Reply to Innovative Ideas to reduce educational disparity

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[quote=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.
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