NC public schools declining

From the AP (via the Durham Herald-Sun) by Margaret Lillard:

The number of North Carolina schools performing as expected dropped for the second year in a row, while student performance on math and reading tests slipped slightly after more than a decade of steady gains, state education officials said Thursday.

Data from the ABCs of Public Education program show 69 percent of schools statewide met or surpassed grade-level performance targets set by the state. In the 2003-04 school year, 75.1 percent reached the benchmarks, a significant drop from the 94 percent that did so in 2002-03.

...

The tests also showed that 56.3 percent of North Carolina's schools met federal Adequate Yearly Progress goals, a significant drop from the 70.5 percent that did so last year. Lou Fabrizio, director of accountability services, blamed the difference on new reading standards for 10th grade students.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act mandates that schools meet performance targets each year for subgroups of groups divided, for example, by race. Under the stringent program, if one subgroup misses its target then an entire school doesn't meet the goal.

I hope nobody is surprised.  Dismayed, yes, but not surprised.  The public schools in NC are a bad joke, and I suspect that this is true across the country.  Notice how Lou Fabrizio blames the problem on tighter requirements.  HOW DARE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EXPECT KIDS TO DO BETTER???

The Conservative Rant indicates that Texas ain't exactly dazzlin' everybody with their scores, either.  His suggestions:

1. Rigid discipline within the school, so students know they are coming to learn and not socialize.
2. Everyone reads on their grade level. Most of my students did poorly because they don't understand what the question is asking. They don't posess the necessary vocabulary for their grade level. How do you improve your vocab? You read.
3. Get the kids to class on time and keep them there. In most of the low performing schools, the students aren't where they are supposed to be.
4. Get rid of teachers who can't do their job. That would include me if I wasn't up to snuff.

Makes sense to me.  Of course, I can already hear the NEA, NAACP, and a host of other special interest groups shrieking in outrage now.

Comments

[Dan Trabue]

Not many teachers have any problems with the five suggestions mentioned above. But your rant is ignoring difficult questions.

1. We are trying to educate everyone now, not just the 50% that graduated in the 1950s. Trying to educate everyone is more difficult than trying to educate half.
2. The single greatest predictor for success in school is parental concern/involvement. Unfortunately, we have a bit of a family values problem in this country and many families are struggling, making it difficult to support their children in school. This is a larger societal problem that needs to be addressed and teachers have limited time or ability to do so.

My children are in public school and doing just fine, thank you. Except for the occasional right wing teaching that passes through the classroom (we put up with it because diversity is important to us), we've had an exceptional educational experience.

God bless our teachers and those who support them as they attempt the challenging work they do!

[NYgirl]

Great post Jim. It's sad to see that the this is a problem throughout our whole country. As you point out, what allows this problem to persist are the administrators who blame standards, which are hardly unfair, & not the real causes.

If children don't learn basic skills, they will not be able to find employment when they grow up. It is setting the stage for disaster.

[Jo]

This is why a good majority of the people I know with kids put them in private schools. Have some friends moving to NC in about 3 months, they've already located a private school to put their kids in.

[docjim505]

Dan, you've got a good point about trying to educate a very diverse set of students. However, the system hobbles itself in this matter by insisting on throwing all the kids into one classroom regardless of the fact that they learn at different rates and have different needs. This is done in the name of their self-esteem (don't want them to feel bad by putting them in 'dumb kid' classes). The end result is that the bright kids are bored to death and the slow ones struggle to keep up. Further, the kids aren't taught the basics. I tutored twelfth graders who didn't know their multiplication tables and still had to count on their fingers if I took away their calculators. I had kids in my college lab sections who couldn't do modestly complicated ARITHMETIC even with a calculator, or who couldn't write a good English sentence if their lives depended on it. I even had to remind one students that, in the English language, one capitalizes the first word in a sentence as well as proper names. These were COLLEGE STUDENTS.

It is certainly possible to get a decent education in public schools (I did*). I absolutely agree with you that parental involvement is very important and even critical to a child's education. I'd wager that you spend time with your kids, either reading or helping them with their homework. My parents did with me and my brother, and he does with his daughter. But what do we do with kids whose parents DON'T do these things? How do we help kids who don't get help at home? Do we drag the entire system down to cater to their needs?

I think that many people would agree that this is exactly what we have done, and hence they are pulling their kids out of public school and sending them to private (often religious) schools or homeschooling them. These things are difficult if not impossible for single parents or families with low incomes (a reason I strongly support school vouchers), and so their kids stay stuck in the swamps of the public schools, and the cycle repeats from generation to generation.

I would like to submit a question to you about your own kids. When you say they are getting a good education in the public schools, by what standard are you judging this? I had a (very unpleasant) instructor in my senior year of college who used to jeer at us, saying that we couldn't have passed tests required of FRESHMEN when he was our age. I think he probably had a point, even if I did fantasize about siccing a large, angry dog on him. Have we lowered the standards so that we THINK the kids are getting a good education, even though they are not learning anywhere near what they COULD learn? A recent National Board of Governors survery seems to bear out this suspicion; a large majority of kids indicated that they find their coursework unchallenging, inappropriate, and downright boring (and so we stuff them full of Ritalin to keep them under control). Look at the job advertizements and consider how many require a BA that, a few decades ago, could have been filled by a person with a high school diploma.

Teaching is a tough job, no doubt about it, but I think the present system is deeply flawed and isn't serving the purposes for which it was intended.

(*) Well, I thought I did at the time... until I met kids from other parts of the country or foreign countries while I was in college, and they sneered at the fact that I had only taken calculus AS AN ELECTIVE in the twelfth grade, or that I'd never been REQUIRED to take calculus-based physics in high school, or that in NC its unheard of for PhDs to teach in the public schools. I still think my NC public school education was pretty good, but I have since learned that it could have been much better.

[Dan Trabue]

Thank you for the reasonable response. A few thoughts. You said:

"This is done in the name of their self-esteem (don't want them to feel bad by putting them in 'dumb kid' classes)."

As a former educator (special ed-Behavior Problems, briefly) and one with a degree in education, I'd say it's done because studies suggest it's a wise thing to do. Not merely for self-esteem. There are certainly conflicting studies. It's a difficult issue. But it's not done, at least here in Louisville, merely for self-esteem.

You said:
"But what do we do with kids whose parents DON'T do these things? How do we help kids who don't get help at home?"

This is THE question, then, isn't it? I'd suggest we keep in mind the wise saying: It takes a village to raise a child. There are no simple answers. Most good answers require effort and money on our part. But studies show and wisdom confirms that simply isolating "the trouble kids" is not a solution. I've other thoughts on the topic, but will save those for now for brevity's sake.

You said:
"When you say they are getting a good education in the public schools, by what standard are you judging this?"

Great question. I judge this by the quality child they are and the wisdom they've gained. Certainly, if we remove all "difficult" children from classes, my children (assuming they're not difficult children themselves) could possibly advance quicker, learning a bit more quickly the facts that we try to pass on in school.

If I merely wanted my child to learn as many facts as possible, I'd probably homeschool. Children can often learn faster one-on-one than in a group setting with no one slowing them down. But, education is so much more than facts, isn't it?

[docjim505]

Dan,

I believe that the NYC public schools recently had a big debate over 'social promotion'. The SOLE reason that I heard given in support of the practice was the self-esteem of the kids. Maybe there are other reasons, but I think that this is the trump. It seems a very silly practice to me. If a kid hasn't shown competence in (for example) 3rd grade skills, what possible good does it do to send him on to 4th grade where he'll probably only get farther behind?

I don't agree with the saying 'It takes a village'. To my knowledge, this has NEVER been widely accepted in our culture. Oh, citizens support public education through taxes and other children's activities through charitable donations or serving as volunteers in such organizations as the Scouts, 4-H, Boys and Girls Clubs, Sunday schools, etc. However, the primary responsibility for raising children has always fallen to the parents (or other family). Indeed, are laws make it virtually impossible for anybody from 'the village' to deal with children for fear of a lawsuit or arrest (refer to the case of Fitzroy Barnaby in Evanston, IL, who was convicted of sexual assault on a child because he grabbed her by the arm and scolded her when she ran out in front of his car).

Even if it DID take a village, how much responsibility or obligation do I have for my neighbor's kids? Common decency and humanity would require me to intervene if they were being threatened with bodily harm, and I might well let my neighbor know if I saw them doing something that they oughtn't. But, sadly, most Americans feel that other people's kids are other people's business.

Your point about the wisdom your children have picked up in school raises the question of 'What do we want the kids to learn, anyway?' For example, we spend a lot of time teaching them history. Do they need it? What about advanced mathematics? Do they really need to know how to prove that angle ABC is equal to angle XYZ, or that there are 2pi radians in a circle? What constitutes 'wisdom' or 'quality' in a child? How can we teach these things?

I much appreciate your thoughtful comments, and hope you have time to continue this discussion.

[Erin Monahan]

My son is in an elementary school that didn't meet the benchmarks in reading for the second year in a row. The reason for this is absolutely a lack of parental involvement. My son just started 3rd grade, he reads on a 6th grade level according to his testing and has never made anything less than the best grades possible (I can't say 'A" because at this level they use a 1-4 number scale and the age old O,S,N,and U)

The school failed because the Mexican students didn't read on an acceptable level - BECAUSE MEXICAN SPEAKING PARENTS CAN'T REINFORCE THE LESSONS IN ENGLISH. This is no reflection on the school, staff, or the system, but I think it is direct proof that parental reinforcement is vital. Unfortunately, it's really not an option for children who live in a home where they happen to be the only english speaking inhabitants, but for us Americans, it proves that we should be helping our kids to learn at home!

That's not to say I don't have my share of qualms with the NCLB system, I do - but until people see the flaws in it, all I can do 'now' is to help my children learn at home!

[docjim505]

An interesting point. I wonder what the scores would have been if they'd been broken down by ethnic group. Is No. Carolina's large Mexican immigrant population 'dragging down' the school scores? Hmmmm...

My mother worked very hard with me and my brother when we were kids, and we could (like your son) read on a higher grade level because of it. Not saying *I* liked it; she used to get this maniacal glint in her eye that told us the flashcards commeth!

[NYgirl]

Eric, you bring up a good point, the situation in schools today means that the burden on parents is much heavier.

Jim, your last comment prompted flashbacks :)