Way to compete, America, with the rest of the world! Um, we are still trying to compete, right?
States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School
One team of statisticians working at the [Mississippi] state education headquarters here recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent, which Mississippi reported to Washington. But in another office piled with computer printouts, a second team of number crunchers came up with a different rate: a more sobering 63 percent.
The state schools superintendent, Hank Bounds, says the lower rate is more accurate and uses it in a campaign to combat a dropout crisis.
[…]
Like Mississippi, many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.
[…]
The multiple rates have many causes. Some states have long obscured their real numbers to avoid embarrassment. Others have only recently developed data-tracking systems that allow them to follow dropouts accurately.The No Child law is also at fault.
For those who don’t want to use a fake email address to log into the NYT article, here’s a shortened version of it. And here’s what Kentucky is doing about part of the problem.
-Sigh- I’m just wrapping up “The World is Flat” and the emphasis on education, and our disastrous investments in education as a nation, were equally sobering. –Cheers
When I was a kiddie, California was no1 or 2 in the nation in educational results. Today I hear we are #47. I went by my old high school last week and it is gated and guarded==looks very much like a penitentiary from turn of the century now.
When I was a kiddie, I grew up/went to school thinking I could get any job I wanted if I was good enough to study hard. Today, I can’t think of a job that can’t be outsourced. Today, I don’t know what I would counsel an average kid to study with an ultimate goal of being financially successful?
More than just the flood is coming.
See what happens when you cut the arts out of schools ( sorry I just wanted to say that. I do believe it however )
Bobbo has a good point. Maybe if the atmosphere was more nurturing then “master and servant” kids might actually pay attention rather then trying to hide from teachers and security guards in schools. I should add that most of my friends who are teachers say that the No Child left behind deal is a crock
I just read the entire article, NCLB is not the reason for the fraud, but only the excuse for a lack of professional integrity. Long before the Feds imposed NCLB, there were reports of teachers, schools, and school districts fudging numbers.
It’s not a lack of money, or a lack of qualified teachers that’s to blame for the sad state of education in this country. It’s a incompetently managed educational system, at all levels.
#2 – When I was a kiddie, I grew up/went to school thinking I could get any job I wanted if I was good enough to study hard.
I fell for that lie too.
from the article… recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent
87% is NOT respectable. It’s 12% shy of a respectable number. I think 1 idiot in 100 is all we can tolerate.
I actually work for major school district here in california. I listen to teacher trash NCLB since the Feds passed it. Teachers don’t like NCLB because it can be used to monitor their job performance.
The one thing I’ve learned about teachers in my 20 years with the district, they don’t like to be held accountable for the education they provide. They consider it an insult to their profession.
I’ve seen them in action both from the perspective of a student and co-worker, they are not the noble educators they have convinced the general public they are.
Comes as no surprise. Americans are the stupidest people to have ever lived on the planet.
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
#6–so true. Its fun to pose the question this way: are schools here to serve the students, or to serve the teachers?
If the former, then have tenure and faculty focused administration. If the later, have annual teacher evaluations and have the students and parents vote the bottom 10% teachers off the staff==that kind of thing.
There are injustices in any system you devise, so the deciding question should be on what group do we prefer the injury to fall?–teachers or students?
The school in Stand and Deliver isn’t doing so well. Jaime Escalante gave them good math results for several years.
Don’t blame this on the job market. Kids don’t think that far ahead in any concrete way. They’ll study if forced. Those of you praising Kentucky, they passed No Child Left Behind on steroids a decade ago. It led to the elimination of the spelling bee as against the principles of the education reform.
“The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals.”
Yes, the myriad of state officials can’t establish their own graduation goals. God, how pathetic. Fire the lot of them.
#7: At least we know “stupidest” is not a word!
Today, I don’t know what I would counsel an average kid to study with an ultimate goal of being financially successful?
And that is the problem. Most people in US measure success with dollar which ironically is getting weaker by the minute …
If schools are strict about dropout rate calculations the effectiveness of NCLB (ha!) becomes clear, but at the same time the school comes under federal scrutiny and control. If you look at NCLB with a close eye for the the true range of abilities of all kids in public schools, NCLB guarantees that all school districts will eventually be labeled as failing, except those in the most affluent communities. Cynically, I believe that was the plan all along.
#14–“a”==no, only financial success is measured by dollars which are getter weaker by the minute which is what was posted. To your implied issue–is it easier or harder to find emotional/immaterial success in a society that is failing, or in one that is growing more successful?
Back to school for you.
I’ve done volunteer work at a couple local city schools over the past few years. In most cases, the majority of students have no respect for the teacher, and the teacher either spends more of their energy trying to “manage” the class than they do teaching. When I was in school (way back when), there were clear and unpleasant consequences when you disrupted the class. Not necessarily physical punishment (that was banned while I was in elementary school in my state), but you wanted to avoid it, if for no other reason than the trouble you might have gotten into at home. This didn’t mean you couldn’t have fun in class, but it was usually within the boundaries the teacher established. If the students have no respect for their teachers (possibly due to their parents not driving that point home), the teachers aren’t able to teach much.
It doesn’t help that in most classrooms that use computers (at least locally), the “safeguards” that are supposed to keep kids’ browsing to education-related websites is poor, easily circumvented by even a halfway tech-savy adolescent. I’ve met many kids that were barely computer-literate (other than using YouTube and playing Runescape), but they certainly knows how to use ninjaproxy to access their MySpace at school.
I’m going to use my walker to get off my soap box now. (mutter-darned whippersnappers-grumble)
A question: Since ~1980 has K-12 education nationwide improved or has it degraded?
ok but what good will an education do if we keep importing cheap labor from overseas?? (you know H1B’s)
dont belive the new figures. it isnt the sad state of education, it is the types of students that are in regular school systems as well,
There are now learning disabled in regular schools these day, that werent included years ago as they went to other schools that were setup especially for them. has anyone really factored these students (and i mean more learning disabled then say dyslexia) out of these figures???
how many inner city schools saved on building expences by folding their learning disabled student into their regular student buildings?? and how are they counted??
NCLB is an effort to force teachers to do their jobs, but the teachers cannot without being able to keep discipline in class.
Teachers are prevented from keeping discipline in class by the legal system, the school administration, the parents, and their own training.
That training taught them that certain things were “bad”, but all the methods of keeping discipline are included in the list of “bad” things. It’s like needing to drive a nail, but not having anything to use for a hammer.
In my own home state, education spending is the #1 budget item, even about transportation. Then there’s local and federal funding on top of that. If a “lack of sufficient funds” is the problem, we’re all in deep shit.
#23. It’s not lack of funds. In my 1st grade class (parochial school) we used slate & chalk due to low funds. Our basic 3 R books were 30+ years old. But, we became literate & proficient in math. Our class size was about 40 students.
It’s a bunch of B.S. If your car stopped working you analyze what went wrong and fix it. You don’t just throw $ at it, hook a trailer on it sporting a 747 engine with no linkage to the transmission.
I haven’t seen ONE pol who wants to pile on more $ show an evaluation based on data as to what has CHANGED from when the system DID work.
Imagine if only government, and union workers were allowed to run restaurants. ( You know, public safety, equal oppertunity and free luches for the working poor reasons like that. )
How well would they be?
And you expect government to do a good job in intellectual development and skill training?
What is that old saw about doing the same and expecting different results?
Anyways, lets throw more money at it. I deduced, back of the envelope, that a D.C. high graduate, able to do community college work, prices out at $80k/year. There are more costs but I couldn’t get them. A true total dynamic cost might be even a couple of hundred thousand a year.
Oh, well.
Even though I’m only 35, I’m thinking this problem is generational.
Example: When I last attended college, the “gamer geeks” met in the largest student lounges to hang out, play RPG’s/CCG’s, and generally BS. There were many other students there besides us. In general, the noise level was moderate, and people tended to pick up after themselves. Not spotless, but fairly clean.
Eight years later, I went back for a class. The same lounge was there, but a different generation of student was as well. There was a lot of yelling and noise, and there was a LOT of trash on the floor and on the tables. People would bring lunches to the lounge, and just leave them on the table (sometimes with half-eaten food) and walk away. That seemed to be the state the entire quarter.
It just seems that people have less and less respect for others and common areas than they used to. And those people grow up, have kids, who continue that “tradition,” but “improve” upon it. And this was in college, after the high school dropouts were removed from the equation.
I never blow-up, throw acid on, drop heavy weights on, or set fire to other people or other people’s belongings. It’s part of being Slightly-Mad in polite society. It’s good for people to have at least some respect for others and your surroundings.
T-E-A-C-H-E-R’-S U-N-I-O-N
Until schools are closed and teachers are fired, public education will not improve. Parents can either pay for private school (above the taxes they pay to support public school) or Homeschool (and still pay taxes to support public school). Federal money for the district goes away however if the student leaves public school. This is the reason the teacher’s union is pushing for judgment in California requiring homeschooling parents be certified teachers. No, California is not worried that your mom can’t teach Physics, they are worried they can’t hire more teachers and throw more $ at the NCLB “problem”. Keep in mind too that countries ahead of the US on the list don’t require all children to attend K-12. The chaff is removed early on. We leave our chaff in the system for the full ride.
Having worked for a short stint in the Los Angeles Unified School District, I have a word to say on the matter.
The overriding problem isn’t the teachers, administrators, or NCLB, it is the quality of the kids they have to work with, which is a reflection of the society we now live in.
After all, schools only can do so much with what they are given to work with.
May I say, the root of the problem isn’t so much the kids, but the parents which allow their kids to be animals. Parents who deny or abrogate their responsibilities to
the school and their teachers. Parents who complain that the teachers for not being good enough surrogate parents. Parents who complain that the schools aren’t doing enough when they themselves do nothing.
Let’s have a dose of cold, hard, reality. The US educational system is in the crapper because Parents, and I am talking straight to all of us, have given our kids up to the corner gang, the consumer culture, etc. and have offered them as sacrifices to our own selfishness. Kids, don’t bother us, we’re too busy for you.
And how about this for another splash of reality?
NOT ALL KIDS BELONG IN SCHOOL!
No, there are too many kids who use school to prey on others and use every moment to disrupt any chance to learn and achieve. These kids need to be separated from the school environment the same as all other criminals in society.
Then those who want to learn can learn, and things will get better.
#28–Ah Yea==I’m with you. Even when schools were at their best, I thought there were some “tough cases” that should have been kicked out, but weren’t.
School should be very much “a privilege” and if you as the kiddie don’t want to act correctly, then you get kicked out to an environment with a more remedial program. The school may be some miles away so get ready for a nice long bus ride each way==lots of time to finish your homework. Counseling and grades to get back into regular school if you see the error of your ways.
There will be some unfair results from this but “the system” will have the resources and environment to cater to those who want to learn. Carrot and stick.
I’ve seen the other side of the coin. I live in a medium size city with about 25,000 kids in the school district. In the 3rd grade, my son got to be one of the 14 kids in the district’s “genius program”. That meant that some special Ed. teacher met with him for 30 minutes a week. That’s it. By the 6th grade, all it meant was that he could play chess while he ate lunch, once a week. That’s it. That’s not too burdensome for the system, I hope.
[deleted for violation of blog guidelines — ed.]