Diamondeye wrote:
Seriously, you're saying that even though they supposedly have worse teachers private schools still do better because of the burden of poor or disabled students on public schools?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, at least from the perspective of average test scores and average results. It takes very few zeroes to completely wreck average performance. We've had this discussion before. I'll pull this example out again. Let's say you have a class of students where seven of them are motivated/care about their performance and three are not. Which teacher is better?
1. A "private school" teacher that focuses on the students who care and has seven students pass the standardized test with a 95% while the other three students totally fail with 20%. (random guessing on a 5-choice multiple choice test)
2. A "public school" teacher that ignores the students who care to focus entirely on the bottom performers, resulting in the seven motivated students passing the same test with a 75% while the three nonperformers barely squeak by passing with a 60%.
The second teacher's average is significantly higher. Does that mean this teacher is better? Well, that's debatable, but the second teacher's method is what pays the bills for the public system, as it all comes down to the average test score. So this method is what is enforced, and this is what they pay salaries to get. This is why public schools get a bad reputation. There is no incompetence amongst the teachers, they are simply forced to ignore the gifted/smart students so the rejects don't drag their average performance into the shitter and cause them to lose all their federal funding. The private school can simply expel them or refuse to admit them at all.
Of course, in reality it doesn't work out like that simple example. You can't get the rejects up to a 60%, for obvious reasons. A private school would try for a year or two and then expel all the failures. Now they suddenly have an average of the seven 95% students. Of course their performance looks better. A public school can't do it. Not only are they forced to keep those rejects, but to maintain their funding they have to then ignore all the good students and focus on said rejects, because of the severe diminishing returns involved in helping someone who's already making an 80%. There's only 20 more points of upside. A zero-percent student has 100 points of upside. It looks better on your annual Test Score Report to get one 0% failure up to 50% than it does to get four 80% passers up to 90%.
You yourself have admitted that the European and Japanese public school systems turn out much better results than ours because they're not unwilling to sideline or expel the failures. Why would it be any different here?
If you want to make American public schools more like European public schools or American private schools, the solution is very simple. Anyone who makes less than 60% on the standardized tests gets recorded as a 60%, at least for determining funding distribution. Now every school would have to focus on the actual performers to keep their average up and keep their funding, not the nonperformers. Considering the incredible amount of money we spend on education in this country it would turn things around for public schools damn quickly. Of course, this comes with the downside that the schools will now completely ignore anyone who can't make 60% on their own, as they're getting a 60% recorded on the books for them anyway. That's a lot of kids that will just be completely abandoned by the system before they have any chance.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
You should the cover of this month's NEA Mag. I'll have to give it to you. Oh wait SEAN already destoyed it. HHHMM OH WELL!
~~