two pools of students. But the bottom line is that the charters - whatever they are doing - are succeeding where BPS is failing. And that's all that really matters.
Give it another go round, guy.
You got the part where you multiply 6 by 180 down pretty well. I'm impressed. But what you seem to have missed is the part where this whole entire thread started (look at the top of the page!) with the city seeking to expand the school day by one hour. So what you do then (I'll hold your hand, it's not scary) is you multiply 1 X 180. And then you add that to 1080. Like I said... 1,260 hours a year. Are you still able to follow that? Use your calculator if you need to.
You are the person who brought up a total of three positive points about the charter model: "no unions, longer days and longer school years." Two of these points are pretty much the same point - more hours per year. And more hours is just grand. That's why Carol Johnson wants more hours. No unions? That's not really an inherent benefit for the children, Steve. That's your priority, not theirs. If you had pointed to one thing that benefits the children that busting the teachers' union is required to accomplish, you might have had a point. But you didn't. On the contrary, touting it as a benefit of the model indicates that you value union busting for its own sake. And that's a shame, because after the destruction wrought on this country by thirty years of voodoo economics, that's the last thing people who work for a living need.
I assume by this point you've bothered to look up IEP and know what it is, and what FAPE is. The point is not that every person in the world needs to know what they are. The point is that if you really truly don't care - as you stated - what these things are, if you really, truly don't care that 20% of Boston public school students have IEPs to get the public education they're entitled to by law, then you really, truly, have very little perspective on the most significant challenges in our public education system right now. If, as you say, you volunteer around some school in Boston, then your ignorance of a free and public education is simply because it doesn't matter to you. And that's pretty damn lame.
Yes, Steve, a crucial part of public education is meeting the needs of a diverse population. If you don't know what an individualized education plan is, and you don't care to know, then you're not really in the game, you're just posing. I really hope you aren't just using those kids to grind some ideological axe, because that would be despicable.
Speaking of despicable posers
I can't even dignify this with a response. In addition to several errors in reading comprehension and jumping to numerous incorrect conclusions, the assumptions in your final accusations are beyond despicable, they are revolting and detract from the otherwise generally intelligent discourse on this site. If the best you can do is come out here to pick fights by making wild assumptions and unseemly accusations - don't.
Thanks
I figure if all you have left is name-calling, you concede the argument. Maybe you'll think twice next time before rolling out easily disproven statements.
Well then - congratulations
On disproving all the statements I never made that you attributed to me.
In the meantime I'll revel in the fact that Dr. Johnson, virtually the entire state and municipal education bureaucracy, the unions, the legislature, the governor and all those working hard in the charter schools have finally deemed and proven all of my strategic proposals on longer education hours, accountability through testing and reduced union work rules worthy of emulation. I guess I can only reach out to them and thank them for easily "disproving" me by validating my recommendations by implementing and now replicating them for thousands of children across the Commonwealth.
The only question I see remaining is "WHAT THE HELL TOOK YOU SO LONG?!"
Revel on
If it's enough to make you happy that, out of the entirety of what you've said on this thread, the only thing you can still hold to is that 1,470 > 1,080, then I wholeheartedly encourage your self-satisfaction. It's absolutely true!
If someday you have a more complex argument that won't suddenly flip-flop from being a "strategic proposal" to a "statement you never made," as soon as it is shown to be specious, do bring it forth and try to support it calmly and with facts and reason rather than hyperbole and name-calling. I'm sure lots of people here would love to rationally debate the issues without the sort of fluster and bluster you've brought to this thread.
Meanwhile, revel on!
UR doing it wrong
Kaz, if you're going to go 80/20, you should do it right. That would be like this:
80% of the problems in public school are caused by 20% of the kids, be it through behavioral problems, severe challenges at home, or overwhelming developmental disabilities. Charter schools are designed to drop those 20% back in the public schools every time, and skim only from the 80% that would do okay in any school as long as they weren't constantly being distracted by the 20%. This makes all of the very limited success they show in every objective assessment just a matter of casting, and their great advances in technique are shown to be just window dressing.
The damage they do to the majority of schools left behind is more significant than the minor assistance they provide to their students: draining the more motivated parents away from communities that need them. The success or failure of a public school frequently hinges on the motivation and contribution of the parents. At some very successful public schools, the parents go so far as to incorporate non-profit corporations for fundraising and directly pay the salaries of art and music teachers. Again, the 80/20 rule: 20% of the parents are going to do 80% of the fundraising at public schools. The loss of even a few of those families has a disproportionate impact on the school. If the sort of parents who do this are drained away to charter schools, the net overall effect (given the illusory progress of the short-time amateurs at charter schools) will be to worsen education in the city.
Thanks
Thanks for the assist.
inequality already exists
What about the point I made above about the exam schools or the other specialized schools in the system like Boston Arts Academy? They're clearly skimming off the most involved parents and the best kids and yet everyone seems very happy that they exist.
The fact is that this tendency for the best students and families to be distributed unfairly already exists. That's why Burke has 10x as many suspensions a year as Latin even though Latin is something like 4x larger.
As long as you're going to give parents some say in where their kids go there will be inequalities and it seems like we're happy with that tradeoff.
So if we measure the current inequality between our schools as x and the inequality after expanding charters as y than the question is how does y-x compare to the benefit that charters provide - and if there is an increase in the inequality between schools can we design a system of charters in such a way as to mitigate that, say by requiring that some charters specialize in kids with behavioral problems.
On the right track...
"say by requiring that some charters specialize in kids with behavioral problems."
Sure, there are kids whose needs are so significant that they might need to be in a therapeutic school, at least initially. But when I consult with a teacher about how to effectively work with a child with anxiety or Asperger's or bereavement or whatnot, I often find myself thinking that everything I'm suggesting is stuff that every teacher should be doing with every student. Giving clear directions, checking in to make sure they're understood, making expectations and consequences clear, correcting a behavior by explaining specifically what was wrong and specifically what should have been done instead, using a rubric to show exactly how grades are determined, having a schedule, having some sort of routine for transitions, teaching in as many modalities as possible such as verbally/written on the board/with gestures/using songs/using movement/using art, etc.
Brilliant analysis
+1000!
Competition only gives good results on level playing fields.
Right now, the public schools are on the downhill side of a very unlevel playing field.
Free enterprise concepts such as competition work best in business, not in a vitally important field such as education. Free enterprise rarely counts on negative externalities and areas which can't be quantified on a balance sheet.
It's time we realize that education of our children is too important an endeavor to turn over to dog-eat-dog idealogues.
thank you for chiming in Mr. Stutman
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Connolly wants to give parents, business role in contract talks
At tomorrow's city council meeting, At-large Councilor John Connolly will propose a public hearing to let parents, students and business leaders have their say on what should go into a new contract:
Ah, "business leaders".
Which ones will be invited, and what does Connolly think they will contribute? I wonder how many CEO's in Boston send their kids to public schools currently? I wouldn't be that surprised to see business leaders advocating abandoning the experiment of public education altogether, for the sake of temporarily lowering their taxes.
The beatings will continue...
...until morale improves.
Who is going to want to teach
Who is going to want to teach the "lower level" classes, the students who are slower learners,etc?
Good teaching can't make up for other factors in the lives of kids who live in poverty or have problems in their family lives that make learning harder. So, teachers of smarter kids and kids with more stable home lives and supportive, involved parents are going to get better evaluations than teachers of kids who have additional barriers to learning?
I think it will all even out.
I think it will all even out. From what I've seen, learning disability is the *norm* in Boston.
Well...
If we're actually assessing kids in terms of progress related to potential, then it shouldn't be a problem. A lot of people love teaching special education and get master's degrees in it and stuff.
extend school day
Having worked near Copley and Downtown Crossing, I'd like to see all high school and junior school kids in school til 4:30 or 5pm.
If their teachers don't want to work that long they should leave and work longer in the private sector.
Anyone who claims not to know why kids are in gangs because they have nothing to do all day should hang in Copley Sq for an afternoon.
Those kids should be in school. Their teachers should be in school.
So how come their teachers aren't in school? Maybe because they have a union that says they don't have to be?
So school is a place to lock
So school is a place to lock up kids during the day so that they don't have time to get into trouble?
Oh Really
I'm sorry, but my husband used to work many more hours than class time.
There's preparation for class time.
There's grading papers.
There are many schools that already start at 7:30 am.
You don't understand the first thing about what teaching involves, or the hours required. Instead of posting truthy memes, perhaps you should actually spend some time with a teacher - like a full day with a teacher - and see how wonderful the idea of longer days is?
Oh, and when are kids supposed to have any time to be, you know, kids doing and learning in an unstructured, unsupervised way necessary to become responsible and productive adults?
Start later
Part of this is because schools start so early. If you start at 7:50 and end at 2:10 you end up with a lot of unsupervised time in the afternoon. Why not go from 9-3:20? Afterschool programs would have to be open for fewer hours so there might be more money to spread around
9am is about when kids' brains start working anyway.
+100
+100
Or they could just work in a surburban school system.
If their teachers don't want to work that long they should leave and work longer in the private sector
That's why Boston School teachers make so much in the first place.
It doesn't really mater what they do
as long as they are teaching high school kids shit they don’t need or care to learn about, schools will continue to turn out people with half forgotten facts on useless subjects. If we could stop trying to force knowledge on people, give them more options and let them chose their own path, schools will produce better educated citizens. Now we are only teaching kids that unless they do well in English, math, and science, they are failures.
Oh, for sure
Colleges certainly reflect this. Classes with a lot of content about careers or self-awareness or relationships or anything like that taken in high school are viewed as remedial and many colleges won't count them as a social studies or English or whatever class, and similar classes taken in a college setting won't count for transfer credit at the "elite" colleges.
I took a few psychology and women's studies classes in community college that had an experiential component where we looked at ourselves and our communities and our upbringings and whatnot as part of our learning, then when I transferred to an elite-top-notch-competitive-blah-blah-blah wanker of a college, they said they wouldn't take these sorts of courses for transfer credit, because they didn't meet academic standards. Another women's studies course was denied specifically because the word "careers" was in the title. I sure learned a lot more in those classes than I did in 17th century French literature or art history (which are of course proper academic and prestigious subjects).