Innovative Ideas to reduce educational disparity

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to get the parents involved. If parents can't or won't be involved, the school will never get better for most of those kids.

Involved, how?

DP.. care about the kids' education. Make sure the kids do their HW and tell the kids to get a good education. A parent doesn't necessarily have to be able to help with HW, though that definitely helps. MCPS provides Saturday school and summer classes for struggling students. I took a math summer class once in MS (not in MCPS). It enabled me to take more advanced math class in HS.

I grew up low income with parents who didn't speak English. And I was a latch key kid.

Most parents care about their kids' education, don't they?

Oh yes - definitely talk to teachers about how most parents care about their kids’ education. Putting your head in the sand is not going to solve this issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They started doing this in Philadelphia in the late sixties. How is it working there?

THey started doing what exactly in Philie? And are they still doing it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to get the parents involved. If parents can't or won't be involved, the school will never get better for most of those kids.

Involved, how?

DP.. care about the kids' education. Make sure the kids do their HW and tell the kids to get a good education. A parent doesn't necessarily have to be able to help with HW, though that definitely helps. MCPS provides Saturday school and summer classes for struggling students. I took a math summer class once in MS (not in MCPS). It enabled me to take more advanced math class in HS.

I grew up low income with parents who didn't speak English. And I was a latch key kid.

Most parents care about their kids' education, don't they?

Oh yes - definitely talk to teachers about how most parents care about their kids’ education. Putting your head in the sand is not going to solve this issue.

So actually you mean something more specific than just caring about their kids' education. What, specifically, do you mean?

[Anonymous]

This whole thread sounds like OP is crowdsourcing ideas/input for some sort of a school project. Are you, OP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They started doing this in Philadelphia in the late sixties. How is it working there?

THey started doing what exactly in Philie? And are they still doing it?

Diversifying schools by bringing together kids from various parts of the city. I'm not sure if they're still doing it, but I'm thinking that there are probably articles and studies that can tell us how this idea worked there and use those lessons to move forward. There's no need to reinvent the wheel when we can learn from those who went before us.

[Anonymous]

I tend to agree. OP sounds very naive and Pollyanna-ish. Have you ever been a parent? Teacher? Worked in a school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trying to think outside the box to resolve the educational disparities of MCPS, seems some schools consistently perform better, likely due to the insular nature of the well to population attending those schools.

It’s time we finally do something instead of complaining about it. Children of lesser means should have the same educational opportunity as the wealthy and the well off children would really grow if they expanded their multicultural experiences and exposures.

So this isn’t really an innovation because it’s been done before in other places but should we start to advocate for diversified schools... we already have a robust busing system all we need to do is end the practice of local based schooling (which sadly has its roots in segregation, yet has persisted). Amazing how that segregation remains today in schools, albeit more ‘economic’ than race based but we all know pervasive institutional racial discrimination leads to economic disparities and that translates to the reduced educational opportunity in the local school where the victims of systemic generational racism attend.

It cannot be that hard to develop a computer model which will place students in schools to create a balance in the schools of the wonderful diversity we have in the county. What a truly enriching experience it would be for all our young students. The only challenges I see would be potentially longer school bus commutes but I think this one is workable. We already have many of the ‘gifted’ program students traveling cross county. Sure another challenge will be some will complain, but like all change once instituted they’d get used to it.

Let’s have a good discussion and start to make our schools better for all. Please no haters here, the first step to advantageous change is constructive dialogue.

You think longer bus commutes is workable. I, and many others, do not. The school day for elementary school students is long enough. My young child does not get home until 4:20 as it is. Longer bus commutes would make it very difficult to be involved in any extracurricular activities. Our home school has tons of parent volunteers. If the school was further from home, less parents would volunteer. Part of the public school experience is getting to know the children and families that live nearby. I think bussing is a TERRIBLE idea, and one I and many others would strongly fight against. Sure, it might help those in some populations. But it is not worth it to me to have my child sitting on a bus for longer periods of the day of what is already too long of a day to deal with these issues. And one complaint I hear about the gifted programs is that the kids have to travel so far to get to it! At our school, many children don't even apply because the parents DON'T want their kids being bussed another 25 minutes away!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This whole thread sounds like OP is crowdsourcing ideas/input for some sort of a school project. Are you, OP?

Really? I would have said that OP is part of a disinformation campaign to stir up rumors and uncertainty about MCPS. District-wide boundary studies! Cross-county busing! Moving magnet programs! Rezoning students to unidentified future schools! Abolishing neighborhood schools! I'm not sure to what end - is there a particular candidate whom this rumor-milling would favor? Maybe I can crowdsource an answer to this question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I tend to agree. OP sounds very naive and Pollyanna-ish. Have you ever been a parent? Teacher? Worked in a school?

OP is 18 years old, if that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole thread sounds like OP is crowdsourcing ideas/input for some sort of a school project. Are you, OP?

Really? I would have said that OP is part of a disinformation campaign to stir up rumors and uncertainty about MCPS. District-wide boundary studies! Cross-county busing! Moving magnet programs! Rezoning students to unidentified future schools! Abolishing neighborhood schools! I'm not sure to what end - is there a particular candidate whom this rumor-milling would favor? Maybe I can crowdsource an answer to this question.

And I think OP is just a troll.

[Anonymous]

Busing kids arbitrarily is not going to dramatically improve student achievement. Instead of struggling students you'll have tired, struggling students. It's a major inconvenience for minimal returns.

What you describe is like the desegregation busing that did impact achievement significanty because there were subatantial differences in resource allotment. If one group has current textbooks, lots of lab equipment, and well maintained facilities and the other doesn't, busing the haves to the have-nots school provides an incentive to make up the shortfall. I don't think anyone is suggesting that's the problem here.

Clearly the correlation between academic achievement and SES is complex and tied to a multitude of factors. The best way to address it, however, is to strengthen academics. I think there are 3 key areas that need to be addressed:

1. Curriculum - An independent audit has concluded that MCPS'S curriculum is awful. We need a rigorous, content rich curriculum. We need to teach phonics explicitly. We need to have content rich courses in Science and Social Studies which will also help with reading comprehension by supplying context. We need to have a mathematic curriculum developed by mathematical experts (and eliminate calculators before high school). We need to teach grammar, spelling, and handwriting. We need to have textbooks that are prepared and reviewed by subject matter experts, with topics that progress in a logical order, with explanations and examples (especially vital for those who have the least academic support at home), and with convenient features like glossaries and indexes. (Ideally, I'd like for everyone to learn a foreign language and have a comprehensive health class starting in 1st grade, but those are wants, not need.)

2. Grading - The grading system needs to be overhauled. Every assignment should be graded for correctness and all errors should be marked. I'd like to see a percentage based grading scale as that seems the most straightforward indicator of a child's academic performance. Take away the 50% credit for an attempt. Take away test retakes. If you want to allow retakes, it should be at the assignment level where learning is supposed to occur, not at the assessment level. If the child's grade is low they can do extra course-related work to bring up their grade which will give them a chance to inprove their understanding and/or develop an interest in the subject. Restore cumulative finals.

3. Grouping - Have FLEXIBLE ability grouping (not tracking). With MCPS's preferred heterogeneous grouping, high performance students are often largely ignored, struggling students don't get as much help as they need, and on-level students aren't encouraged to reach their potential. Unless you're going to completely ignore grade level and above grade level students, any attention and class time spent addressing their needs is less that can be devoted to those who need help the most. Sometimes, higher achieving students are set to peer tutor struggling atudents which shortchanges them both. The high achieving student should be given the opportunity to learn. If not, why do they need to be at school? Further, the high achieving student, whatever the reading and math level, will not be as effective as a well-trained, licensed teacher.

Flexible ability grouping has been done, successfully in MCPS.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/03/AR2007110301167.html?sid=ST2007110301386

The fact is that education in MCPS is broken. A lot of times, teachers may go outside the curriculum to make up the deficiencies, but this would be teacher dependent. There could possibly be a correlation by school if more experienced teachers who know what supplemental instruction children need and are secure enough in their jobs to go outside the curriculum are drawn to certain schools. The key is not to shuffle around the students so that students might happen to get one of these gems. The key is to change the curriculum so that all teachers are providing all necessary content.

Going to a high SES school is no guarantee that academic conditions will be better, as amply demonstrated in this recent thread concerning math instruction at Churchill:

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/749557.page

I've long been convinced that a large part of MCPS's "success" is that it has a large percentage of well-educated parents. These parents know what is vital for academic success, and where they see shortfalls, will either tutor the child at home or high a tutor from the locally booming tutor industry. Bussing a child to another school "to instill educational virtue", is unlikely to be successful if the key to being a "better student" is to get supplemental instruction outside the school. I think you'd get a better return if you spent the bussing fund on vouchers to Sylvan, Kumon, Mathnasium, Orton Gillingham, Lindamood Bell, etc. They can learn to harmonize there, where they're actually learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trying to think outside the box to resolve the educational disparities of MCPS, seems some schools consistently perform better, likely due to the insular nature of the well to population attending those schools.

It’s time we finally do something instead of complaining about it. Children of lesser means should have the same educational opportunity as the wealthy and the well off children would really grow if they expanded their multicultural experiences and exposures.

So this isn’t really an innovation because it’s been done before in other places but should we start to advocate for diversified schools... we already have a robust busing system all we need to do is end the practice of local based schooling (which sadly has its roots in segregation, yet has persisted). Amazing how that segregation remains today in schools, albeit more ‘economic’ than race based but we all know pervasive institutional racial discrimination leads to economic disparities and that translates to the reduced educational opportunity in the local school where the victims of systemic generational racism attend.

It cannot be that hard to develop a computer model which will place students in schools to create a balance in the schools of the wonderful diversity we have in the county. What a truly enriching experience it would be for all our young students. The only challenges I see would be potentially longer school bus commutes but I think this one is workable. We already have many of the ‘gifted’ program students traveling cross county. Sure another challenge will be some will complain, but like all change once instituted they’d get used to it.

Let’s have a good discussion and start to make our schools better for all. Please no haters here, the first step to advantageous change is constructive dialogue.

Your fundamental premise is flawed. You're judging school performance based on averages when in fact the same child would likely do equally well at any of these schools. The difference isn't the schools but the extent of poverty at these schools that impact the average. It doesn't mean there aren't kids at all these schools who score off the charts. It's that some schools have higher numbers of poor students whose scores tend to bring down the average. The problem isn't with the schools and no amount of school spending will address this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Busing kids arbitrarily is not going to dramatically improve student achievement. Instead of struggling students you'll have tired, struggling students. It's a major inconvenience for minimal returns.

What you describe is like the desegregation busing that did impact achievement significanty because there were subatantial differences in resource allotment. If one group has current textbooks, lots of lab equipment, and well maintained facilities and the other doesn't, busing the haves to the have-nots school provides an incentive to make up the shortfall. I don't think anyone is suggesting that's the problem here.

Clearly the correlation between academic achievement and SES is complex and tied to a multitude of factors. The best way to address it, however, is to strengthen academics. I think there are 3 key areas that need to be addressed:

1. Curriculum - An independent audit has concluded that MCPS'S curriculum is awful. We need a rigorous, content rich curriculum. We need to teach phonics explicitly. We need to have content rich courses in Science and Social Studies which will also help with reading comprehension by supplying context. We need to have a mathematic curriculum developed by mathematical experts (and eliminate calculators before high school). We need to teach grammar, spelling, and handwriting. We need to have textbooks that are prepared and reviewed by subject matter experts, with topics that progress in a logical order, with explanations and examples (especially vital for those who have the least academic support at home), and with convenient features like glossaries and indexes. (Ideally, I'd like for everyone to learn a foreign language and have a comprehensive health class starting in 1st grade, but those are wants, not need.)

2. Grading - The grading system needs to be overhauled. Every assignment should be graded for correctness and all errors should be marked. I'd like to see a percentage based grading scale as that seems the most straightforward indicator of a child's academic performance. Take away the 50% credit for an attempt. Take away test retakes. If you want to allow retakes, it should be at the assignment level where learning is supposed to occur, not at the assessment level. If the child's grade is low they can do extra course-related work to bring up their grade which will give them a chance to inprove their understanding and/or develop an interest in the subject. Restore cumulative finals.

3. Grouping - Have FLEXIBLE ability grouping (not tracking). With MCPS's preferred heterogeneous grouping, high performance students are often largely ignored, struggling students don't get as much help as they need, and on-level students aren't encouraged to reach their potential. Unless you're going to completely ignore grade level and above grade level students, any attention and class time spent addressing their needs is less that can be devoted to those who need help the most. Sometimes, higher achieving students are set to peer tutor struggling atudents which shortchanges them both. The high achieving student should be given the opportunity to learn. If not, why do they need to be at school? Further, the high achieving student, whatever the reading and math level, will not be as effective as a well-trained, licensed teacher.

Flexible ability grouping has been done, successfully in MCPS.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/03/AR2007110301167.html?sid=ST2007110301386

The fact is that education in MCPS is broken. A lot of times, teachers may go outside the curriculum to make up the deficiencies, but this would be teacher dependent. There could possibly be a correlation by school if more experienced teachers who know what supplemental instruction children need and are secure enough in their jobs to go outside the curriculum are drawn to certain schools. The key is not to shuffle around the students so that students might happen to get one of these gems. The key is to change the curriculum so that all teachers are providing all necessary content.

Going to a high SES school is no guarantee that academic conditions will be better, as amply demonstrated in this recent thread concerning math instruction at Churchill:

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/749557.page

I've long been convinced that a large part of MCPS's "success" is that it has a large percentage of well-educated parents. These parents know what is vital for academic success, and where they see shortfalls, will either tutor the child at home or high a tutor from the locally booming tutor industry. Bussing a child to another school "to instill educational virtue", is unlikely to be successful if the key to being a "better student" is to get supplemental instruction outside the school. I think you'd get a better return if you spent the bussing fund on vouchers to Sylvan, Kumon, Mathnasium, Orton Gillingham, Lindamood Bell, etc. They can learn to harmonize there, where they're actually learning.

+1000

[Anonymous]

It depends on whether you want to improve the optics, gentrify areas to push poverty out/increase the # of residents with higher SES, help a smaller number of low SES students who perform high gain access to better schools, or raise the performance of all students.

1. Optics/ small number -Re-districting and magnet programs only help a small number of poor students. On the pro side- they enable more advanced course offerings so a poor student who is high performing has the option to access a higher level course that normally wouldn't have enough students to support in a low performing school. Another pro is that when the number of low performing/poor students is very low then the peer pressure of the higher performing students kicks in. If you are surrounded by kids who do their homework every night and prioritize grades then in order to fit in you'll start to adopt these habits. In this scenario, the kid's low performance is very noticeable, flagged early on and the school intervenes quickly. If 40% is failing too the kid isn't going to get individual attention. The cons are that this only works if you have a low poverty rate within your school district, the poverty is distributed where its geographically feasible to redistribute, and you have money to bus kids all over to magnets. The poverty rate for MCPS is way too high for this to have positive impact on very many students, Its more likely to create a negative impact on poor struggling students by hiding them behind the UMC high performing students. Poor kids in the regular programs at Blair, RM, and Poolesville are doing no better than poor kids at other schools. The OOB magnets being located in their schools will give the small number of high performing poor kids an opportunity to excel but its does little for the rest of the kids.

Principals like these approaches because it makes their numbers look better and school systems like the optics of schools appearing to be equal performing even though there is segregation within the school.

2. Gentrify/push out poverty - This only helps poor kids by reducing their numbers so the remaining poor get more resources. This is the magnet argument. If you build an OOB magnet that is rigorous and can attract the highest performing students across the county then you will attract more UMC whites into the area gentrifying the area. Again this only helps the smaller numbers of high performing poor students by giving them an alternative peer group and classes within their school.

3. Raise all poor kids- This requires someone else to run MCPS. The curriculum is a big part of this equation. It must be clear, comprehensive, and require mastering the material before moving to the next section. One of the complaints that MCPS ignored about 2.0 came from poor parents who said they didn't understand it and couldn't help their kids. They felt that their lack of education is what made it incomprehensible to them and MCPS pushed this idea. The wealthy PHd parents also found it incomprehensible but knew it was crap so they supplemented. K-5 needs to drill in the foundation -math facts and skills, grammar, writing and stop farting around with metacognition or whatever trendy edu jargon some Hood College grade heard on a podcast. There needs to be beginning of the year and end of year placement tests in K-5. Any kid that doesn't meet grade level on the end of year placement needs to be required to attend summer school. Any kid that fails the placement test at the beginning of the school year is placed in an intensive remedial class to catch up that includes a required afters school supervised homework club.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately, parental involvement is something that cannot be solved by re-engineering the districts. I live in a wealthy public school district in the NYC suburbs and even with the relatively homoegeneous student population (racially diverse but not economically diverse), it is the students whose parents feel the school district should raise and educate their kids that have the worst outcomes.

Single parents and poor parents are struggling to put food on the plate, maybe working 2 jobs, or are suffering because they are unemployed and thus for a variety of reasons they cannot instill educational virtue into their children. Do we let such disadvanged children of disadvantaged parents (not saying being a single parent is a disadvantage, it’s a blessing of course but single parents will on average be more busy). No, by mixing the advanced students with the disadvanged... the disadvanged can watch, learn, see from the well performing peers how to be a better student. Better students get the benefit of being a role model. Also we can use the SSL requirement to our advantage. We can assign underperforming students to high achieving students and for SSL hours, they can tutor and assist with homework the academically challenged. Since the under performers need SSL hits too, since they too are experiencing a multicultural experience... they can get SSL hours for this type of learning. Since perhaps these children would be working after school to support the family, and not doing homework and now we’ve restricted their free time in this SSL-tutor model. We can pay these students a SSL credit ‘cash award’. Thus they learns that education pays dividends. A great lesson. This would be affordable because as they become better students, the county will spend much less on all the special programs.
Then think of the social benefits. New opportunity for boyfriend and girlfriend relationships outside the static stale undiverse options now available. Kids will learn poor kids are people too, learn rich kids aren’t so bad after all, colors religions creeds and cultural barriers break down as children enjoy their shared human experience. I know this sounds cheesy but point is these are real word lessons many don’t learn until they are an adult, now they can learn them when their life is dedicated to learning. When these kids grow up they will likely be more harmonious with ‘others’ more open minded, ideally less likely to partake in the divisive and partisan political behavior the current crop in office our forcing upon society. This isn’t ‘hope and change’ rhetoric but change we can work on to hopefully bring more peaceful and prosperous future for all of our children.

Isn’t this worth a try? You say it failed in NYC, their failure is our opportunity to improve. MoCo is growing and expanding with increases of immigrants and diverse peoples, do we throw our hands up and say it can be done, so we build more walls to live behind? Or do we embrace our new neighbors, friends, and in time,our new family members. Now is the time to embrace the future for our county.

Reading what you wrote makes me realize how idealistic you are. What you describe is a utopian society where the Larlos and Larlas collaboratively work together, all the time. There are so many issues involved: (1) do parents of poor children want their kids spending more time on the bus being truck across the county? (2) Does diversifying the school truly equally help both sides? (3) You are trying to fix an academic disparity issue with something that seems superficial rather than something that has deeper roots (4) To me, education starts at home. Parents of kids who prioritize education will likely have children who do well in school. (5) you are describing what I consider a socialist society.

I think the best way to close the achievement gap is to start early even before kids start Kindergarten. Provide programs in poorer areas during after school hours to motive kids and instill curiosity.

Actually the new thinking is we need to move away from the PreK model. We are over educating our kids... meaning we are forcing children into specific structured didactic with ever increasing worse results. Children are learning dependence not independence. We have expanded helicopter parenting to helicopter life from nearly cradle to post college. Kids need unsupervised play to develop properly.