Quote :

"Where the fuck are the parents?"

10/16/2009 2:27:07 PM

At home watching TV. Duh.

Anecdotally, when I have to call a parent of a failing student, I can always reach them at home at 3:30.

10/17/2009 9:57:46 AM

i love all of these people who have never been in a classroom in a role other than student get on here and think they have THE solution.

10/17/2009 11:24:48 AM

Rather than compulsory education up to age 16 why not make it optional up to around 14? Allow workers permits for 14 year olds and go from there. If you don't want to be in school you will be a massive detriment to the rest of your class (as I'm sure we've all experienced at both the high school and collegiate levels). Frankly I would not make public education mandatory at any age, but since I know that will never ever happen I'm willing to compromise.

The other thing that needs to happen is the elimination of a single track system in high schools. We need to face the facts that not everyone is suited for college, not everyone wants to go to college, and frankly not everyone should go to college. I'd love to see more opportunity for vocational training or skilled labor to be taught in public schools. Europe already does this and it works out well for most of the countries that have this in place (see Germany for a great example).

Finally, I think we need to allow teachers and administrators much more room to discipline, suspend, and expel problem students. Again, if you are a detriment to the learning of your classmates you should be removed from the classroom, continue with the same behavior and you can hit the bricks.

10/17/2009 8:27:41 PM

The answers are simple but they don't benefit government or teachers unions.

- vouchers work, but they kill schools which should be killed which we can't have.

- focus more on basics like math, science and writing and less on social sciences,

- fail kids. Introduce competition in general. This already exists outside the government schools to a greater extent and people with wealth will send their kids to these exclusive schools. However, these same exclusive schools have an incentive to bring in excellent poor students if the voucher was tied to the student rather than to the cancerous bureaucracy of the local school system.

- get rid of the idea of a "professionally trained teacher". Instead, look for individuals who are at least college educated and institute a mentoring program for entry-level teachers. The current system has teachers in math (for example) learning less about their subject than they should because they are burdened with a bunch of BS-psychobabble classes. If the goal is educating not indoctrinating then there is no need for so many "education" classes. Teaching is not something that is taught, it's something that comes from the heart as a consequence of caring for the students. Teachers can be epically dumb and still get an education degree because all these classes are a joke and everybody knows it. We ought not be putting masters-degree educated people into "education classes" if they want to teach. Instead we should let them teach and simply evaluate their progress on the criteria of their success. This must be done locally and case by case.

[Edited on October 18, 2009 at 3:54 PM. Reason : .]

10/18/2009 3:48:23 PM

High quality, fully subsidized pre-K for all...we've got kids coming in who can read, write, and do basic math in the first grade, and then we've got kids who know so little that it almost seems like a conscious effort on the part of the parents to keep their kids as uneducated as possible. We know how important those first five years are, and before we can institute some hardcore "fuck 'em" policy (disco_stu), it will be our moral duty to get kids access to good pre-K.

Reinvigorate vocational education. Have kids linked up with apprenticeships, community colleges, or trade schools when they graduate. We can't just let them take three hours of shop every day making bongs and then send them out into the real world with nothing but bong knowledge.

Spread economically disadvantaged students out among the schools so no one school becomes "bad." (Good schools breed good behavior.)

Lengthen the school day (arts, intramural sports, homework help, fun clubs!) for elementary and middle school. Lengthen the school year for elementary, middle, and high school. We don't rely on child labor in a largely agrarian economy anymore...the story of the kid who works after school and in the summer to help his mother make the bills and save for college is compelling, but it's very rarely the case, and we shouldn't keep building our system around that myth.

Start high school later in the morning.

Finally, principals should more aggressively monitor teachers. I know there are planned observation days, but principals gotta poke their heads in more. Stay abreast of what the fuck is going down and don't rehire some of these "teachers." I've observed classrooms where I wouldn't even hire the teacher to babysit...teachers that aren't even worth six bucks an hour or whatever you can get away with paying your 12 year-old neighbor to tuck the kids in too early and eat all your food up. It's ridiculous, but it's a fairly easy problem to solve--fire they asses.

10/18/2009 5:27:32 PM

There’s a pretty excellent TAL report on the impact pre-k education can have: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1311

10/18/2009 6:18:40 PM

Quote :

"Finally, principals should more aggressively monitor teachers."

teacher accountability is perfectly reasonable, but a principal gestapo will definitely NOT inspire teachers or provide a good, professional work environment. I don't know what you do, but would you like your boss hounding you and looking over your shoulder every 10 minutes? Do you think it would make you more productive, or make you want to continue working for the company?

10/18/2009 6:55:21 PM

I'm not really liberal but the "kick them out of the system" solution leaves you with a high number of guaranteed worthless adults that produce more worthless adults. It would seem more economical long term to pay for psychologists and psychiatrist and temporarily segregate the "bad" kids into drastically reduced class or group sizes to keep them out of trouble, with the intention of reintegrating down the road or preparing them for a non-college future.

10/19/2009 11:22:41 AM

Quote :

"Forcing the graduation rate at traditional high schools up and up has helped to water down the value of a high school diploma, not to mention the quality of education. Someone who has an aptitude in mechanics, for example, might excel in a trade school learning how to fix cars, and once he graduates, can join the workforce instead of going to, and then flunking out of college. "

agree, i was trying to get at the idea of everyong finishes HS at least, and the goal is to get everyone after HS into either, trade school, associates school/college, college, or university. preferably without the european tracking system.

i fully agree that everyone should not be forced into a college or university, especially if that's not where their interests or abilities lie.

10/19/2009 12:10:42 PM

Quote :

"High quality, fully subsidized pre-K for all"

smart start is a failure, kids show no boost from the program after 2nd grade....

private K and pre-k actually have to COMPETE for $ and kids by providing superlative services and ACTUAL results.

unless you are agreeing with me about the attached money thing per person but just scaling it farther back to pre-k

the public school system has been collapsing (compared to other top level countries) for about the last 15 years or so.

11/16/2009 1:14:07 PM

Depressingly, I agree a lot with Bridget.

1) Longer school days, more school days. Around the world there's a pretty good correlation between class time and performance. More school days might also help reduce certain education gaps (rich vs. poor, black vs. white, etc) because there's a good deal of evidence that those gaps close over the course of the school year but get much wider over the summer. However, unlike Bridget, I don't have any particular desire to fill the extra time with sports and arts and whatnot. I don't give a copper-plated damn about that shit.

2) Pre-K programs seem to do a lot of good, and again it's one of those things that narrows achievement gaps without having to drag down the top performers. It'd be expensive to subsidize, and it would involve more government involvement in our lives, so I inherently dislike it. But all the evidence indicates that it works without much in the way of negative unintended consequences.

3) Community college and trade schools need some love. Not even money, necessarily. Just love (or better put, respect). They need to be seen as a real and important alternative to 4-year universities. How to accomplish this is an open question, I suppose. Possibly better advertising and a memo to guidance counselors telling them to quit treating these places like leper colonies and start aggressively proposing them.

4) OVERHAUL DISCIPLINE!!!

I was a substitute for two teachers at a local high school over the course of a year, so I got to know most of the students and they got to know me. Most of my classes were not particularly good. The biggest problem I ran into on a daily basis was that I had no sticks and only the most meager carrots.

A kid acts up, what can I do? Deduct from his grade? Call his parents? Those were good things to threaten me with, because I wanted good grades and feared my parents. They don't do much to a kid whose parents care as little as he does about his grades. Send him to ISS? He's probably got friends there, and at least there he doesn't have to listen to a teacher talk. Get the principal to give him out-of-school suspension, AKA free vacation?

The simple fact is that bad kids can only be threatened with things bad kids don't care about. We need an alternative, something that they do care about.

My initial thought was food. Ban food brought in from outside, and then offer two qualities of lunches: decent, and gruel. A healthy gruel, mind you, that fulfills the nutritional needs of the kid but which tastes like ass. The only way to get a good lunch is if you get a good behavior chit.

There's also just manning up and going back to beating the little bastards with reeds when they get out of line.

11/16/2009 1:57:17 PM

The most effective punishments we have impede their ability to socialize. Lunch detentions, primarily.

11/16/2009 2:26:55 PM

Yeah, that might have been slightly more effective than the others, but not by much. Sooner or later they just start trying to socialize during lunch detention, and then what can you do? Fall back to all the useless shit listed.

11/16/2009 2:38:50 PM

I'm in the middle of writing a thesis on information literacy in vocational schools, and I try to avoid garbage arguments on the internet in this area so I don't get distracted and go down some rabbit hole based on someone's emotional arguments, but this:

Quote :

"get rid of the idea of a "professionally trained teacher". Instead, look for individuals who are at least college educated and institute a mentoring program for entry-level teachers. The current system has teachers in math (for example) learning less about their subject than they should because they are burdened with a bunch of BS-psychobabble classes. If the goal is educating not indoctrinating then there is no need for so many "education" classes. Teaching is not something that is taught, it's something that comes from the heart as a consequence of caring for the students. Teachers can be epically dumb and still get an education degree because all these classes are a joke and everybody knows it. We ought not be putting masters-degree educated people into "education classes" if they want to teach. Instead we should let them teach and simply evaluate their progress on the criteria of their success. This must be done locally and case by case."

would be like teaching a nurse a bunch of anatomy and science and then just telling them to go out and apply that and we'll watch and see how it goes. Let me guess: you're a grad student who teaches hard sciences and thinks teaching college students who've made it this far largely on their own more than likely (like i did) can be applied to teaching the disadvantaged. Then again, we can just send all the dumb poor problem kids to the Army right? Just a bunch of dumb brutes.

Most kids at my community college that I work with have the work ethic but just not the smarts, and it takes more than just someone that knows all there is to know about physics to guide them in the right path. Maybe they even have a shot at doing more than going to a CC if we can figure out their impediments. And where do you learn about those things? In stupid Education School, of course.

[Edited on November 16, 2009 at 11:55 PM. Reason : .]

11/16/2009 11:49:40 PM

Quote :

"GrumpyGOP: 4) OVERHAUL DISCIPLINE!!! I was a substitute for two teachers at a local high school over the course of a year, so I got to know most of the students and they got to know me. Most of my classes were not particularly good. The biggest problem I ran into on a daily basis was that I had no sticks and only the most meager carrots. A kid acts up, what can I do? Deduct from his grade? Call his parents? Those were good things to threaten me with, because I wanted good grades and feared my parents. They don't do much to a kid whose parents care as little as he does about his grades. Send him to ISS? He's probably got friends there, and at least there he doesn't have to listen to a teacher talk. Get the principal to give him out-of-school suspension, AKA free vacation?"

As academic opportunities and parent education improve, behavior will hopefully improve as well. Like, with the trade schools and community colleges. If we can have kids explicitly linked up with future opportunities after high school, there will be more incentive to get through high school successfully. I dunno. It just doesn't seem that punishments are a long term option for discipline. For starters, some misbehavior should be expected and tolerated. They're kids!

The stuff that directly and repeatedly threatens the learning environment comes, for the most part, from kids who genuinely don't know how to act right and kids who truly (and perhaps rightfully) believe that they don't get shit out of school and straight up do not care. Neither of those conditions seem like they could be resolved with crappy lunches or physical beatings.

When I was in school, I observed some kids who "turned it around" late in high school academically and behaviorally and whatnot. It would be interesting to collect instances of those cases and take a look at the kids and at what precise interventions occurred. Some of the improvement is spurred on by major life events and general maturing, I'm sure, but I think a lot of it is just one teacher saying and doing the right thing at the right time.

A couple particularly influential teachers that I recall (one in high school and one in middle school) always had kids hanging out in their classrooms after school and socializing and tutoring one another. And then other teachers are like, "Ugh, OMG, I've got two kids coming by after school for help. If they had just payed attention in class, I wouldn't have to use my time to give them extra help," and I sympathize with that. But it's fairly evident that one type of teacher is going to have a greater impact on more students than the other.

[Edited on November 17, 2009 at 1:20 AM. Reason : I wants my Leonid!]

11/17/2009 1:18:57 AM

When the system gets fixed, yeah, I think disciplinary problems will probably decrease. But they won't be eliminated just by good teachers and a better curriculum, in no small part because it's impossible to hire nothing but good teachers. More immediately, there's the problem of dealing with the kids in the system now so the bad apples don't continue to poison future generations.

11/17/2009 1:50:27 AM

Education is no different than any other business or organization

1. Find talented people
2. Pay them to stay in your school
3. Give them the resources they need
4. Get out of the way

You micromanage from the legislature and levels far removed from the school when you admit that you have no clue how to improve your human resources or when you don't even realize that you have an HR problem. You will see this progression in just about any organization or company: people can't figure out how to develop talent, so they rely on process-ization to mitigate the downsides of a mediocre talent pool (NCLB).

In reality, success is mainly a function of your talent pool and their ability to use those talents unencumbered. The legislature shouldn't be telling whoever that they need to do pre-k, emphasize trade schools, do more schooling, etc. They should provide the resources to get talented people who have the aptitude to see what the problems are and have the wherewithal to solve them (with pre k, trade schools, whatever is needed).

[Edited on November 17, 2009 at 3:07 AM. Reason : .]

11/17/2009 3:06:05 AM

^A need for pre-K, trade schools emphasis, and longer school days and school years has been noted by talented teachers.

So now what?

11/17/2009 3:09:37 AM

Find out exactly who these talented educators are and give them the money to implement it. Promote them, pay them, put them in charge of other training, hiring, and firing other educators.

Giving losers and winners the same money and responsibilities alike, as legislation to do any of those programs would, is doomed to failure. That's why we see, at best, average returns from most education funding programs.

11/17/2009 3:16:21 AM

Okay, so you're talking about a radically new way doing things, and not just in public education, but in the history of every organization ever.

11/17/2009 3:34:13 AM

Your fatalistic response means something, and you are way off. Any highly successful organization will be good at recruiting, keeping, and promoting talent. First of all, most organizations have the freedom to pay what it takes to keep talented people.

Go down the list of organizations and companies that are good places to work and highly successful (google, cisco, MS, apple), and you will see that they place a lot of emphasis on getting talent. On top of that, employees have the resources and opportunities to try out new ideas and develop the ones that seem promising without an act of congress.

Most companies and organizations (especially the government) think you can cheap out on talent, save money, and spend the savings elsewhere. That's why most organizations aren't remarkable

[Edited on November 17, 2009 at 3:56 AM. Reason : .]

11/17/2009 3:56:27 AM

^They try new ideas in public school without legislation all the time...it's pretty annoying. And almost all organizations have reporting structures.

I totally see what you're saying, but you're being a snooty, uppity bitch about it. And you're all vague and buzzwordy.

You just came in and said, "You're all wrong! Let me tell you about my Utopia that no taxpayer would ever go for! Fuck all your practical ideas that acknowledge reality."

11/17/2009 4:42:16 AM

Quote :

"I dunno. It just doesn't seem that punishments are a long term option for discipline. For starters, some misbehavior should be expected and tolerated. They're kids! The stuff that directly and repeatedly threatens the learning environment comes, for the most part, from kids who genuinely don't know how to act right and kids who truly (and perhaps rightfully) believe that they don't get shit out of school and straight up do not care. Neither of those conditions seem like they could be resolved with crappy lunches or physical beatings."

I like how you call skokiaan's business strategy a Utopia that "fucks all your practical ideas that acknowledge reality", but your solution is a fluffy world where bad kids don't get punished. Why don't we just get the good kids to do the shitty kids' work for them so they can pass and get a diploma?

If all we need to do to ensure that a shitty kid won't grow up into a shitty adult is give them a degree so they have a chance at getting a good job, then why don't we just give them degrees? It sounds like you're bending over backwards to change the system to work for shitty kids anyway.

11/17/2009 9:00:27 AM

Quote :

"I totally see what you're saying, but you're being a snooty, uppity bitch about it. And you're all vague and buzzwordy."

No he isn't. He's carpet bombing this thread with 2000lb knowledge bombs.

Quote :

"You micromanage from the legislature and levels far removed from the school when you admit that you have no clue how to improve your human resources or when you don't even realize that you have an HR problem. You will see this progression in just about any organization or company: people can't figure out how to develop talent, so they rely on process-ization to mitigate the downsides of a mediocre talent pool (NCLB)."

Totally.

Huge amounts of resources are spent on implementing micromanagement and upgrading facilities, when the obvious solution is better teachers. The leadership in my county is obsessed with technology. They're always spending money on ridiculously expensive, redundant crap, even when they're seemingly unsure what to do with it. It's sometimes cool, but it's not the silver bullet they think it is.

11/17/2009 12:19:56 PM

Quote :

"High quality, fully subsidized pre-K "

Waste of money. Sounds like another Bridget idea to give people another free handout. A 4 yr old sitting in a class playing with
blocks and seasme street games will have a benefit that would be negligeable by 18. We already have Kindergarter for this
exact purpose. We may as well snowball bridgets plan since next people are going to be asking for pre-pre kindergarten.
Soon enough the ball will roll until all pre-school is free and public for all.

Quote :

"Reinvigorate vocational education. Have kids linked up with apprenticeships, community colleges, or trade schools when they graduate"

I agree.

Quote :

"Spread economically disadvantaged students out among the schools so no one school becomes "bad"

NO NO NO

NO BUSSING

I had to literally drive by one high school then at another intersection if I went right instead of straight, 1.5 miles down the road
I would be at another high school. Instead I had to drive 4 more miles into shitty Charlotte rush hour traffic to attend
East Meck since my neighborhood was on a sliver of a school zone that was bussed to offset the inner city kids that were
bussed to the suburb high schools.

Why not just work to throw crap like NCLB in the trash and treat all schools more equally.

Quote :

"Finally, principals should more aggressively monitor teachers"

My mom is a teacher and trust me that principals are already overbearing on teachers. Way more so than what should occur for a professional.

Largely this would vary as exected by the individual in charge.


As far as discipline, I thought one of the stupidest things was to send kids (like at my high school) home for 3 days as
punishment for minor to moderate (non-violent) infractions. Like saying Shit in class was 3 days. Being late to class X
times was 3 days. I always thought this was counter-productive. The principal is almost rewarding these kids for causing trouble.

If anything they need to be in the dungeon (ISS) or forced to conduct community service (pick up trash) after school.

Overall I think many problems in this country can be at the root tacked down to education. The Federal gov't needs to stay out
of legislation which needs to be left to the state legislature for budgeting and general curriculm with day-to-day management
left to the counties/municipalities.

Disclaimer: I did not feel like proofreading so sorry for any misspellings and grammar errors.

11/17/2009 1:43:30 PM

Quote :

"Waste of money. Sounds like another Bridget idea to give people another free handout. A 4 yr old sitting in a class playing with blocks and seasme street games will have a benefit that would be negligeable by 18."

I've read studies that demonstrate the exact opposite. In fact, it's shown that pre-K is the factor when predicting future success.

Quote :

"-Chicago children who attended a pre-k program were 29 percent more likely to graduate from high school than their peers who did not have pre-k. (Source: Chicago Longitudinal Study) Pre-k helps children do better on standardized tests. -Michigan fourth graders who had attended pre-k passed the state's literacy and math assessment tests at higher rates than their peers who had no pre-k. (Source: "State Efforts to Evaluate the Effects of Pre-Kindergarten", Yale University Child Study Center) Pre-k reduces grade repetition. -Maryland fifth graders who attended pre-k were 44 percent less likely to have repeated a grade than their peers who did not attend pre-k. (Source: "State Efforts to Evaluate the Effects of Pre-Kindergarten", Yale University Child Study Center) -Among Chicago children, those who attended pre-k were 41 percent less likely to require special education services than their peers who did not attend. (Source: Chicago Longitudinal Study)"

http://www.preknow.org/policy/factsheets/benefits.cfm

(it's an advocacy group, but their stuff is cited, and I've seen similar statistics at teacher workshops)

11/17/2009 3:46:37 PM

^ couldnt that be because those children that are enrolled in pre-k educational programs have parents that support their child getting a good education and that is what led to the increase graduation rates?
basically the fact they were in pre-k was just indicative of another (possibly) more important factor? (parents that care and push their child to excel)

11/17/2009 4:57:52 PM

^ yea i'd say thats pretty likely. However, if year round schools + longer hours make better students, it might be due to kids getting support from the system that they wouldn't get from their parents otherwise. If this is the case, there might be benefit from pre-k for everyone.

But you'd have to find studies showing benefits from low performing US schools being switched from part year/standard hours to year round/more hours.

11/17/2009 5:03:06 PM

I'm sure there's an element of that. But let's remember what kids in Pre-K are not doing during those hours of the day, regardless of parental involvement:

1) Watching TV
2) Shoving Little Debbie cakes down their gullets
3) Generally being unsupervised
4) and, in the case of families where the parents are shitty, witnessing/being exposed to aspects of their parents' shittiness

And let's remember what kids are doing in Pre-K, regardless of parental involvement:

1) Interacting socially with others
2) Having stories read to them (which has often been demonstrated to be useful)
3) Participating in rudimentary learning exercises

---

I hesitate to mention it because Malcolm Gladwell gets plenty of press on his own, and the book is mainstream enough that some people will probably discount it just for that reason, but Outliers is a damned good and interesting read that talks quite a bit about education and the snowballing effect that early differences can have.

Developmental differences are so clear at early ages that they quickly get kids pigeonholed, often for bad reasons. School year cutoff dates can lead to pretty wide disparities in education based on birthdate -- disparities that remain apparent much later in life, when the kid graduates high school.

For example, if the cutoff date is January 1, a kid born January 2 will start school at the same time as a kid who was born later that year on December 31. That's almost a year's maturity difference, which is pretty fucking apparent in a 5 year old. The January 2 kid is seen as smarter because, well, he is -- he has had 20% more years to learn than the December kid. Because his teachers see him as smarter, he's more likely to get special treatment, put into advanced programs and whatnot. So maybe by second grade, the Jan. kid is in an AG class, the Dec. kid stays in regular, and by the time high school comes around Jan. is an IB graduate and Dec. is in prison for selling crack.

Obviously this does not happen all the time, but Gladwell provides some pretty compelling evidence for the trend. Regardless of everyone's actual relative intelligence, you get an edge by being born just after the cutoff date. I have a hard time believing that the same principle wouldn't apply to, say, Pre-K, where a tiny initial difference could lead to a magnified one down the road.

11/17/2009 5:16:39 PM

was just going to say the same exact thing as this ^^^. But I am certainly not against Pre-K or anything, I just don't think it is 100% the cause for those results.

My wife, licensed in K-6 education and also some special ed, actually did some research on this during school. Obviously its hard to quantify. My guess, and something that she was convinced of afterward, was that parents that value education and take an interest in their child's education potentially play a larger role than the Pre-K activities themselves.

On a separate note, Its sad how many parents hinder their children out of ignorance or just bad parenting. This goes for discipline as well as education these days. Having several friends who are teachers, I just hear some ridiculous stories. One that shocked me the most had to do with a friend harmlessly "calling out" a kid who obviously had not put any effort into the assignment that they were having an open class discussion / QA on. I know him, and I believe him when it said it was nothing more than a statement made to the student that he needed start doing the readings. He ended up having a conference with the Principle and the student's mom. Basically he got reprimanded because he "embarrassed" the student in front of his peers by calling him out.

Its pretty sad when a school teacher can get reprimanded for showing disappointment that a student failed to complete a homework assignment. Yea, sure he could have pulled him out after class, but give me a break...parents need to stop babying their kids. It is certainly adding an extra factor into the failing education system.

[Edited on November 17, 2009 at 5:20 PM. Reason : ]

11/17/2009 5:19:10 PM

point taken

I do think parents need to be more involved with their child's education though. and not in the way where they go bitching to the teacher if their kid is a little snot. I remember as a kid mom always asking if I had homework, how much, what I did that day etc. and while it annoyed the crap out of me as a kid I see the benefits now.

11/17/2009 5:20:04 PM

^ yep. My parents were very involved in my education. In fact my dad took on a second job and my mom got her BS from an Associates degree pretty much just to help pay for my sister and I go to a college prep school. At the time it was sometimes annoying and I didn't fully realize the impact their interest and the school they paid for me to attend had until I started college. And that isnt to say that people can't get a good public education...I'll have to see what the school systems are like when I have kids before I make the decision on public vs private.

[Edited on November 17, 2009 at 5:25 PM. Reason : ]

11/17/2009 5:22:56 PM

So can we make the leap from our complaints to some sort of parent education program? Maybe something tied to pre-K like they do with the Harlem Children's Zone program that moron posted about.

11/17/2009 6:44:35 PM

So you guys think that parents who don't give a shit in the first place will have any incentive to go to programs to make them give a shit? That'll work!

11/17/2009 8:34:32 PM

have you read anything about the harlem program? it's incredibly successful

and it's not just "giving a shit." some parents literally don't know many basic things that we take for granted in child-rearing.


[Edited on November 17, 2009 at 8:42 PM. Reason : .\]

11/17/2009 8:41:52 PM

Quote :

"Developmental differences are so clear at early ages that they quickly get kids pigeonholed, often for bad reasons. School year cutoff dates can lead to pretty wide disparities in education based on birthdate -- disparities that remain apparent much later in life, when the kid graduates high school.Developmental differences are so clear at early ages that they quickly get kids pigeonholed, often for bad reasons. School year cutoff dates can lead to pretty wide disparities in education based on birthdate -- disparities that remain apparent much later in life, when the kid graduates high school. "

I am not sure how well this link can be made for education but i do know that their is some solid evidence that this type of relationship exist in sports. Sports most in particular in hockey where (from 3rd party source) a lot of hockey stars have Jan and Feb birthdays. Early January also is the cut off date for an age bracket in youth hockey. So those right after the cutoff have almost a year of development versus their teammate born in Nov/Dec. This development is positively reinforced throughout the year; as these kids get more playing time and thus proceed to improve even more.

11/17/2009 11:26:13 PM

The same book I mentioned earlier covers sports (and hockey in particular) in great detail. The author demonstrated pretty convincingly that the same effect worked in schools.

Bridget pointed out that, while I used January 1 as a hypothetical cutoff for school, it's more usually around August/September.

11/18/2009 12:11:37 AM

my kid is in Pre-K and it's great. kids at that age are prime for learning.

theres a lot of recent empirical evidence showing that kids at this age can learn math skills (even in places like Head Start) that carry with them and give them an advantage later on standardized math tests.

a lot of it of course depends on parents though. the schools can only do so much if the kid isnt getting good nutrition, getting a good nights sleep, being encouraged to learn, and is generally not stressed about their basic needs like safety and family.

11/18/2009 1:24:05 AM

As many budgeting and staffing problems our schools already have; the last thing we need is to tag on an extra year before Kindergarten which is nothing more than a "public-option" for parents to get out of paying for pre-school.

Perhaps we should worry about adequately funding the grades within the schools we have. I think its ridiculous as to how much school (especially high school) budgets get neglected. This is a macro equivalent of someone cutting their 401k back in order to have more money to buy beer or to afford the lease of a luxury car.

11/18/2009 9:15:04 PM

^ That would require a LOT more government spending to bring things up to par. Are you willing to pay increased taxes for that purpose?

11/18/2009 9:24:32 PM

Actually I probably would. Education (if used correctly) is one thing I think we get our money back as in investment for the future. Plus people like schmoe want to already pay more to fund an extra grade of education; so instead this money could be used for teh grades that are already in place.

11/19/2009 7:34:39 AM

There are only budget problems because of how public schools are budgeted: millions for six figure administrators that never set foot in a classroom (they have a union) and nothing for books or desks (they have no union).

11/19/2009 4:12:40 PM

I am not sure what state you live in but teachers in NC most certainly DO NOT have a union.

11/19/2009 4:24:34 PM

They'd be better off spending money on reducing class sizes, generally. Watching my mother, an elementary school teacher, over most of her 30+ year career teaching in the NC public school system, her biggest complaint wasn't cuts to funding of programs, or materials, or even textbooks. It was that her classes kept getting bigger. More students in a room = more difficulty imposing order and control.

On an unrelated note, corporal punishment should be brought back to schools. Punishments like suspensions and detention do very little to actually punish the behaviors we'd seek to curtail in schools.

11/19/2009 4:30:02 PM

Class size is everything. There's a lightyear's distance between 20 and 25 and 30.

I've only taught 35 while student teaching, and it was just silly. Might as well have them watch videos of teachers teaching.

11/19/2009 4:49:13 PM

Quote :

"HUR: the last thing we need is to tag on an extra year before Kindergarten which is nothing more than a "public-option" for parents to get out of paying for pre-school."

A year? I'm thinking we should tack on two years! And free daycare before pre-K, too!

And it's not for parents to get out paying for it. It's for kids to have it because their parents can't afford it.

It's hard enough for middle class folks to manage care for children while they work. Poor parents (and their children) are fucked.

11/19/2009 4:54:12 PM

Yeah that great in fantasy world Bridget but how the fuck do you propose paying for this in already ca$h $trapped $chools. The democrats are already spending $trillions in health care reform. Meanwhile half the states are fighting to stay out of bankruptcy.

11/19/2009 5:15:42 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/19/california.tuition.protests/index.html

fucking 32% increase

11/19/2009 7:54:14 PM

their students will vote with their feet, same as any other customer.

11/19/2009 8:09:30 PM