A reader forwarded this excellent article that appeared in the Denver Post.
The author Robert Zubrin scanned the state’s tables ranking schools based in large part on test scores. And this was his amazing discovery:
“So, does this testing data, acquired at great expense in both money and class time, tell us which schools are doing their job and which are performing poorly? Not at all. Rather, what really jumps out of the data is the extremely strong relationship between school rank and student family income. This correlation is so strong that it is possible to predict the rank of the school in advance with fair accuracy just by using a simple formula that multiples its percentage of low-income students by 4 and subtracts 20….
“In short, what we have managed to learn is that the children of doctors and lawyers do better on standardized tests than the children of day laborers and welfare recipients. This raises an interesting question: Why are we funding this program?
“At a time when school funds are scarce, why are we wasting tens of millions of dollars per year statewide, and close to 20 percent of classroom time, on a testing program, only to find out nothing that we didn’t know before? Does anyone actually believe that Evergreen students do better than Jefferson students because of the superior quality of the staff? If we switched school staffs, but kept the students in place, would the high scores move with the staffs or stay with the students? So, do we punish the teachers at the lower ranked schools because they are willing to take on the tougher jobs?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why are we funding this program—that is an easy one. So the children and of Doctors and Lawyers continue to maintain their location on the social capital ladder to success.The genius of race to the top is implementing policies that turn Robin Hood on its head in the name of equality of opportunity. For two decades now, the “no excuses” strategy from conservatives has eliminated poverty from educational policy debates. Politicians from both parties have learned that it is easier and more expedient to debate tenure, or vouchers, or charters, or international test scores, then to take poverty. What we now have in Washington is entire governmental mindset that believes the war on poverty was won, now it is time to race to the top.
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“What we now have in Washington is entire governmental mindset that believes the war on poverty was won. . . ”
And they also believe that the illegal wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan were also won!
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Oh, they were won, alright. Six trillion dollars in taxpayer money were diverted into the hands of a few plutocrats and into the federal jobs program known as the defense industry. The right wing adamantly opposes every government welfare program except this, the second largest one after social security.
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The only war that’s been won is the class war, and it was won by the wrong side.
As The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, indiscreetly admitted to Joe Nocera of the NY Times in 2006 (www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html),
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Since these immortal words were uttered, class antagonism and outright looting by the Overclass has only intensified, and one of the primary theaters of this war is the hostile takeover of public education.
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This is from one of Duncan’s appearances where he’s promoting a “turnaround” school:
“volunteers from City Year, a nonprofit organization that trains young people ages 17 to 24 to work with students who are having trouble with attendance, behavior or academics and who are most at risk of dropping out.
That one-on-one and small-group attention makes a big difference, Garner said, especially when class sizes are larger than one teacher can manage alone. “Having that extra body just really, really helps,” she said.”
Doesn’t this directly contradict what reformers say about class sizes? I know the tutors are volunteers not teachers, but when they pull the kids out for tutoring aren’t they simply creating a smaller class size, both for the children who are struggling and those children who remain with the teacher?
Why are smaller class sizes and more individual attention (from human beings, not screens) such a huge success here, when we call it tutoring and use volunteers?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/arne-duncan-visits-dc-school-to-cheer-city-year-volunteers/2014/02/10/c17d0410-9280-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html
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There is no question that I was an excellent 8th grade math teacher. The high school teachers often commented to my ex-students that they must have had Mr. Allen last year. I constantly run into adults who were my students who readily praise my impact on their life. I was often teaching the first quartile students in a middle school in Camden N.J..
My kids learned how to be students and made major strides. VERY FEW PAST the “test” yet everyone of them praise my my dedication and work effort. Many regret not taking advantage of the opportunities that were made available to them.
2o years later I reflect on the staff we had (before the Whitmen administration dismantle the Camden educational system) and admire the talent and dedication of that educational team.
It is a sin what has happened to urban education. The more they test the lower the effective literacy rate.
Socio-economic standing is the key ingredient to success on high stake testing. They are designed for the relevent experinces of upper middle class life style. Todays test are more socially and culturally bias than their predecessor.
“Designed by and for the pockets $$$$ of corporate America “,
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While this is true and can be noted by observing zip code results in schools, I believe in my district that something else has come into play.
While there are many low income families in our district, there is not a lot of drugs and violence in the lives of most students. In homes where there is violence and drugs in addition to poverty, the student lack of success is apparent.
In spite of some poverty , we have sustained high ratings over the years. It makes me wonder about some views of poverty and education al results. I think the key factor really is whether or not the children have parental guidance and support. If the home has a low income but they spend money on nutrition instead of drugs, and alcohol, and if the parents are interested in their student’s learning, then there is a better chance of growth. Our valedictorians don’t necessarily come from affluent households, for example.
So I am not denying that income impacts learning success. I just think that extenuating circumstances and the value placed on learning by each family has an equal impact, regardless of income.
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Deb, What’s the total percent of children who are on free and reduced lunches at your school? Typically, the higher the percentage of low income students, the lower the scores.
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What school grades probably are most closely related to is genetics. It is no surprise that the children of doctors and lawyers have higher IQ’s than welfare children. The IQ’s of children of physicists are no doubt even higher.
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Of course, Jimbo. So, we can save a lot of trouble by simply giving IQ tests to toddlers and then not bothering to educate the defectives. They can be warehoused in the underfunded shells of public schools left after the bright ones are all siphoned off to charters, and then they can handed off to the extremely profitable private prisons. As it is, today, only 3 out of every 100 citizens of the United States is in prison, in jail, or on parole. While this is the highest rate in the world, it isn’t nearly high enough to deal properly with all those defective children. Alternatively, we could institute the policy recommended in a report by the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, established in 1910 by Mary Harriman (widow of railroad baron E. H. Harriman), the Rockefeller family and the Carnegie Institution, and euthanize the bottom 10 percent to maintain the genetic purity of the population. See Edwin Black. The War against the Weak. New York: Dialogue P., 2012.
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BTW, the report I reference, above, was real, and so was the Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Records Office that issued it. The ERO was an early example of a “public-private partnership” funded jointly by a few plutocrats and the United States Government. See Edwin Black’s superb book for details.
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cx: 3 out of every 100 are, of course
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http://www.fox.com/thesimpsons/videos/
I think the Simpsons covered this in their short film (5 min), “The Longest Daycare.” Little Maggie attended the Ayn Rand School for Tots and upon entry was measured as average. No “Gifted” room for her with music, art, pastel colors and comfy furniture. Instead she was placed in the drab “Nothing Special” room where a poster on the gray walls states “Honest Bunny Sez, You Have No Future.”
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Hilarious, Michelle!
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Jim,
The children of professionals have far more advantages than the children who live in poverty. Their parents are educated; they have good medical care; they are exposed to complex vocabulary; there are books in the home and access to the Internet. They don’t worry about being homeless or staying home from school to babysit a sibling. They don’t worry about whether there is enough food for dinner. Those factors affect test scores.
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Not to mention that the children of college educated professionals grow up with the expectation that they will be going to college themselves. Children in poverty see no pay-off to higher education if they can only imagine themselves working at WalMart like their parents, aunts, cousins, etc
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This guy is known for his Eugenics views. Scary that we have people that still believe this garbage in today’s day and age. That all should have gone out with the Holocaust (and before!).
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“What school grades probably are most closely related to is genetics”
Please list your qualifications in the field of genetics.
In addition, please list your sources for this bit of “information”.
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Don’t encourage this, Ang. You know the sources.
The Bell Curve.
Any work by Jensen et al.
Applied Eugenics, by Paul Popenoe.
The Foundations of Racial Hygiene, by Alfred Ploetz.
Archiv für rassen-und gesellschafts-biologie (Archive for Racial and Social Biology), Ploetz et al.
Rasse und Selle [Race and Soul, (Nazi schoolbook)].
Comic books about supermen.
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Yes, Robert. I know.
I just insist he say it.
It matters.
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That would be Rasse und Seele, one of the most horrifying products, ever, of the human mind
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To: Mr. Jim,
From: Skull Configuration Assessment and Evaluation Office
Please report to the Phrenology Lab, Room 10, at noon today for your mandated Official Skull Configuration Assessment and Evaluation.
Failure to comply with this directive will result in your permanent rating of Ineffective.
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For those in favor of a “better education for all,” let me repeat a short personal anecdote from my long ago HS days that underscores this posting.
A classmate came from a solidly upper-middle family on the other side of Eight Mile Road [hint: also a title from the rapper Eminem, designating the dividing line between Detroit proper and the suburbs]. She was modest, self-deprecating and smart—and she had spent every summer of her life on the French Mediterranean with her family. *She had wonderful stories to tell of sailing there.*
Her parents were, to put it mildly, Francophiles. They provided every opportunity they could to keep her French at the same level as her English [e.g., growing up she had a native French-speaking nanny]. She was an American college/university bound student when I met her; she was at the same level in French. The fearsomely demanding advanced French teacher at my HS was renowned [okay, feared] for a take-no-prisoners approach to teaching French language and culture. There were not only no easy A’s, there were no easy any grades in her class.
Yet within days of entering the French Class From Hell, my classmate was told by the teacher that she was going to automatically get an A. Furthermore, her role for the rest of the semester was to assist the teacher in instructing the other students in all aspects of oral and written French.
Family income, if I may be permitted, is shorthand for all the advantages that her family could provide her, including those memorable summer months on the family boat sailing the beautiful waters of the French Riviera.
She wasn’t a genius at languages—she had just been given every opportunity to love learning and using French.
Of course, I won’t be surprised to read comments that pretend not to understand what I am getting at.
I’ve read your Marxist playbook, so here’s right back at ya:
“A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.”
😎
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You Krazy Groucho Marxist you!
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“If we switched school staffs, but kept the students in place, would the high scores move with the staffs or stay with the students?”
A fantastic question.
It is not difficult at all for me to teach in a way that far exceeds the comprehension of my 46-percent-free-and-reduced-lunch students for the limits on their exposure to the world.
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Merdcedes, just ask Jimbo, above. The experiences those children have had make no difference. They are where they are because they have defective genes.
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“If we switched school staffs, but kept the students in place, would the high scores move with the staffs or stay with the students?”
Mr. Zubrin doesn’t seem to understand how DEFORMY MAGIC works. Do I need to explain? As everyone knows, magic works by incantation. You utter the magic words, and before you can say “abacadabra” or “VAM, BAM, thank you, MA’AM,” whatever you demanded transpires.
For example, NCLB demanded that all states create high standards and test on those and that by 2014, all students would be proficient. The DOE carefully reviewed the state standards and tests to ensure that they were sufficiently demanding. And see? It’s now 2014, and all students are proficient.
Well, except those that were taught by lousy teachers. Let me explain. DEFORMY MAGIC would have worked perfectly (duh, that’s the nature of Magic) if only the standards had been national and we had had school grades and VAM in place universally. NCLB was an inexact utterance of the incantation. Everyone knows that Magic only works if you say the incantation precisely. You aren’t going to roll any stones from in front of caves by saying, “Open Sesayou.” You have to say, “Open Sesame.”
DEFORMY MAGIC is simply an application of the well-established principle that “You get what you measure,” and in Rheformish, “measure” means “demand.” Rheformish to standard English translation: You get what you demand.
If you are the boss, and you make a demand, it must and will happen, period. So, we just have to show these “teachers” who is boss. We have to show EVERYONE who is boss. That is what the “State” means in Common Core State Standards.
from the Rheformish Lexicon:
failure. noun. What U.S. public schools did before they were replaced by virtual charters run by the grifter brothers, cousins, and golfing buddies of Party members.
teacher. noun. Pimply adolescent given five weeks of training prior to spending two years doing Great Grates with dark-skinned children before going on to his or her real job in investment banking (Archaic usage: whiny union member with ersatz degree from an education “school,” responsible for failure.)
DEFORMY MAGIC. noun. Magical incantation, similar to the philosopher’s stone or a magic elixir, for ending failure. [Usage Note: DEFORMY MAGIC is a registered trademark of Achieve, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the U.S. Department of Education, collectively known as the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth (MiniTru), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation]
State. adjectival noun. Of the Leviathan, the distant, centralized, authority that serves as the enforcement arm of The Party to Which You Are Not Invited (As in, “Great Party at Berlusconi’s, hey?”)
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cx: all students be proficient, not all students would be proficient
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Not to quibble, but isn’t the correct incantation, “Vam, scam, screw you, Ma’am”?
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And we have a winner! Excellent comment!
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I’ll have to consult the Rheformish grimoire and get back to you on that, Michael. But knowing you to be a great scholar of Rheformish, I take your correction seriously.
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There’s always Andrew Cuomo’s version:
“Slam, Bam! – thank you VAM.”
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Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
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KrazyTA – Your story reminds me of a friend of mine back in college. He was an Armenian
who had been born in Lebannon, grew up in Egypt and came to this country when he was in high school. In Egypt at least at that time the educational system was conducted in French. So my friend took a senior course in French Literature when he was a freshman and aced the course. He could speak Armenian, Arabic, Frrench and English fluently. He told me that when arrived in this country he knew no English. As a freshman he spoke English with a just barely noticeable accent but by the time he was a senior there was no way to tell from hie voice that he was not a native speaker. Not everybody can do this. Henry Kissinger has never learned how to speak English. Maybe just as well.
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“What School Grades Measure Best: Family Income”
School Grades don’t “measure” anything. They are an extremely poor representation of supposed school quality assessment. This common logical fallacy dominates educational discourse, that grades and/or tests “measure” “something”. Grades and tests are not measuring devices even though they may “numerize” the resulting assessment. Putting a number to something is not “measuring” it.
To put it another way, Wilson’s way that is: “So what does a test [supposedly] measure in our world? It [supposedly] measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it [supposedly] measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.” In other words, words such as “measure” in these instances are meaningless.
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The dirty little secret of high-stakes criterion-referenced testing is that you can design a test to get any results, whatsoever, that you wish to get. You give the test to a sample group and add or throw out questions until the results are what you want. Or, if that’s too much trouble, you simply manipulate the raw-score-to-scaled score conversion tables. (If you graph the conversion tables for the New York exams during the NCLB era, for example, you will find that instead of those conversions being linear, they jump around like a gerbil on methamphetamine or lines in a Jackson Pollack painting.) And, if that’s too much trouble, you simply announce whatever cut scores you want.
from the Rheformish lexicon:
research. n. Process by which one gathers and manipulates numerical information to yield the outcomes one was looking for to begin with. See data-driven decision making.
(This process was brilliantly illustrated by the recent Thomas B. Fordham Institute study of time that schools spend on assessments. You decide beforehand that you want that number to be low. Then, you count only the time actually spent taking the state high-stakes test, and you ignore time spent doing a. diagnostic testing, benchmark testing, and practice testing related to the state test; b. test prep using a wide variety of online and print prep materials; c. activities and exercises in the regular curricula that have been modeled on the state test questions; d. afterschool and summer test remediation classes; e. training related to the tests; f. staff data chats; g. training in the use of test prep products; h. exam proctoring, etc. In other words, you ignore the otherwise obvious fact the NCLB and CC$$ standards-and-testing approach has turned our schools into institutions for test prep and has driven out rational, coherent curricula and pedagogy.)
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Robert D. Shepherd: IMHO, I am sure that even some viewers of this blog will view your first sentence somewhat askance—
“The dirty little secret of high-stakes criterion-referenced testing is that you can design a test to get any results, whatsoever, that you wish to get.”
I would urge anyone interested in the subject of how standardized tests are designed, produced, tested, administered and scored to read works like that of psychometrician Daniel Koretz, MEASURING UP: WHAT EDUCATIONAL TESTING REALLY TELLS US (2009, paperback) and of Todd Farley, MAKING THE GRADES: MY MISADVENTURES IN THE STANDARDIZED TESTING INDUSTRY (2009, paperback). Also take a look at works like that of Noel Wilson [as Duane Swacker has referenced many times] and of Banesh Hoffman (THE TYRANNY OF TESTING, 2003 edition of the 1964 edition of the 1962 original).
If you replaced the words “dirty little secret of” in that sentence with “openly acknowledged standard practice in” it would dull the sentence’s impact but would be even truer because—
It is no secret that when you buy or rent those highly polished standardized tests you are writing about, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
I mean that literally.
So 70% fail in recent NY tests?
They paid for standardized tests that gave them a 70% fail rate. That’s what they wanted, that’s what they paid for, that’s what they got.
So pay no attention when self-styled “education reformers” bemoan the results of their own deliberately rigged-to-fail schemes. Between their words and their deeds, well, one of those old dead Greek guys knew the type over 2000 years ago:
“Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, Utters another.” [Homer]
$tudent $ucce$$, anyone?
😎
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Let’s peel away one more layer:
What doe family income measure?
and more importantly . . .
What advantages does family income provide the child?
and even more importantly . . .
Which of these advantages are independent of family income?
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Interesting thoughts NYS Teacher!
More folks should ponder what you have written!
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Education level of the parents is also sometimes used as a predictor of student achievement. Probably even more accurate than income, I would imagine.
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Income (SES), then educational level of the mother.
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While spending six years on the Duluth School Board we learned the same thing, we know this now. Your correct lets move on and put the money and time where it matters. I want to personally thank you for your work, be well.
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Quality after school programs with busing included would have benefitted students.
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A teacher Blog you will love http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/category/college-board/
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Mr. Zubrin’s superb article should be read by every education policy maker in the country. Even the slow learners in state legislatures and the U.S.E.D. should be able to follow it. What he says is obvious, clear, and extremely important.
Years ago, after the Challenger tragedy, a committee was debating whether the O-rings on the Challenger were susceptible to breaking due to cold. The manufacturer was presenting reams of data to prove otherwise. Richard Feynman, who was sitting on the panel, placed a glass of ice water in front of him and dropped an O-ring into it. He waited a bit, fished it out, and snapped it in two.
Mr. Zubrin does in this article what Feynman did.
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And how “simple” Feynman’s mind worked!
(and isn’t that simplicity what constitutes the mind of a “true” scientist?)
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There is nothing quite as stupid as spending billions of dollars to tell us what we already know. But then billionaires are not always smart, intuitive, creative or good, they are just rich. So the results to them seem wonderful and amazing and they will continue to shove it to the teachers who are struggling with no materials and poorer students in less funded schools, like they are to blame. It seems they don’t see reality too clearly either.
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Quite correct, Julie!!
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Wow. I’m forwarding this article onto my legislature friends in my state. They REALLY need to see what a waste of money this is. I LOVE how a simple formula could pretty much predict each schools’ grade (that last sentence was sarcasm).
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So what happens when you have a public charter with the same kids as the zoned school in the same building and the Charter gets results as good as those rich doctors and lawyers kids in the burbs and the zoned school fails to garner more then 13% passing rates? Does that have anything to do with socio-economics?
http://nypost.com/2013/08/11/schooling-the-critics/
Keep blaming anything other then those responsible folks….
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“a public charter with the same kids as the zoned school in the same building ”
Please give example(s) where this has or does occur.
Thanks!
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I just did. Success Academy in NYC, their schools are in the top 10 in the state. They beat Scarsedales system (rich and white) by 14% points in the Math tests and beat their colocated schools by the multiples you see in the above link, SA Harlem is 99% minority and poor. You see, when its great teaching with a proper education model, you get results regardless of skin color or parents income.
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“proper education model, ”
Constant test prep?
Counseling out those who will not cut it?
High attrition rates?
Closing schools to participate in political rallies?
Sounds great….for other peoples children.
I am not seeing The Obama, Gates or Emanuel children enrolling any time soon
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SA does not coucil out and the public charters of NYCs attrition rates are LOWER then that of zoned schools. As for ‘excessive test prep’ what a joke, when a poor minority tests well via a public charter its due to ‘excessive test prep’ but when they fail the same test via a zoned school its due to their parents income.
See the pattern here?! Blame everyone but those responsible.
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MS — what’s the response to Tim’s comment below re: SA’s policy of no back-filling? I think it’s extremely compelling, and unlike the crowd favorite of “counseling out,” it doesn’t really seem to be in dispute.
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Many schools only have certain entry points. I have asked tim to respond to this on a few threads now and am not getting much of an answer. For example, Hunter College Elementary School which is a public school but chartered by the CUNY system and run on public funds only accepts children at 1st grad and at no other point. For some reason this is ok but for Success to only allow kids in from K-3 is some how in violation of the law which is preposterous. You see, the anti choice movement wants it both ways, they want to blame charters like Success for their spectacular results by calling them cheaters, but when other schools have similar policies, its all ok, let alone if its a school within the DOE system such as various Gifted and Talented programs that you must test into. This doesnt even get into the NYC High School system that is extremely segregated and based almost soley on test results. But again, its ok for some to do it not others. We call this a double standard.
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You’ve gotten your answer multiple times, MS; you’ve simply chosen to ignore it.
There is no state law prohibiting screened or exam admissions at traditional district schools.
There is a state law prohibiting screened or exam admissions at charter schools.
If you feel the state law is unfair or unjust, then by all means you should work to have it amended. Until that happens, the law is the law, and any school in the Success network with “scholars” in fourth grade or above is violating it–quite proudly and conspicuously, to boot!
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Is it fair that traditional schools can screen students based on aptitude but public charters can not? Why do zoned schools get to pick and choose who they admit but not public charters?
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“Is it fair that traditional schools can screen students based on aptitude but public charters can not? Why do zoned schools get to pick and choose who they admit but not public charters?”
First, here in NYC, we don’t refer to selective admission schools as “zoned” or “traditional.” Some have some kind of zones (e.g., “district-wide” schools), others don’t (“city-wide”), but none of them are traditional zoned schools. Just FYI.
Second, I think you can just write “charter schools,” rather than “public charter schools,” assuming you’re not trying to avoid confusion with “private charter schools,” which to my knowledge don’t exist.
Third, what’s your point? That it’s unfair that some public schools have screened admissions? Or that it’s unfair that charter schools don’t? Either way, write your local and state representatives and tell them you how you think the law should be changed.
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Damn, sometimes you write a comment and it gets a great discussion! Thanks for all who contributed. But then again isn’t that what this site is all about ” to discuss better education for all”.
Again, thanks for all the responses!
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FLERP, I think it is rude to answer a question with another question. And this question is not only directed towards you, its towards anyone with the courage to answer.
All we hear all day is how public charters pick and choose who they allow entry to, yet, the law, as cited on this thread, clearly shows it is illegal for public charters to pick and choose who they accept. Yet at the same time we have various forms of non chartered public schools that can pick and choose based on academic standards and that is not only acceptable but encouraged.
So I want to know, why is it ok for zoned or non chartered schools to have the ability to pick and choose who they enroll but public charters are forced to have a blind lottery?
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What MS is referring to, of course, is the percentage of Success Academy students who are deemed “proficient” on state tests. Success has done an admirable job of carrying what students it admits and retains to proficiency on state tests.
And as we all (I hope) know by now, the Success network is in flagrant violation of NYS law, which states that admission to charter schools must not be “limited on the basis of intellectual ability, measures of achievement or aptitude . . . ” They do not admit any new children after the very first day of third grade, and they justify this permanent policy due to their belief that new children would struggle academically.
Success should not receive any new charters, any renewals of existing charters, or any space in DOE facilities until they are in compliance with New York State law. The test scores they produce as a limited, screened school are irrelevant.
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Many public schools have a transient population. It is interesting how this effects test scores.
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Tim, Success has an admissions policy based on a blind lottery with no testing or academic requirements needed. In fact, it would be illegal, as you claim, for them to require certain academic standards to admit students. So tell me, at what point in their admissions process do they deny entry to students due to lackluster academic abilities?
Your claim that they are in violation of the law is wrong. Their is no point in their admissions process in which the academic aptitude of any applicant is ever checked.
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“Success says its demanding program requires that a student attend its schools almost from the get go. By the time they reach middle school, Success spokesperson Jenny Sedlis, said in an email, ‘Success scholars have had thousands of hours more of instruction [and] are several levels above grade level. … We want all children to feel and be successful. We wouldn’t want the newer children to be at a disadvantage.'”
NYS Law Article 56, Section 2854 #2: Admissions; enrollment; students. (a) A charter school shall be nonsectarian in its programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations and shall not charge tuition or fees; provided that a charter school may require the payment of fees on the same basis and to the same extent as other public schools. A charter school shall not discriminate against any student, employee or any other person on the basis of ethnicity, national origin, gender, or disability or any other ground that would be unlawful if done by a school. Admission of students shall not be limited on the basis of intellectual ability, measures of achievement or aptitude . …
NYS Law Article 56, Section 2854 #2c: A charter school shall serve one or more of the grades one through twelve, and shall limit admission to pupils within the grade levels served.
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Tim, you are making two different statements. Again, Success has no point in their admissions process in which applicants academic aptitude is checked. They only enroll via a blind lottery for grades K thru 3. This is completely legal, in fact it is the ONLY legal way they are allowed to accept students. Are you claiming that by not accepting students in 4th, 5th or 6th grade they are in violation of the law? If so that would be incorrect as they are not required by law to admit students at all grade points. The law only requires them to not deny students based on education levels during their ‘admissions or enrollment’ process. If they have no process after 3rd grade, they are not in violation of the law.
Now I assume what you really mean is the school not taking in students mid year for those who leave. While this is something to debate it is also not part of their admissions or enrollment process as they do not accept students at those times, therefore it also does not fall under the law you cite.
So, tell me how SA breaks the admissions/enrollment laws of NY State at any point in their admissions/enrollment process?
I will say, I think its unfortunate that they stop accepting children after 3rd grade, I would be saddened if I moved into a zone with a failing traditional school and could not get into a Success due to my kid being a 4th grader.
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Tim, The law does not require charters to accept new students at all grade levels. IN fact you quoted the law yourself:
NYS Law Article 56, Section 2854 #2c: A charter school shall serve one or more of the grades one through twelve, and shall limit admission to pupils within the grade levels served.
Shall, in legal terms, is not a mandatory term but a direction. This means that charters are limited to enrolling only students in the grades they serve but are not required to accept students at each grade level. I think you are not understanding the proper meaning of the law.
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SA has two teachers per classroom, which is unsustainable for neighborhood public schools and makes comparing them a moot point.
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There are Success schools with classrooms educating 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. We know from the attrition numbers that there is space in these classrooms. Children who don’t attend Success schools are not allowed to apply for these vacant seats because the network doesn’t feel they are smart enough to keep up.
Success is in violation of the state’s charter school law.
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Even a blind lottery is a de facto skimming mechanism, because the most dysfunctional parents can’t get it together enough to apply. Right there Success has avoided having to deal with the most difficult to teach.
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Continuing to claim that a college experimental demonstration lab school for gifted children is a charter school –when it was repeatedly explained previously that the school was established in 1870 as an integral component of the colleges’ Teacher Education program and turned into a program for gifted children in 1941– long before charter schools existed, is absolutely ridiculous. That is a comparison of very old apples with brand new oranges.
If “shall” in education law was permissive and meant ‘maybe yes or maybe no’, then policies in districts and schools would be a free for all. “Shall” is not just a “direction;” it is mandatory in school law and means “will.” (A big clue is that anti-discrimination was included and public schools do not have a choice about complying with that.)
Selective enrollment magnet schools exist for gifted children because this population has special educational needs and, in special education, “fairness does not mean that everyone gets the same thing; it means that everyone gets what they need.” (Rick Lavoie).
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Tim, please show me where state law requires Success Academy to accept students from 4th grade onward? You cant. now tell me why its wrong that Success caps entry at 3rd grade yet ok that Hunter caps entry at K, or Stuyvesant caps entry at 9th grade?.
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Tim,
I have pointed out how you are wrong and you simply restated your incorrect view that SA is somehow in violation of the law. Please explain to me how SA breaks the law? Show me where the law states that SA must accept students in 4th grade or higher?
You cant, because the law does not require it.
I wish SA took students after 3rd grade too, and I am confident they will once the network gets up and running city wide. Unfortunately our new mayor wants to kill the network despite its unrivaled success.
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Teachers Ed,
You need a basic refresher in law 101. Or, take a look at this:
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/shall
Shall in a court of law that is unbiased ALWAYS means directive, not manditory. For christs sakes, Supreme Court decisions have been based on this non manditory clause, yet you somehow believe it is manditory.
But more importantly your own post highlights the double standard prevelent in the anti choice movement. You are totally fine with standards and selecteve enrollment in certain schools but not others.
Why is it ok for a zoned school to have enrollment standards based on academic aptitude but public charters must accept all students via a blind lottery? Why do you support this double standard?
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Other SPaces,
Why is it unsustainable for zoned schools to have 2 teachers per class? zoned schools in NYC get more funding per pupil than public charters by a factor of 21k to 13.5k. Why cant a zoned school have 2 teachers? Is it becuase of the contracts that the teachers union has worked out, which they still operate on regardless of what you hear, is too expensive to afford a second teacher even at the higher funding rate?
Maybe zoned schools should not have a union that makes it too expensive to educate our children with 2 teachers in a classroom like the public charters do. Maybe if 5k out of that 21k per child given to the zoned schools did not have to go to pensioners living in Florida paying no state or city taxes, we could afford more teachers.
Follow the money and you find the problem….
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MS, All of these things have already been explained to you, multiple times in many cases. Your repetition of the same questions and baseless arguments, in order to support your pro-privatized schools agenda, are old, tired and make you look like an obsessed dolt. Don’t expect any more replies from these people until you take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth.
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This is a classic example of how “reformers” think that if they repeat a lie enough times, then people will believe it. We’re not that gullible here. People have also been down this well trodden road before and we know better.
Remember this? “Charter Schools Housed in the City’s School Buildings Get More Public Funding per Student than Traditional Public Schools” http://ibo.nyc.ny.us/cgi-park/?p=272
FYI, If you respond with the SOS article, I will reply with IBO’s own rebuttal to SOS, as previously shown to you here.
Neighborhood schools do not get the millions of dollars from foundations and hedge funds that charters like SA get –so much that SA can afford to spend nearly $1M per year on advertising even though they claim to have a waiting list.
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I don’t need a legal dictionary to learn how to read education laws and know how schools must comply with legal mandates, since I was formally trained in that as a school administrator and I’ve been in charge of running several schools. When did you last run a school?
Every one of the statements in the law cited says the formal “shall” instead of “will”. It’s just nonsense to think that “shall” means ‘maybe you might want to do this… or maybe not… either way it’s okay… do what you want.’ Try growing some more brain cells, MS.
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Unbelievable. MS is so blinded by confirmation bias that he could care less about exceptional children with special educational needs and sees those services as a “double standard”. No doubt, he’d probably think otherwise if his own child incurred a traumatic brain injury or was gifted and needed specialized services.
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I read that Eva encourages parents to advocate for her schools. As if paying $1,000,000 a year on advertising isn’t enough self-promotion (especially when claiming to have a waiting list). Note to the Unknowing: Public schools don’t typically advertise because they don’t HAVE to do marketing in order to get students.
Eva needs to get herself a new parent advocate with aplomb from her lower income group, because the arrogant, upper income one just keeps saying the same old inane stuff and also can’t seem to speak without putting down others, all of which just makes them both look like self-aggrandizers.
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Other spaces,
The IBO retort to the SOS criticism does not change or make that criticism irrelevant. In fact, the accounting gimmicktry that the IBO uses in their response is borderline fraudulent. They are using a Detroit style method of adding the cost to the entire system when it only applies to the non chartered schools. This gets us into an even bigger debate about the maddoff like ponzi scheme that is todays pension debacle. The IBO flat out cheats and lies with their funding numbers and their response crystalizes it. If that does not sink in I can not expect you to grasp the subject matter.
As for hedge funds, there is no reason why zoned schools dont raise money from them either. Why dont they? There is no rule requiring hedge fund philantropy to only go to public charters. There are also PTAs in rich zones like PS29, 58 or 321 in Brooklyn that raise millions thru their student body who are in many cases children of hedge funders.
You want it both ways, you are ok with millions more to zoned schools and their PTAs raising millions but think public c harters should receive less due to similar fundraising from other sources. This is a double standard.
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Cosmic Thinker,
At SA, the percentage of special needs leanrers is 3% below that of the citywide average for zoned schools. 3%!!! While that is unforutnate and they should work to get it up to the city average, its 3%, all but a statistical abnormality.
Of course you did nto know that though, you think SA has no special needs and the citywide average is multiples higher.
This is the problem I am confronted with on this forum daily and why I post. the anti-choice movement that you represent is so poorly informed or purposfully negligent of the facts you need to be schooled in these matters from time to time.
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Got a link to support your claim about the network-wide number of special ed students Success serves, MS? If Success is a public school, then why doesn’t it maintain up-to-the-minute demographic data like NYC DOE schools do?
http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/15/K129/AboutUs/Statistics/register.htm
Even if Success’s special ed population is close to the DOE’s overall percentage, Success doesn’t have a single student who requires a self-contained/MRE class, nor do they provide SETTS. These children make up about 4% of the overall DOE population.
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Here is the IBO reply for everyone who can think for themselves:
http://ibo.nyc.ny.us/cgi-park/?p=763
Just ignore MS, folks, despite the ad hominem attacks on people’s intelligence and expertise, and the self-serving spin from this non-educator, pro-privatization propaganda machine who wants everyone to think he knows education and education laws better than genuine educators.
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Tim, There have also been reports from dozens of parents about high suspension rates of SA special ed kids and attempts to push them out, including this:
“Success Academy parent’s secret tapes reveal attempt to push out special needs student: The Upper West Side Success Academy charter school has touted itself for not trying to push out kids with special needs or behavior problems, but a parent has audio to the contrary.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/success-academy-tapes-reveal-attempt-transfer-student-article-1.1441098
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“MS is so blinded by confirmation bias that he…” only ever sees “a double standard.”
BINGO! Maslow’s classic law of the instrument: ‘When your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything as if it’s a nail.’ (And you will get nowhere on “a one trick poney,” so don’t waste your time, people.)
In addition to the two teachers per classroom, SA has a 10:1 student teacher ratio. Their teachers have reported that they do massive test prep and also that they have been teaching to the Common Core standards longer than elsewhere.
What a joke to think that neighborhood public schools can just hire more teachers from funds raised by the PTA. Schools that need more teachers the most are in low income areas and their bake sale funds will go only so far.
It’s also very naive to think that neighborhood public schools can just get their own funding from businesses and foundations and then hire more teachers. That funding was actually promised in my city, when mayoral control and the business model first took over, nearly 20 years ago, but it never materialized. Many neighborhood schools would love to be adopted by hedge fund managers, but they prefer charter schools. Why? “Follow the money”:
“So why do hedge funds so favor charter schools?”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/15/1187346/-So-why-do-hedge-funds-so-favor-charter-schools
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Cosmic Thinker,
You continue to get it wrong. The IBO study underfunds zoned schools by thousands by ignoring pension liabilities that do NOT fall under chareter funding. THe IBOs retort to this accounting trick to make pension liablities dissapear is pure fantasy. You can educate yourself more by reading the SOS study.
http://nypost.com/2013/10/03/study-charter-schools-actually-cheaper-than-public-schools/
and
http://www.scribd.com/doc/173211810/NYC-School-Funding-White-Paper-FINAL
Charters do not receive funding for pension costs of unionized teahcers in the DoE system, in fact Charters are only funded for operating costs. If the IBO added the pension liabilites to the zoned schools they are not also adding them to the charter state funding totals as it is not an evenly distributed accounting entry as the IBO falsely claims. To be clear, they are using wise guy accounting tricks to hide the reality of their pension costs. Cities all over the country use this trick, a great example is Detroit, look how that is working out.
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Cosmic Thnker,
You post the article about these tinfoil hat ‘secret tapes’ yet clearly have decided not to actually listen to them. If you had, you would see that in no point in any of those taped conversations do the teachers and administrators at Success Academy show anything but a desire to get teh child into a program that is best for the child.
SA does not have the funding that zoned schools nearby have for special needs, therefore it should not shock anyone that when they have a child with various needs for services they can not provide, they would recommend them to go to the school closest by with the best programs for those needs. Does a hospital counsel out a patient in need of a brain surgery if they dont have a brain surgeon?
I know it is easy to make up wild conspiracy theories and get excited, but when you take a deep breath and actually review the facts without a bias, you see that the situation is not controversal but normal and handled correctly.
As for the suspensions, yes, SA does suspend more, they have a much more strict policy for behavior and are very open about that. When you start you are made very well aware that they are strict with behavior as well as dress code and to be prepared for it. It may nto be for everyone, but to call it some form of hazing or pushing out is downright ignorance.
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Tim,
Apologies, I have misspoken. The 3% difference is charter wide in NYC vs zone wide. You can find that data here:
http://www.crpe.org/publications/new-york-state-special-education-enrollment-analysis
The question is, does 3% matter. While the anti choice movement will claim that charters cream out, isnt it easily possible that parents of speical needs childrenn choose their zoned schools over charters due to the charters not having the IEP’s their kids require? Interestingly enough we have a study on the matter that you can read here:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_80.htm
Looks like parents choice goes in both directions and is working effectively in NYC, parents pick what is best for their kids and in this case it is being in a zoned school.
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More follow up on IEPs in Charters, while the chareters have less IEP students (by choice) those students perform better then IEPs in zoned schools.
Click to access SpecialNeedsFactSheetApril2013.pdf
Success Academy use to put aside 20% of their lottery spots for special needs kids but were forced to stop based on federal law passed by the Obama administration. While the anti choice movement blames charters like SA for ignoring special needs, they do not seem to mind these funds being pulled for attempting to get more special need students. Once again, the same old double standard reasserts itself.
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2013/09/05/facing-federal-funding-freeze-success-to-nix-lottery-preference/
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Chi-Town Res,
THanks for the Daily Kos op-ed, interesting but generally more occupy wall street fodder then reality. If you wish to get a more balanced view of why wealthy Americans like hedge funders get involved with charters you should read this:
I know it can be hard to grasp for many OWS types, but hedge fund involvement can possibly come from pure civic duty to fix a failed system. Our traditional schools have failed our kids for generations and now people with means have the ability to make a difference directly.
THe reason they do not give their money to zoned schools is because they are aware of the missmanagement that has been institutionalized by the union-DoE educational complex that has absolute control of our system. This is why we have such high demand for charters, as a society we are sick of this complex and we demand better. This also explains why those in power are so fearful of the charter movement, it is a threat to their control.
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Trying to communicate with MS=Truth in -> garbage out / pure adulterated horsefeathers.
Ignore this long-winded huckster who is so enamored with spinning lies!
Just pity the day his child comes home, fed up with the rigid discipline and massive test prep and he realizes no test scores are worth selling out your own child on a wing and a prayer and blind faith in “free” market non-educator entrepreneurs. Or will he even hear his child? One can only hope, some day, down the road, the truth will prevail. Alas, the fairytale miracle of magic sauce persists now, so that is not to occur in his life today.
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MS the trend clearly shows that higher income parents, in general, have higher performing students. In your statements are you implying that SA has great performance due to great instruction? Honestly? Are you saying all of these lower income areas have lower performing students due to instruction? You’ve got to be kidding. All of the higher income areas have better instruction? BS
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Dee Dee, I am asking a very basic question that you see from the ad-hominem attacks against me, people are affriad to answer. Perhaps you would be kind enough to answer my question.
Why is it that SA’s schools who serivce entirely poor and minority students in Harlem and the Bronx score higher then the all white rich schools in Westchester and rank in the top 10 schools state wide when the very same zoned schools they share buildings with can not get 13% of their students to pass the same tests?
If socio-economics are to blame than SA should not be getting these results, they should be getting the same results as the kids in the co-located zoned schools. So why does SA score so much better with the same kids?
Clearly it has nothing to do with income. Income is just a nice excuse for the apologists who think our kids are not competent and want to protect a failing system.
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Dee Dee,
If you wish to learn more about what makes Success Academy perform at levels so much better then the rich westchester schools, or most all of the schools in the state, here is a great independent take from an Atlanta blogger who reviewed SA:
Sadly, the anti choice movement is too stuborn to take a lesson from Eva and emulate her system and improve the entire school system. Unfortunately, truth goes thru 3 stages for those who can not accept it, first its ridiculed. then it is violently opposed, adn finally it is accepted as being obvious. As you see with each passing post from the anti-choice movement, they are stuck in stage two…
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Highest level of education in the home, which also correlates with income.
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Interesting. In a nearby rural community many years ago, years before NCLB, I remember seeing something in the newspaper I had never seen before and never saw again. In reporting the test scores for local schools, inserted into the article, in parentheses as if a disclaimer, was the statement that the scores of children of professional parents were 100 points higher.
Because everyone in the community attended the same schools, the children of the teachers, the doctors and nurses, the lawyers, the accountants, that group of test takers, scored better than their classmates who were the children of field workers at best, the drug addicted unemployed at worst.
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“If we switched school staffs, but kept the students in place, would the high scores move with the staffs or stay with the students?”
Teachers don’t need to switch schools to find that out, because EVERY nation has an achievement gap between low income and high income students: “International tests show achievement gaps in all countries” http://www.epi.org/blog/international-tests-achievement-gaps-gains-american-students/
People really need to stress the fact that this is a global issue, to combat the propaganda that tries to make it just about public education in America, and point out the gross inequities in our society –which are indeed an American matter.
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You mean the money spent to destroy public education these past 12 years would have been better spent on wrap around services for disadvantaged students. Who knew?
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Billions. It’s beyond tragic. It’s a crime.
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Business as usual …. since 1980.
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Hey, you gotta have enough money to spend on killing them turrurists and, before them, the commies!
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Once Lewis Powell wrote the playbook in the 1970s for business to take back America, the stage was set for big business and their supporters to take back whatever they wanted. The second Santa in The Two Santa Claus Theory would become a Grinch who never changed. And unlike a Noble Lie, Crass Lies would be used to ensure power and wealth.
Re The Powell Memo http://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/
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I am so glad that this sort of state mandated madness does not exist in Australia. Yes, there is the yearly comparisons published in the papers after the results of the NAPLAN literacy and numeracy tests are published for years 3,5,7 & 9, but that is a mild frenzy for a few days. Some of the (especially private) schools that do very well use these results as a selling point, but there is no annual report card on schools and no movement to close “failing” schools … as yet.
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I am interested in how other countries opperate. In Norway, which has some of the highest standards and results on the planet, they do not even start schooling until kids are 7 years old. Kind of goes against the concept that pre-K for 4yr olds is what drives fixing income inequality doesnt it….
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MS: Finland doesn’t start “school” until age 7, but there is preschool for all….not of the academic kind, but of playing and socializing and learning as children learn: through imaginative play. All European nations have a far higher proportion of children in preschool than we do, but it is developmentally appropriate, not phonics and math drills.
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Also, Diane, recall that in Finland, only about 3% of children are in poverty, while we have more like 23%.child poverty
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What Diane is talking about here is extraordinarily important for impoverished children. They need constructive compensatory environments early on. We know from research that the children of the poorest among us come into school having heard a TINY FRACTION of the vocabulary and syntax heard by high SES kids and that almost all the low SES kids will, as a result, NEVER CATCH UP (this is called the Matthew Effect, btw). And many of those impoverished kids (26 % of our child population) don’t get proper nutrition and nurturing and socialization. They need a place to go to where they will get all that–a place, as Diane says, “for playing and socializing and learning as children learn: through imaginative play.”
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What would happen if we switched the teaching staff of a wealthy district for a teaching staff of inexperienced teachers with no advanced degrees? Would you expect this to have no impact on students in the district? If you expect that there would be no impact on students, how would you change public education spending in order to get the most value for money?
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If you mean non-certified teachers, the negative impacts would be especially severe in the upper level math and science courses.
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TE
You should know better than to ask these questions. I assume you’re playing devils advocate.
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Spot on, NY teacher. That is TE’s game and it’s gotten very stale and moldy.
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TE, of course this would have an impact. What’s your point? Do you really mean to imply by this that it’s false to say that simply replacing the teaching staffs in impoverished schools will not improve them measurably?
Apples and oranges.
Yes, if we hired orangutans to replace the experienced teachers in high-performing schools, this would negatively impact outcomes. Brilliant deduction.
And yes, replacing the teaching staffs in schools in impoverished areas will make no appreciable difference in outcomes.
Outcomes in those impoverished schools will not improve appreciably by virtue of firing and replacing teachers and/or ratcheting up the test prep. We did that during the ten years of the NCLB era with no significant improvements in outcomes as measured by those tests. Been there. Done that.
If you want to change things in those schools, you have to put real money into wrap-around services. And you need to get those kids, as early as possible, into places where they are nurtured and fed and safe and properly socialized for significant amounts of time. That doesn’t come as cheaply as Deformy Magic does (though Deformy Magic is quite expensive). It will cost A LOT. But the magic solution is no solution whatsoever. And in the long term, those services and those compensatory, alternative environments are going to be a LOT cheaper than prisons.
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Don’t you ever go to sleep?
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This thought experiment has been played out a zillion times in faculty rooms across the country ever since NCLB thought it would be a good idea to threaten and punish schools (not individual teachers) for being unable to do the impossible – close the income gap. In fact, in most of these conversations, teachers in high FARL schools will typically comment that if the teaching staff of any nearby affluent district came in to their impoverished school that the test scores would probably drop significantly. Now I would love to see this social experiment played out for real, but since it is impractical, we should try it on a very small scale. Lets take an good 7th grade math teacher from an affluent district, one who routinely turns out high test scores and switch her with her counterpart in a low functioning, “failing” school with very low math scores. My bet would be that she quits in frustration before the experiment is completed.
The constraints put on teachers in low functioning schools is beyond the imagination of anyone who has never worked in a school district where generational poverty and the ugly residue of racism has crushed the hopes and dreams and smothered the aspirations and expectations of so many. Closing the “learning gap” is a mere pipe-dream of the ignorant if nothing is done to close the income gap and close the enrichment gap and close the vacation gap and close the conversation gap and close the parental sacrifice gap and close the expectation gap and close the family discipline gap and close the health care gap and close the addiction gap and close the book gap and close the crayon gap and close the birthday party gap and close the ugly shadow of racism that still permeates our country like a selective plague.
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And the income gap continues to widen.
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Outstanding, NY teacher!
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I asked the question because switching out the faculty from a majority white school with the faculty at a majority African American school will give the African American school, on average, a more experienced faculty with a smaller percentage of beginning teachers (see http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010015/figures/figure_9_2.asp ) and a much smaller percentage of teachers without standard certification or undergraduate major in the subject that is their main teaching assignment (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010015/figures/figure_9_1.asp) than the faculty the African American majority school is sending to the majority white school.
NY teacher might want to note that the NCES study found that 8% of the math faculty in a majority white school did not have either an undergraduate major or certification in math while 25% of the math faculty at a majority African American school did not have either an undergraduate major or certification in math.
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That disparity odes not exist here in NYS. And if teaching certifications can eliminate the learning gap why do Wendy Kopp’s minions form elite universities have such a remarkable failure rate in the impoverished districts in which they temporarily seek reconciliation.
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The disparity might not exist in New York State, but it does exist nationally. If there is none in the state of New York, it must be that the national figures understate the disparity in other states.
Your initial response to my question was “If you mean non-certified teachers, the negative impacts would be especially severe in the upper level math and science courses.” Given that a majority white school would receive three non-certified teachers back for every non-certified teacher sent to a majority African American school, don’t we have to conclude that switching faculty between the two schools would have an impact, especially in upper level math classes?
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Don’t even go there. TE likes to take back handed swipes at American teachers. When every country in the world has an achievement gap between lower and higher income students, this is clearly a global issue and correlated with poverty.
Research by TE’s economist colleagues, Hanushek, Goldhaber et al. has repeatedly demonstrated that about 20% of student achievement is attributed to schools, with at most 15% due to teacher effects, while about 60% is attributable to out of school factors, such as student and family background characteristics including poverty.
Scapegoating US teachers has become a parlor game that just lets American politicians off the hook for not addressing our outrageously high 23% child poverty rate –making us number one in child poverty amongst developed nations (not counting Romania). You can see on the chart below that Finland has only about a 3% child poverty, the lowest rate of child poverty in the world –and they also have some of the most high achieving students on the planet:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/04/15/map-how-35-countries-compare-on-child-poverty-the-u-s-is-ranked-34th/
Forget the manufactured crisis about US teachers. How about we switch out our heartless corporate lackey politicians with those in Finland instead?
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Where am I denying that student achievement is correlated with poverty? This is obvious and I have examples of the impact of poverty on student achievement in my family.
The original post state asks the question “If we switched school staffs, but kept the students in place, would the high scores move with the staffs or stay with the students?” Many posters here argue that the high scores will stay with the students. My post points out that switching the staffs would result in an a substantial increase in the number of teachers who were not certified in or had majored in the area in which they are teaching in the majority white schools and a substantial decrease in the majority African American schools.
It seems to me that you can respond to my observation in one of two ways. You can say that certification or undergraduate major is relatively unimportant or you can answer the original poster’s question by saying that some of the scores will move with the staff because the staff of majority white schools, in general, are more likely to be certified or having majored in the fields in which they teach. I think either answer has important policy implications.
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Not buying any more of your spin and pretzel logic, TE.
Instead of piggybacking on the myth that education is the one and only path out of poverty, economists need to forget about a hypothetical switching of teachers and provide some actionable guidance to the nation for addressing poverty.
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“If we switched school staffs, but kept the students in place…”
I’ve been saying for years that this would make a brilliant reality show.
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