Innovative Ideas to reduce educational disparity

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC is a stellar MCPS student who would love to have study buddies of different race/SEC status. Where to find such opportunities? Classmates are either uninterested or unwill.

Your child should learn how to inspire others around her to engage and make them want to learn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is a stellar MCPS student who would love to have study buddies of different race/SEC status. Where to find such opportunities? Classmates are either uninterested or unwill.

Your child should learn how to inspire others around her to engage and make them want to learn.

Really?

[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.

This!

[Anonymous]

You can't fight human nature

People pay hundreds of thousands dollars more to be in "better" schools

Some people pay private school tuition and some pay higher real estate costs

You could try and tinker with school boundaries zoning and where you put different types of housing. You could also spend money to revitalize places in the Eastern MoCo to make the more attractive of course if you do it too much prices go up and you are back to square one with a Bethesda in Silver Spring. Don't laugh it's only a matter of time people are already getting priced out

Anyway, fighting human nature is a lost cause. The best you can do is have smaller class sizes in lower performing schools with more resources too. Also I would hold back kids who can't read until they can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay here's the thing.. most kids from poor families with uneducated parents grow up not thinking that college or some type of higher education is a reality for them. It's not even in their thought process. We need to change that culture- for the kids AND for the parents.

Well once they realize the streets aren't all paved with free gold in America, they quickly realize that having 4+ kids is not ideal and neither is living on the dole. Now the key here is they may not like living on the dole; other segments of society don't have an issue with this and have serious generational poverty. Many fear that if illegals were suddenly granted citizenship and all aid prospects that "living on the dole," while working cash jobs and keeping family income under $42K reportable income, would sky rocket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is a stellar MCPS student who would love to have study buddies of different race/SEC status. Where to find such opportunities? Classmates are either uninterested or unwill.

Your child should learn how to inspire others around her to engage and make them want to learn.

Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya.

Group work even in grad school had its 50% share of freeloaders, don't tell me elementary school does not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't fight human nature

People pay hundreds of thousands dollars more to be in "better" schools

Some people pay private school tuition and some pay higher real estate costs

You could try and tinker with school boundaries zoning and where you put different types of housing. You could also spend money to revitalize places in the Eastern MoCo to make the more attractive of course if you do it too much prices go up and you are back to square one with a Bethesda in Silver Spring. Don't laugh it's only a matter of time people are already getting priced out

Anyway, fighting human nature is a lost cause. The best you can do is have smaller class sizes in lower performing schools with more resources too. Also I would hold back kids who can't read until they can.

This is beyond that.

This is fighting LAND PRICES. You know, the whole reason many people legally immigrated away from countries with zero land rights or too costly of land. Basic econ. Basic urban planning. Basic human nature.

We've all seen the studies about the Projects in NY's five boroughs - crime, drugs, killings, infestation.

You can't just raze a whole semi-dense suburban neighborhood in a Top 20 metro area in the name of social justice and cheap housing for the poors. You'll need $$billions to do so. You're decades too late, who knew that the DC area economy would be so vibrant and diverse in the 1990s?. Can't do that in any metro area in the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay here's the thing.. most kids from poor families with uneducated parents grow up not thinking that college or some type of higher education is a reality for them. It's not even in their thought process. We need to change that culture- for the kids AND for the parents.

Central American countries only mandate school until 6th grade. Not a value. Not a concept.
That plus zero assimilation here = Still not a value.

Bingo! 4 sentences sum up the problem with the OP's theory. No way busing will fix this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is so cultural. You are dealing with students whose parents never finished middle school in this country or another one. They don't do preventative care, they think paying HC insurance premiums is wrong, they work cash jobs and have Auntie raise them with their cousins, they send $100s a month back to the home country family, they never bother to learn nor use English.

Then the other culture - no father figure, rap and sports icons, violence instead of discussion, pick on those who study "like a white person", etc.

Maybe OP desires the socialist boarding school for the millions of at risk babies age 2 through 18. What is that? $100,000 per pupil room, board, field trips? Then they can graduate and create more socialist programs. Just keep paying them taxes on the books MoCo!![/b]

I hate to say it.. but THIS.

Agreed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay here's the thing.. most kids from poor families with uneducated parents grow up not thinking that college or some type of higher education is a reality for them. It's not even in their thought process. We need to change that culture- for the kids AND for the parents.

Central American countries only mandate school until 6th grade. Not a value. Not a concept.
That plus zero assimilation here = Still not a value.

Bingo! 4 sentences sum up the problem with the OP's theory. No way busing will fix this.

But kids aren’t their parents.

Hey everybody: raise your hand if you have more education than your parents. It may be hard to believe, but over a third of American college students today have parents who did not go to college: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-generation_college_students_in_the_United_States

You really can’t just write off a generation of students because they don’t have the right parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay here's the thing.. most kids from poor families with uneducated parents grow up not thinking that college or some type of higher education is a reality for them. It's not even in their thought process. We need to change that culture- for the kids AND for the parents.

Central American countries only mandate school until 6th grade. Not a value. Not a concept.
That plus zero assimilation here = Still not a value.

Bingo! 4 sentences sum up the problem with the OP's theory. No way busing will fix this.

But kids aren’t their parents.

Hey everybody: raise your hand if you have more education than your parents. It may be hard to believe, but over a third of American college students today have parents who did not go to college: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-generation_college_students_in_the_United_States

You really can’t just write off a generation of students because they don’t have the right parents.

WHo's writing them off? If anything, MCPS has proven that they do care about these students despite their upbringing. Look at the focus on the achievement gap and the continuous flow of resources that go to Title 1 schools. But clearly it's not working.. because you can't have a solution that doesn't involve parents.

[Anonymous]

I used to send my kids to tutoring until I realized how much free, guided, enrichment is available online.
This isnt about money, its cultural.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

WHo's writing them off? If anything, MCPS has proven that they do care about these students despite their upbringing. Look at the focus on the achievement gap and the continuous flow of resources that go to Title 1 schools. But clearly it's not working.. because you can't have a solution that doesn't involve parents.

What do you mean by "involve parents"? Involve them how?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
This is beyond that.

This is fighting LAND PRICES. You know, the whole reason many people legally immigrated away from countries with zero land rights or too costly of land. Basic econ. Basic urban planning. Basic human nature.

We've all seen the studies about the Projects in NY's five boroughs - crime, drugs, killings, infestation.

You can't just raze a whole semi-dense suburban neighborhood in a Top 20 metro area in the name of social justice and cheap housing for the poors. You'll need $$billions to do so. You're decades too late, who knew that the DC area economy would be so vibrant and diverse in the 1990s?. Can't do that in any metro area in the world.

Fortunately, nobody is proposing to do this. In fact, nobody has proposed to raze any whole semi-dense neighborhoods in metropolitan areas in the US for any purpose since the urban removal days ended in the 1970s,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I used to send my kids to tutoring until I realized how much free, guided, enrichment is available online.
This isnt about money, its cultural.

It takes money to have a computer and high speed internet access.

The school should provide access to the needed content without having to resort to outside instruction.

Moreover, people are using culture here to describe parental apathy. It could be that a parent who is uneducated themselves doesn't know that outside instruction is necessary in "one of the best school systems in the country". I suppose that a parent's low level of education may be cultural, but it's not apathy. If a parent is busy working 2 jobs trying to keep food on the table and a roof overhead, they are not apathetic, even if they don't have a lot of time to provide outside enrichment.

I was a SAH mom. I volunteered in schools. I provided all the types of enrichment that have been described in this thread I am about as far from apathetic as a parent can be. I was shocked and appalled at how much instruction I had to provide because of MCPS deficiencies. I had the benefit of a strong education in a public school. It had some weaknesses, but it was so much stronger on the fundamentals, which meant that I could identify and address problems as they came up. When we bought our house, school quality was a primary concern. I assumed I would have to occasionally answer a homework question or quiz my child on spelling words. I never envisioned that I would have to become a reading/grammar/math/science/social studies teacher.

I've met parents with struggling students, none of whom were indifferent to their child's education. Yes, I'm sure there are some apathetic, neglectful parents. (I strongly suspect you'll find some of those even in high SES brackets.) However, I think most are trying, like the rest of us, to help our kids to the best of our abilities, even if those abilities vary widely.

The purpose of public schools is to offer a free education to all children, regardless of their parents capabilities and/or interest in educating their children. If you felt it necessary to provide a tutor or online tutor equivalent for your children, then I think it has failed in that purpose. Thank goodness you understood your childrens' needs and had the knowledge required to get them the necessary help.