What can be done to level the playing field?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools cannot overcome the parental advantage/ disadvantage faced by kids 18 hours a day outside of school. You cannot just throw $ at the problem.

This.

OP, please look this up. How much $$ is being spent on the worst schools vs the best ones?

You can if you throw enough money to equalize the benefits of having a wealthy educated parent (snacks, rides, activities etc)

Most studies show that throwing money at the school system does not get results. Look at the Baltimore school system.

That's because that money never makes it to the schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are public schools where there are significant achievement gaps between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Yet some schools thrive despite having great economic differences among the student body - these schools show no significant achievement differences in math, science, social science, and language arts. What are the schools that have no gap doing right? Do these schools provide after-school tutoring, supplemental weekend and summer enrichment? Do these schools provide parents with the resources to supplement their kids or are systemic issues permanent barriers in schools that cannot overcome the gaps (such as parents not having sufficient time because they work in the evenings and nights and needs to sleep during the day)?

What can be done? By whom?

The largest impact on a child’s development and education is due to PARENTING.

What to do there? Family planning, involved parents, positive family values instilled, maintain high expectations for behavior and academics. This can be done after school and work, and on weekends. Parents are the role models. Put in 1-2 hours of actual parenting a day. Or more, but most parents work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry for staying the obvious but ESOL kids are fluent in a foreign language. Instead of seeing them as an educational hinderance look at the huge benefits. Search for relevant foreign newspapers online covering a major event in history or geography or social studies. Set reading lists of books from country of origin. Discuss how western medias portray of a country or event aligns with the local populations take. There is a lot of rich material there to mine.

Lots of kids entering our schools are NOT fluent in a foreign language. They are illiterate in their own language as well.

The parents, student and siblings never speak to each other then? They obviously have a working knowledge of a common language otherwise they couldn’t function at all. Play them a YouTube clip of a segment of a national news broadcast from their home country and they almost certainly could tell you the gist of the story. This is assuming they are old enough and absent of significant special needs that would impede that skill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It can't be done. Proven time and time again. We should just give up on this idea and go to another plan.

When have we offered universal pre- k to all? Class sizes in public school as small as private school ( max 15). Universal Year round schooling and late opening hours to mitigate extra tutoring and enrichment by the middle class/rich?

The answer is never so we have never done what would work to actually level the playing field. What happens outside the classroom is at least equally if not more important. Kids need supervision to get homework done, intervention if behind, the ability to move at their own pace.

This. And also outlaw private schools except ones that only do religious education.

What schools only do religious education?

Apparently, the Hasidic schools in NY.

Haha I was about to say the same thing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a child of poor Asian immigrants. I hated being poor. My parents taught me that with education, you can move from the bottom to the top. I was a free lunch kid. I had to translate for my parents. I filled out all their forms. We now have a seven figure income. I still have to make phone calls, translate and fill out all their forms.

The child has to want change.

I have friends from childhood who blame their parents or racism. They think it isn’t fair for X reason. Others don’t make excuses and just worked hard.

I agree and in my opinion the more handouts/programs/free crap that is given the less people will even consider that THEY should have to get up and work hard. There is no other way

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools cannot overcome the parental advantage/ disadvantage faced by kids 18 hours a day outside of school. You cannot just throw $ at the problem.

This.

OP, please look this up. How much $$ is being spent on the worst schools vs the best ones?

Depends on how the money is spent. It’s usually spent on tech and other bells and whistles in bad schools. It needs to be spent hiring extra teachers

It still won't help. I will tell you this that there is not a DAMN thing that can be done until PARENTS change. I don't believe for a second that it all comes down to a parent's attitude. Even if their life is "unfair" and they are poor, etc. You can find a million examples of immigrants, poor people, etc, that with the right attitude, got a great education and listen themselves up. People need to stop ingraining the attitude that more needs to be done for people so that people can go back to "I need to do something to change my life".

[Anonymous]

The differences at home start from birth, long before kids are school age.
If kids have parents who regularly talk with them (in any language), read to them, take them to interesting places (the woods, a museum, whatever), encourage curiosity, take them to the library, etc, this makes a huge difference. Obviously, so do things like having loving/stable adults, plenty of food, safe place to sleep, etc.
I know people have recently tried to refute the studies showing the benefits of talking more to young children, but it’s hard to argue with the original results.

[Anonymous]

It's all commonsense

If you give your kid junk to eat and stick them in front of the tv all day they won't make it

This is why we have intergenerational poverty, kids having kids who have no idea how to properly parent

And this cuts across racial lines from deadbeat rural whites, to suburban Hispanics who culturally don't understand they need to be involved in educating their kids, to inner city blacks.

[Anonymous]

What if we give parents training of how to optimise their kids education outcome. Both my parents grew up in poverty in South Asia and I went to a predominantly white working class high school and I never met a parent who didn’t genuinely care about their kids. At worst they dropped out of schools themselves due to having a terrible time there, and they just now still have animosity to the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
What if we give parents training of how to optimise their kids education outcome. Both my parents grew up in poverty in South Asia and I went to a predominantly white working class high school and I never met a parent who didn’t genuinely care about their kids. At worst they dropped out of schools themselves due to having a terrible time there, and they just now still have animosity to the system.

And how do you provide that training to the parents?

Inter generational poor families tend to have fallen into a cycle of dropping out of school and having children early. The parents don't see a value to school because they don't have anyone who is a role model for doing well in school or graduating. When people are able to graduate from school and move into different types of jobs that pay more or allow them to get jobs that pay enough to be removed from welfare, the families move away.

I read a report on white families who have had multiple generations receiving disability payments. The report pointed to kids with ADHD or LDs that the families used to justify the child receiving disability payments because they could not succeed in school. Mom and Dad, or just Mom, were receiving disability for some type of injury and Grandma and Grandpa were receiving disability. Every family that they followed need the kids disability money in order to be able to pay the bills. And even then families were going out and pan handling in order to buy cigarettes.

The cyclical nature of poverty is nasty and hard to break. It takes a good amount of work and effort to do well in school and find a good job. the trades all require someone put in the effort to learn a specific skill set and then earn a certification. College is not an easy option for many people. Asking young people who come from backgrounds where all the adults in their lives have dropped out and barely work or live off of welfare or disability to navigate learning a trade or going to college is asking a lot. And it starts a lot earlier then Kindergarten.

The education gap exists because kids are arriving at K without having been read to or played with or talked to or allowed to explore in a way that prepares them for K. Kids are arriving not knowing their sounds or letters or colors or shapes or numbers. They have not been taught how to behave in school. They are hungry, tired, and poorly dressed. They are not ready for school physically or mentally or emotionally. But we hold them to standards that some MC and UMC struggle to achieve.

You can't develop a different teaching method or approach because if you suggest anything that is slower then a school in MC or UMC neighborhood you are being racist, never mind that the lower SES kids are starting in a totally different place. We can't seperate out ESOL kids and develop a program that is more targeted and focused on their needs because it is racist. So the gap just grows and grows.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What if we give parents training of how to optimise their kids education outcome. Both my parents grew up in poverty in South Asia and I went to a predominantly white working class high school and I never met a parent who didn’t genuinely care about their kids. At worst they dropped out of schools themselves due to having a terrible time there, and they just now still have animosity to the system.

And how do you provide that training to the parents?

Inter generational poor families tend to have fallen into a cycle of dropping out of school and having children early. The parents don't see a value to school because they don't have anyone who is a role model for doing well in school or graduating. When people are able to graduate from school and move into different types of jobs that pay more or allow them to get jobs that pay enough to be removed from welfare, the families move away.

I read a report on white families who have had multiple generations receiving disability payments. The report pointed to kids with ADHD or LDs that the families used to justify the child receiving disability payments because they could not succeed in school. Mom and Dad, or just Mom, were receiving disability for some type of injury and Grandma and Grandpa were receiving disability. Every family that they followed need the kids disability money in order to be able to pay the bills. And even then families were going out and pan handling in order to buy cigarettes.

The cyclical nature of poverty is nasty and hard to break. It takes a good amount of work and effort to do well in school and find a good job. the trades all require someone put in the effort to learn a specific skill set and then earn a certification. College is not an easy option for many people. Asking young people who come from backgrounds where all the adults in their lives have dropped out and barely work or live off of welfare or disability to navigate learning a trade or going to college is asking a lot. And it starts a lot earlier then Kindergarten.

The education gap exists because kids are arriving at K without having been read to or played with or talked to or allowed to explore in a way that prepares them for K. Kids are arriving not knowing their sounds or letters or colors or shapes or numbers. They have not been taught how to behave in school. They are hungry, tired, and poorly dressed. They are not ready for school physically or mentally or emotionally. But we hold them to standards that some MC and UMC struggle to achieve.

You can't develop a different teaching method or approach because if you suggest anything that is slower then a school in MC or UMC neighborhood you are being racist, never mind that the lower SES kids are starting in a totally different place. We can't seperate out ESOL kids and develop a program that is more targeted and focused on their needs because it is racist. So the gap just grows and grows.

I posted previously that I was a poor Asian immigrant. I grew up watching Who’s the Boss, Family Ties, Different Strokes, etc. My mom was the housekeeper of a doctor family. I never went to the doctor’s home but my mom would tell us stories about their family. I knew that these people who lived the life I wanted all had jobs that required college.

I lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. I looked up my old school and it is rated a 1 on great schools and is 100% free lunch. I did test into a gifted program and attended a magnet high school. My magnet high school had a lot of smart black students.

I was shy and a good listener. Teachers always liked me. I think these poor kids need someone to believe in them whether it is a parent, sibling, teacher, mentor.

[Anonymous]

Whenever schools are mentioned and equity is mentioned, it always seems to be for African Americans. No other ethnic group struggles the way this group does.

I have seen African immigrants excel. I have seen uneducated refugees from all over the world work hard and succeed. The US has so many opportunities. You have to take advantage of the opportunities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So a poor kid of illiterate or non English speaking parents will have no benefit or even regress if they attend free high quality pre-k?

Bull ! People are so scared of their mediocre kid getting outperformed by poor POC kids aren’t they?

Our ESOL students who attend pre-k are so much better off than the ESOL students who start in kindergarten. It's hard to learn content at the same time as learning language. I've only had one student in the last 12 years who started in kindergarten with no English who was able to keep up with the grade level standards. She just started high school at the best high school in our district because she's incredibly intelligent. She tested out of ESOL in just two years. Amazing kid.

It’s possible to keep up if the content has already been learned in another language.
That’s why MC kids test out so quickly out of ESOL
But if you essentially learn nothing in either language and it’s been like that for a few generations then yes it’s tough

I teach in a Title 1 school. Most older newcomers have limited/interrupted education. It's not unusual to get Spanish speakers in grades 3-5 who cannot read or write in Spanish. I don't know any ESOL teachers in my district who teach MC students.

+100 come in at age 12 and never had even been in a school in any country in a regular basis. Same for parent(s)

[Anonymous]

How about closing the achievement gap from the top down by eliminating so-called “gifted and talented” programs like NYC has done?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Schools cannot overcome the parental advantage/ disadvantage faced by kids 18 hours a day outside of school. You cannot just throw $ at the problem.

They can provide opportunities and that's about it. I think we need to accept not everyone has the same values or goals in life.