on PolicyMic
Grayson Cooper Daniel's comment and reference below may be helpful "Greater racial and economic segregation (http://ow.ly/7Fow6)" I'm not aware of any studies using NC EOG data off the top of my head. However, not much has changed in NC's charter landscape since then, and given the strength of the results in Ladd's study, I don't think there's much reason to suspect the situation is any different today.
Grayson Cooper Yes, but I haven't seen any examples of schools becoming more responsive to demands within due to choice between them (if you can find a counter example, please let me know!) I agree that competition improves the condition of systems, when the systems are rational, and responsive to demands. That's a substantial assumption though. Just as I believe that we should choose elected officials who are not necessarily aligned with our views, but rather, are able to create systems which are responsive to our inputs, so too is a centralized school system necessary for creating this responsiveness with parents and the community. What recourse do parents have with school choice? Leaving? But only rarely are schools shuttered for low attendance.
Grayson Cooper I completely agree that it's not a problem of teacher motivation, but I think it is a matter of teacher professionalism. While starting teacher salaries are decent, their late career salaries are pitiful. Which is why you see so many of the best teachers leaving education in their later years. As a personal example, one of my best elementary school teachers is now retired, but is bagging groceries for a quarter over minimum wage, because her retirement isn't sufficient to support her as a single woman.
Grayson Cooper Andrew, gave this some thought, and although it seems like there's a dark ineffective side to everything: 1) Early Childhood Education 2) Increased Teacher Pay (http://www.theteachersalaryproject.org/ great documentary on this-biggest takeaways, teachers too often take on 2nd jobs that impact their classroom effectiveness) 3) Shift focus from high-stakes student achievement tests to targeted professional development for teachers How about you?
Grayson Cooper Thank you everyone, however, I don't want to loose the essence of Susan's point here, which is that, I did not go for the crux, the civil rights part of this issue (if I were to, there are plenty of supreme court decisions to talk about in that regard...). I did this intentionally, because there is a great divide on school choice, and we need a common talking ground to address it. I'm not claiming to have done a great job, but to emphasize that we need to simply take the first step. School choice may make a difference, I am not contending that, but the difference it makes is not commensurate with the attention it receives; it distracts from more important and effective options. Please keep this thread going.
Grayson Cooper Phil, Thanks for your comment! Hospital choice does make a difference, I have no contention with that, but consider a teaching hospital. If you don't advocate for yourself, you could end up with a resident doing your surgery, as opposed to the world-class attending. That is an extreme example, but medical errors are fairly common: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/07/hospital-errors-may-occur_n_846077.html Charter schools don't have a monopoly on parent involvement, and there is no reason to think they are doing it better. The students who attend must have some parental involvement, but these students' academic growth does not improve after moving from a public school to a charter. Thanks again, keep it coming!
Grayson Cooper "It is definitely not a money issue; the amount spent per student from Kindergarten through 12th grade is $129,000 compared to other countries’ averaging only $95,000." Really? Education is labor intensive, and surely labor costs are not consistent across OECD countries.
Grayson Cooper I completely agree, but to play devil's advocate (and to anyone who has read Freakonomics), people will take lower paying jobs if they perceive the opportunity to achieve a more lucrative position. Hairdressers and drug dealers alike.
Grayson Cooper @Rasheed, Gary: Well, we also have welfare. Without minimum wage laws, then low paying jobs, ones where you decrease the amount you collect are disincentivized. Also, for the kids situation, we have social services. But you can't be taken away from yourself
Grayson Cooper This all sounds good, was just playing devil's advocate
Grayson Cooper Would you place a ceiling on payouts to players? Otherwise, how would you control the price wars over top recruits? Also, people accept inappropriate gifts all the time (or celebrities shoplift) not because of necessity, rather it serves as validation. An ego boost. Not to be deterred by a stipend
Grayson Cooper Simple math [round numbers], if you need $100 a day to live. With a minimum wage, you can work 10 hours at a $10/hr job. Without, you can work 20 hours at a $5/hr job. Yes, unemployment is bad, but requiring someone to work 2+ shifts to make ends meet is just as unsustainable.
Grayson Cooper To add to Susan, these tests are rarely validated for teacher evaluation, and often their publishers recommend against their use as such. (i.e. DC-CAS) So, we have 1) accountability for the student, 2) accountability for the teacher. This piece strives for (2), but these EOGs can only get us (1).
Grayson Cooper "Federal educational standards would ... introducing accountability into the system." - 1) Standards are not accountability, 2) What are we missing in terms of accountability from NCLB - not standards, but test parameters: confidence intervals, minimum subgroup size, etc. Fix those first.
Grayson Cooper "daily prayer sessions or transcendental rebirthings don’t end up teaching kids calculus, evaluations will – ideally, of course – show it and action can be taken" - Yes, the Common Core achieves this, but state standards have already done this. Why national? This isn't addressed.
Grayson Cooper "Offering funds for meeting federal standards is an enticement." - I disagree, atleast in how RTTT was implemented. Had RTTT been adopted during normal economic conditions, sure, enticement. But when you have to choose between firing teachers or changing standards-it's a gun to the governor's head
Grayson Cooper As an example, look at municipal exclusion, minority communities which do not receive public services, like trash or water/sewer. Also, some real-estate markets (ie. upper-middle class) are more responsive to school quality partly due to their increased capacity to monitor & evaluate education
Grayson Cooper I really don't understand how federalizing education would solve unions and seniority. And discrimination and funding issues could be addressed just as easily by the state. Within-State variances in funding are greater than state-to-state. There is no apparent gain from federalizing education
Grayson Cooper Roman, the Federal Government reserved this right to the states, so doing this would be unconstitutional, even more so impractical. Out of the 27 passed amendments, 11,000 have been proposed. I don't trust the federal government with education, because I don't trust, as you put it, you-symbolically
Grayson Cooper Spending is casual if applied in the right places, the classroom, see: http://bit.ly/orO4qh We talk about private schools doing so much better than public, but they charge $20+k per year, public schools get $10k. If we doubled or tripled school expenditure this year, would we not get better results?
Grayson Cooper This isn't just an issue of Congress passing a law. We would need a Constitutional Amendment, or even if the US Supreme Court did, through activist judges, allow the law, it would always be open to challenge as it violates the Constitution. We don't solve our problems by ignoring founding documents
on PolicyMic
Grayson Cooper Daniel's comment and reference below may be helpful "Greater racial and economic segregation (http://ow.ly/7Fow6)" I'm not aware of any studies using NC EOG data off the top of my head. However, not much has changed in NC's charter landscape since then, and given the strength of the results in Ladd's study, I don't think there's much reason to suspect the situation is any different today.
Grayson Cooper Yes, but I haven't seen any examples of schools becoming more responsive to demands within due to choice between them (if you can find a counter example, please let me know!) I agree that competition improves the condition of systems, when the systems are rational, and responsive to demands. That's a substantial assumption though. Just as I believe that we should choose elected officials who are not necessarily aligned with our views, but rather, are able to create systems which are responsive to our inputs, so too is a centralized school system necessary for creating this responsiveness with parents and the community. What recourse do parents have with school choice? Leaving? But only rarely are schools shuttered for low attendance.
Grayson Cooper I completely agree that it's not a problem of teacher motivation, but I think it is a matter of teacher professionalism. While starting teacher salaries are decent, their late career salaries are pitiful. Which is why you see so many of the best teachers leaving education in their later years. As a personal example, one of my best elementary school teachers is now retired, but is bagging groceries for a quarter over minimum wage, because her retirement isn't sufficient to support her as a single woman.
Grayson Cooper Andrew, gave this some thought, and although it seems like there's a dark ineffective side to everything: 1) Early Childhood Education 2) Increased Teacher Pay (http://www.theteachersalaryproject.org/ great documentary on this-biggest takeaways, teachers too often take on 2nd jobs that impact their classroom effectiveness) 3) Shift focus from high-stakes student achievement tests to targeted professional development for teachers How about you?
Grayson Cooper Thank you everyone, however, I don't want to loose the essence of Susan's point here, which is that, I did not go for the crux, the civil rights part of this issue (if I were to, there are plenty of supreme court decisions to talk about in that regard...). I did this intentionally, because there is a great divide on school choice, and we need a common talking ground to address it. I'm not claiming to have done a great job, but to emphasize that we need to simply take the first step. School choice may make a difference, I am not contending that, but the difference it makes is not commensurate with the attention it receives; it distracts from more important and effective options. Please keep this thread going.
Grayson Cooper Thank you everyone, however, I don't want to loose the essence of Susan's point here, which is that, I did not go for the crux, the civil rights part of this issue (if I were to, there are plenty of supreme court decisions to talk about in that regard...). I did this intentionally, because there is a great divide on school choice, and we need a common talking ground to address it. I'm not claiming to have done a great job, but to emphasize that we need to simply take the first step. School choice may make a difference, I am not contending that, but the difference it makes is not commensurate with the attention it receives; it distracts from more important and effective options. Please keep this thread going.
Grayson Cooper Phil, Thanks for your comment! Hospital choice does make a difference, I have no contention with that, but consider a teaching hospital. If you don't advocate for yourself, you could end up with a resident doing your surgery, as opposed to the world-class attending. That is an extreme example, but medical errors are fairly common: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/07/hospital-errors-may-occur_n_846077.html Charter schools don't have a monopoly on parent involvement, and there is no reason to think they are doing it better. The students who attend must have some parental involvement, but these students' academic growth does not improve after moving from a public school to a charter. Thanks again, keep it coming!
Grayson Cooper "It is definitely not a money issue; the amount spent per student from Kindergarten through 12th grade is $129,000 compared to other countries’ averaging only $95,000." Really? Education is labor intensive, and surely labor costs are not consistent across OECD countries.
Grayson Cooper I completely agree, but to play devil's advocate (and to anyone who has read Freakonomics), people will take lower paying jobs if they perceive the opportunity to achieve a more lucrative position. Hairdressers and drug dealers alike.
Grayson Cooper @Rasheed, Gary: Well, we also have welfare. Without minimum wage laws, then low paying jobs, ones where you decrease the amount you collect are disincentivized. Also, for the kids situation, we have social services. But you can't be taken away from yourself
Grayson Cooper This all sounds good, was just playing devil's advocate
Grayson Cooper Would you place a ceiling on payouts to players? Otherwise, how would you control the price wars over top recruits? Also, people accept inappropriate gifts all the time (or celebrities shoplift) not because of necessity, rather it serves as validation. An ego boost. Not to be deterred by a stipend
Grayson Cooper Simple math [round numbers], if you need $100 a day to live. With a minimum wage, you can work 10 hours at a $10/hr job. Without, you can work 20 hours at a $5/hr job. Yes, unemployment is bad, but requiring someone to work 2+ shifts to make ends meet is just as unsustainable.
Grayson Cooper To add to Susan, these tests are rarely validated for teacher evaluation, and often their publishers recommend against their use as such. (i.e. DC-CAS) So, we have 1) accountability for the student, 2) accountability for the teacher. This piece strives for (2), but these EOGs can only get us (1).
Grayson Cooper "Federal educational standards would ... introducing accountability into the system." - 1) Standards are not accountability, 2) What are we missing in terms of accountability from NCLB - not standards, but test parameters: confidence intervals, minimum subgroup size, etc. Fix those first.
Grayson Cooper "daily prayer sessions or transcendental rebirthings don’t end up teaching kids calculus, evaluations will – ideally, of course – show it and action can be taken" - Yes, the Common Core achieves this, but state standards have already done this. Why national? This isn't addressed.
Grayson Cooper "Offering funds for meeting federal standards is an enticement." - I disagree, atleast in how RTTT was implemented. Had RTTT been adopted during normal economic conditions, sure, enticement. But when you have to choose between firing teachers or changing standards-it's a gun to the governor's head
Grayson Cooper As an example, look at municipal exclusion, minority communities which do not receive public services, like trash or water/sewer. Also, some real-estate markets (ie. upper-middle class) are more responsive to school quality partly due to their increased capacity to monitor & evaluate education
Grayson Cooper I really don't understand how federalizing education would solve unions and seniority. And discrimination and funding issues could be addressed just as easily by the state. Within-State variances in funding are greater than state-to-state. There is no apparent gain from federalizing education
Grayson Cooper Roman, the Federal Government reserved this right to the states, so doing this would be unconstitutional, even more so impractical. Out of the 27 passed amendments, 11,000 have been proposed. I don't trust the federal government with education, because I don't trust, as you put it, you-symbolically
Grayson Cooper Spending is casual if applied in the right places, the classroom, see: http://bit.ly/orO4qh We talk about private schools doing so much better than public, but they charge $20+k per year, public schools get $10k. If we doubled or tripled school expenditure this year, would we not get better results?
Grayson Cooper This isn't just an issue of Congress passing a law. We would need a Constitutional Amendment, or even if the US Supreme Court did, through activist judges, allow the law, it would always be open to challenge as it violates the Constitution. We don't solve our problems by ignoring founding documents