kitchen table math, the sequel

I'm on semi-hiaitus from blogging, but I had to come out of my hole to highlight this article in the New York Times:

Bill Would Bar Linking Class Test Scores to Tenure
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: March 18, 2008
While the state was consumed by the downfall of Eliot Spitzer last week, the Assembly passed a bill that would pre-emptively bar New York City and other school districts from linking teacher tenure to students’ test scores.

Read the rest here.

There's not much more to say, other than how appalling this is.

more on why parents don't criticize their schools:


from Molly:

I have 2 in public school and 1 who now homeschools.

Once I pulled out of the neighborhood school, I suddenly started hearing all sorts of misgivings from other parents. It was as if they felt it was "safe" to talk to me about how they really felt about the school after I made my feelings public. Parents are concerned, but think that everyone else is happy with the school so they must be wrong.

from Tex:

Many people see their own kids as the problem, NOT the school. That attitude was enormously appealing to me. However, when I began to see the nonsense that sometimes passes as teaching, I changed my tune and started to consider that the school was not holding up their end of the bargain. I began to call them on it, and their response has been to do nothing differently. And, to sometimes ignore me.

Sense of futility.

and:

People who don't have kids in the schools need to get involved.

I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, I think people who don’t have kids in the schools usually cannot know the problems as well as the parents with school kids. They’re not as motivated and they view it as someone else’s problem. Of course, their protestations are often discounted by the powers that be and by the other parents.

Steve H on the same subject:

Many of the best advocates for change did have kids in the public schools. They got fed up and went elsewhere. Now they wash their hands of the problem.

Twenty to twenty-five percent of the kids in our town go to other schools. Some of the parents worked very hard to get the public schools to change or offer alternatives. They wouldn't. Now, these parents are accused of wanting an "elite" education and dismissed out-of-hand. The schools know that this is not true.

They just want to do what they want to do, and they try to focus all arguments on money. They would do more, but they just don't have the money.

concerned parent:

Of course, I know of a few people who do. We are, of course, the exception. People move here for the schools. It would never cross their minds that homeschooling would be an option-- a very good option, in fact.

Strangely enough, my daughter is promoting the value of homeschooling whenever she can. She has friends begging their parents to homeschool them. When parents hear all the interesting things my daughter has to say, how eloquently and coherently she can present her ideas, and that she is not socially dwarfed by being educated at home, whatever stereotypes they may have had about homeschooling are challenged.

In some way, this may open up a dialogue between parents are their own children about what is going on in school and what they are learning (or not learning). It just may cause parents to take pause and re-evaluate what's happening in our schools with a more critical eye.

I love it!

Excellent.


homeschooling in the D.C. area:

In the Washington, D.C., area, which is probably just as affluent as that of the above poster, homeschooling is very popular, attracting people of diverse educational philosophies. Many of the posters on this blog would be candidates for homeschooling. My wife and I homeschool our two daughters.

That is very encouraging to hear.

I just remembered that I had not included my own answer to the question.

I would divvy it up into piles of $200,000 each so I could sustain my work for five years. I would identify a smallish district (10-20 schools) and begin a long-term, community-wide campaign to engage parents as customers of public education.

For some reason, talking about public education in anything less than uncritical terms has become taboo - which is ridiculous. It's our money and our kids - they exist to serve their communities.

Remind parents that they have an eminent right to demand accountability, performance, and responsiveness. With a five-year funded effort, you should be able to influence public opinion and ultimately the local elections process. Once you have a community and school board full of people with a consumer mentality, you'll see the public start to take the reins again of this public service.

Verrrry interesting.

Brett's right; speaking ill of one's school is taboo, or close to. The idea of putting some resources into engaging parents as customers rather than fundraisers and loyal fans -- yup. I'm on board for that one.

This post summarizes a more detailed series of posts at my blog – go here to see the first of five on this subject.

It’s the start of a new year, a time for considering the future and making plans accordingly. For those of us who work with the public education system in one way or another, it might be helpful to reflect on how the system might change over the next several years so we’re ready for it.

Consider how the following major trends are going to shape public education in the future:

More kids, different kids

• According to NCES, “school enrollment is projected to set new records every year from 2006 until at least 2014, the last year for which NCES has projected school enrollment.” We’re currently at 55.1 million, and will creep up to a projected 56.7 million in 2014.
• In the year 2000, whites made up 69.9% of the total US population, with all other groups comprising 30.1%. We are on a track towards an even split by the year 2050, with whites comprising 50.1% of the population, and all other groups making up 49.9% (see here). Due to fertility rates, diversification is happening more quickly in the schools: by 2020 approximately 40% of school-aged children will be from minority groups, and by 2025 we can expect to see that the child population will comprise 15.8% blacks, 23.6% Hispanics, 1.1% American Indian/Native Alaskans, 6.9% Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 52.6% whites.
• In addition to racial/ethnic diversity, it is reasonable to assume that the special education population will continue to grow, given that it has seen steady growth from 8.3% in 1976/77 to today’s 13.7% (see here).

NCLB

• While the particulars of No Child Left Behind may change somewhat during the reauthorization process, the fundamental concepts on which it is built – equity (educating every child) and accountability – are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Advancing these two concepts in tandem, by requiring that achievement reports include disaggregated data (so we can track the performance of each subgroup), means that we can’t mask or hide our progress.
• It’s a major change because, while we’ve always talked about the importance of educating every child, we haven’t really done it. The gap between different student groups has been with us for decades, and has not changed significantly for quite some time. Another indication of our lip service in this area is the difference in dropout rates by race/ethnicity, with recent calculations indicating that 75% of white students graduate high school, but only 50% of African-American and 53% of Hispanic students do so.

School Finance

• Average per-student expenditures have increased dramatically in the past 40 years, from $3400 in 1965 to $8745 in 2001 (in constant dollars). This almost certainly cannot continue.
• In the short term, revenues will be pressed by the subprime mortgage crisis: state and local education funding is fueled in part by property taxes, and some experts predict a 15% peak-to-trough adjustment in home prices in the near term. Twenty states are already having to revise their 2008 budgets as a result.
• In the long term, we’re about to see a record number of people moving into retirement age: in 2000, we had 35.1 million people ages 65+, or 12.4% of the population; in 2050, we’ll have 86.7 million in that age group, or 20.6% of the population. These are people who were formerly paying into the system (income taxes), and are now going to be pulling out (in services). And this powerful voting group is less likely to support education funding.
• The rise in retirement will fuel an increase in the costs of Medicaid to the states, which shoulder approximately 43% of the cost of this program. Medicaid currently accounts for 22% of state spending (up from 8% in 1985), and recently surpassed K-12 education as the most expensive item on state ledgers. And it’s growing at 6% annually, twice the rate of inflation.
• While revenues are about to be pressed, expenditures are set to grow significantly. Education is a manpower-intensive business, with 6 million employees currently in the system. First, consider that states have not set aside enough money to cover the retirement benefits of employees (current retirement programs are underfunded by $731 billion). Then consider the rising cost of health insurance, coupled by the fact that many teachers receive full coverage not only for themselves, but for spouses and children as well. As one administrator said, the rising cost of health insurance “is the single most important issue facing districts nationwide."

What does all this mean? It means we’re going to have more kids than we’ve ever had before, and that the population will increasingly be made up of the kids we haven’t done a great job with in the past. We’re making a commitment to teach them all, and have a system in place to see whether we’re actually doing that, so it’s going to be a lot tougher to gloss over any shortcomings. And this is all happening at a time when budgets will either stagnate or even shrink due to major economic forces.

Thoughts?