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Counterintuitively, I believe the exact opposite may often be the case. Schools in the "rich" areas may show superior test performance because of the generally better-developed skills of the students (enhanced by what the parents, not school, are doing) but in fact have less able teachers and an uninspired program. I have only seen true "dead wood" staff at middle-class or better schools -- in the inner city, those people would get eaten alive. Only the competent, committed or crazy survive -- and those only for a while. One needs a change of venue every 5-10 years.
My own very urban low SES school is hardly exemplary -- but it clearly has higher standards and better teaching than the semi-rural, all-white, middle-to-upper-class elementary school in the area where I live. Friends and neighbors show me the work of their kids, their report cards, and I have tested several who are clearly severely delayed (NOT LD) in basic skills yet are getting all B's and no hint of trouble on report cards. Parents are at wits' end in some cases because tutoring is not easily available around here due to rural location. One friend's son I tested was a complete non-reader at end of second grade; parent when expressing concern was told her kid was in the top half of the class and was not considered remedial material. At my low-performing school this kid would have been flagged in first grade for intervention. Not only are struggling students left floundering, but able students are bored out of their skulls -- nothing to challenge them.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
do affluent school districts have good schools?
This teacher is responding to the idea that wealthy suburban schools are good because they are well-funded:
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36 comments:
Do affluent school districts have good schools?
No. At least not by default.
It depends on what you mean by "good schools."
Safer, newer, prettier to look at -- maybe. Higher taxes -- absolutely. But if by better you're talking rigor and academics, affluent schools are not always better. Not by a long shot.
Fantastic post that fits very well with the reality I am experiencing first hand. Thanks for posting it!
Hearing this from an insider....
I think it'd be interesting if you could somehow look at the test scores for the kids in affluent districts by "outside tutoring" vs. "no tutoring". My guess is that affluent districts are buoyed by the SES of the parents and the outside tutoring or parental equiv, so that in lower grades, the parents help the child to read, count, etc. and in middle and higher grades, they intervene personally or by hiring Kumon, Huntington, etc. The parents don't care if the staff is really top notch, and they take matters into their own hands anyway.
that said, "I have only seen true "dead wood" staff at middle-class or better schools -- in the inner city, those people would get eaten alive. Only the competent, committed or crazy survive -- and those only for a while. "
I've seen the dead wood at hte inner city schools in Oakland, CA. They are there. They are awful. They are not competent or committed or crazy. They are punching a clock, and they aren't eaten alive by anyone, because there's nothing there at all. The minimally control the classroom, and the teach nothing at all.
I talked to a Scarsdale tutor this week who told me that tutoring is now a given in Scarsdale.
I'd heard that before, from another tutor who estimated that half the kids there are being tutored.
The problem with tutoring is that it doesn't work. I've seen over and over again that tutoring is an extremely bad way to get through school (although I imagine there are brilliantly effective tutors out there just as there are brilliantly effective teachers).
Tutoring is remediation & reteaching, and remediation and reteaching would never be anyone's first choice.
The "real-world" control group for these kids is their peers in very good private schools.
I've now seen those schools & those kids.
They are miles ahead of same-SES tutored kids in high-performing suburban schools.
You can look at SAT scores for Westchester schools here .
The only school that appeared on the WSJ list of 50 schools with high admissions rates to elite colleges and universities is Scarsdale.
Iirc, the Westchester schools that appeared on Andrew Rotherham's Top 100 "Gold" schools were:
Edgemont
Chappaqua (Horace Greeley)
Scarsdale
Bronxville
Rye High School
Blind Brook
Irvington
You can look up their SAT scores at the link above.
I don't think any of these schools has a significant population of black, Hispanic, or disadvantaged kids (don't know that for sure).
I'll bet there's a lot of variability in these things. My district pays teachers well (not at the top of the scale, but relatively high), has good medical and dental benefits, and is not experiencing a shortage of teachers. Enrolment is declining slightly and there are mobs of recent graduates eagerly lining up for positions. Shortages are only for some specific jobs, such as specialized Special Education programs or particular high school subjects. Thus, the incompetent and truly awful are in fact shown the door -- but not overtly. The public has the idea that bad teachers never get fired, and that is true, in a way. Here they are put through a process (a fair one, IMO) where they are given opportunities to learn new skills and improve; if all fails, they have the option to resign or be fired. Hobson's Choice.
I was the union rep at one school where this process went on (so I was party to the meetings ) and the teacher did finally resign. It was sad, in a way. She was a caring person and wanted to do right by the kids, but did not have the needed skills or the ability to learn them. Hopefully she found her niche in some other line of work. I have known of at least one teacher who resigned before being terminated in several schools I have worked in, plus one who fought the process in court and lost (he was fired). Supply and demand may factor in, and minimally competent people may not be moved out in districts where they have a hard time getting warm bodies in the classroom.
There is competition for jobs here, but I have never seen any evidence that the race was to the instructionally swift. Diversity and political correctness top the list of desirable attributes in the teacher-to-be. We have regular performance evaluations, but student learning is not one of the items on which a teacher's performance is evaluated.
Re tutoring -- I have a friend who teaches fourth grade in a wealthy suburb where the average home is in the million-to-million-and-a-quarter range. She told me EVERY single kid in her class, even the inclusion kids with LD or PDD, had private tutors or were signed up for centers like Sylvan. Many had something akin to the old Greek "pedagogue," that is, a person hired to meet the child every day after school, do homework and then enriching or remedial academics.
She said she never had to teach the basics, the parents took care of it. They spent class time doing wonderful multimedia projects etc.
Even the inclusion kids were close to grade level, or sometimes better. Of course the school was also dripping with resources. And yes, they had high test scores.
wow
that's not happening here - not that I know of
Actually, I should clarify: tutoring in K-5 is probably fine -- although I still prefer a coherent curriculum taught by a good & experienced teacher.
I'm not seeing good results at all in middle school & high school.
I mentioned this to a friend of mine one day, a woman who has hired a gazillion tutors.
She was shocked.
About 3 days later she said to me, "You know, you're right. Tutoring doesn't work."
She'd had lousy results; her kids were struggling like crazy (this is in high school courses)....and she said she was hiring so many tutors she couldn't keep track of them all.
With all that tutoring, nothing was getting any easier.
These are very sharp kids, too.
In all these stories I tell, the people in them aren't remotely LD, ADD, ADHD -- nothing! (If they are, I try to say so.)
These are bright, hard-working kids with highly educated parents.
When I say "highly educated" I mean lawyers, professors, doctors, clinical psychologists.
student learning is not one of the items on which a teacher's performance is evaluated
Can you tell us more about this?
>that's not happening here - not that I know of
You wouldn't know. People here don't know, either. The only reason I knew was because I was a union rep (and in another case because the word got out). The employee's privacy is protected. Other teachers do not know the process is going on. I suspect it now in one case but I can't prove it (it's none of my business anyway).
The fact is, ineffective or incompetent teachers can be and are removed on a regular basis, but no one hears anything about it. For the most part that is just as well (unless we are talking about criminal or abusive behavior). But, because people don't hear about it, they think it is not happening, which is not true. Teachers resign on a regular basis so it does not attract attention.
Doubtless it happens more regularly in some districts than others. I doubt there is any available data on such things as they are considered confidential personnel matters.
Re performance evaluation -- every time I have had one (intermittent intervals, last one in 2004 I think) the criteria and process have changed somewhat. I will see whether I can find some specifics of the last one. The absence of any consideration for student learning struck me forcefully.
Getting along with other people, having attractive bulletin boards, and contributing to extracurricular activities were all items considered as I recall.Lesson plans, reports and recordkeeping were noteworthy too.
Knowledge, on the other hand, didn't count for squat.
[Tutoring is remediation & reteaching, and remediation and reteaching would never be anyone's first choice.]
Sometimes tutoring is the only teaching. I tutor the disadvantaged after school. That school uses Everyday Math and CMP. Today a fifth grader brought his 5th grade EM journal and was assigned exponents by the teacher. I looked at his work and it was totally wrong. The kid had no clue what exponents are. Nobody seemed to have taught him. He was supposed to write 10^3, 10^8, etc. in standard form and write 100,000, ten million and so on in powers of ten. I wrote out 10^3 as 10x10x10 and other examples to show him how exponents work. To my amazement he couldn't multiply 10x10 in his head and started multiplying using the lattice method of all things. Nevertheless, he caught on quickly and understood exponents after I went through several examples. I don't know what's going on with math instruction during the daytime. I suspect the students are just given these assignments without explanation and are expected to discover or something.
"I don't know what's going on with math instruction during the daytime. I suspect the students are just given these assignments without explanation and are expected to discover or something."
It's wrong to think of Everyday Math as being constructivist or any other such thing. It's constructivist only in that the teacher doesn't teach. I remember asking my son time and time again about exactly what the teacher did during math class. He said that she sat at her desk typing on her computer. He says that's what all teachers do. He was exaggerating, but he said it in a matter-of-fact way.
Teachers don't care if kids discover anything. They hand out the material and go sit at their desks. For Everyday Math, the teacher would hand out the Study Links to do in class and the kids would do the work (or not) alone or in groups of 2 or three. Then, they would get the Home Links to do at home. I never saw anything like discovery in any of these worksheets. The Home Links had no more than 10 simple problems to do, and it would take him at most 10 minutes. He could do the material because I made sure of it.
Any teaching that went on was very brief and they really didn't care about discovery. There is way too much stuff in EM to cover it all in one year so teachers don't do anything special and just quit when they get to the end of the year. The downside of this approach is that it's very inefficient to just give worksheets (Study Links) to kids in class and tell them to get to work. It takes them forever. It's not teaching. It's not discovery. It's self-learning.
This is why I hate talk of constructivism and understanding. They have nothing to do with what goes on in class. A good teacher might be able to work around EM, but why not get a better curriculum? Why not take responsibility for learning?
My opinion is that schools like Everyday Math because of their PR support and it's key ingredient: spiraling mastery. This allows schools to pedagogically rationalize differentiated instruction and it puts the onus (blame) on the student for learning. This is low expectations masquerading as discovery and understanding. By the time EM drops kids off at 7th grade pre-algebra, even the kids will be blaming themselves.
I still don't know the ins and outs of discovery. Is it discovering bits of knowledge lying around on the kitchen table, on the floor or in drawers? Or is it taking things to their logical conclusion?
However, I think I can state with a reasonable degree of certainty that conventions don't lend themselves to discovery. Conventions like representing repeated multiplication in shorthand form with tiny superscripts need to be taught explicitly.
There is competition for jobs here, but I have never seen any evidence that the race was to the instructionally swift. Diversity and political correctness top the list of desirable attributes in the teacher-to-be.
Instructionally swift! LOL!
What I hear is that there is LOTS of competition in our school district, an affluent NYC suburb. I have no clue how new hires are selected. An insider told me it was “who you know” that determined hiring. Of course, that enters into the equation almost everywhere, not just schools.
I echo what concernedctparent has said about affluent schools:
"Safer, newer, prettier to look at -- maybe. Higher taxes -- absolutely."
I would certainly say there are some excellent schools in northern Virginia; however, there is too much emphasis on group work and discovery learning. Parents that I talk to equate progressive curricula as meaning their children attend good schools. Yet, we have kids right now in fourth grade who don't know what 7 x 8 is. We have second graders who are failing and being tutored by parent volunteers.
It is funny because recently my fourth grader's teacher said my son is showing "great aptitude" in math. This is ironic because at the beginning of third grade he couldn't add 8 + 9. The principal said he had a "disconnect" in math. She also pointed out to my husband and I that math facts were certainly something we could have worked with him at home.
A year later and with the help of Kumon he is considered advanced in math. If left up to the school, he would never have caught up and surpassed his peers. He would still be looked upon as having a "disconnect."
Scary.
"I still don't know the ins and outs of discovery."
Even for fuzzy math, there are few cases of discovery. Often, they are things like guess and check problems, which is brute force discovery. For regular class time, it means child-centered learning, which isn't necessarily discovery at all, unless you want to include the child's discovery that he or she needs to be directly taught how to do something. Having another child explain it to him/her is not discovery. It's direct teaching by a child.
My opinion is that they just don't like direct instruction. They don't like facts and skills. Those come first. They don't want to believe or they can't figure out how direct instruction can be both efficient and engaging. They are fixated with child-centered learning and the pedagogy of discovery fits this perfectly. Never mind that what actually happens in class is just bad (or non) teaching. I find that there is more discovery going on when I directly teach my son. I don't just tell him what do do. I ask a lot of questions.
Any way I look at it, current implementations of discovery translate to low expectations. I could create a high expectation curriculum based on discovery (not child-centered learning), but it would have grade-level expectations of content and skills.
Mastery of content and skills are not incompatible with discovery, so their talk of discovery is just a cover for low expectations and no accountability. They would rather have the argument focus on high-falutin' pedagogy than mere competence.
That's why I don't like talking about things like discovery and constructivism. It gives them way too much credibility and it ignores what is actually going on in the classroom.
Assuming we're talking about good schools in the sense that they make a contribution to the learning process (versus safety, affluence, etc.), there is no correlation between school performance and the poverty level of the student body.
At least this is true in Tennessee, where there's value-added data to isolate schools' contribution to student learning. We actually mapped value-added performance against the free/reduced lunch rate and found virtually no correlation - see the "poverty versus performance" chart at http://www.education-consumers.org/tnproject/vaanalysis.htm.
"This is ironic because at the beginning of third grade he couldn't add 8 + 9. The principal said he had a "disconnect" in math."
They are the ones with the disconnect. Blame the student in third grade. What kind of profession is this?
We have second graders who are failing and being tutored by parent volunteers.
Paula, it's funny you mention this. Last night I asked why in a district with so many well educated, stay at home, dedicated parents (many of them have been teachers), we do not tap into them for more than parties and social events. The answer was convoluted and rambling but ended up with "student privacy". So, it's okay that students need one on one help that parents can provide but we don't. So, let those poor children struggle in secret to maintain their privacy. How is that the answer?
Brett Thanks so much for that. I've seen this chart several times, and was never sure I was interpreting it correctly. For the sake of parents & taxpayers being able to use this, would it be possible for you to include a line explaining that the chart shows no correlation?
That would be a big help.
I'll get this posted up front!
To me, this chart seems to say that you have a wider range of school quality at the poorest end of the spectrum compared to the most affluent end...
The pretty staggering thing with this chart is seeing that the average "yearly achievement gain" in Z units is pretty much 0.
Of course, that raises the question of: What is a Z unit?
"What is a Z unit?"
The problem with this analysis is that it's all relative.
The site says:
"Tennessee has the most sophisticated value-added data system in the country; this system, called the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS), shows how effective local schools are in helping their students to reach their academic potential - to 'be all that they can be.'"
Relative improvements of "Z-units" might be nice. It might also be nice to see (at this low level of learning) that there is no corelation, but it says nothing about whether kids are anywhere close to reaching their academic potential.
This sort of thinking is how we get schools claiming that Everyday Math is good because scores are improving.
The fact is, ineffective or incompetent teachers can be and are removed on a regular basis, but no one hears anything about it.
I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen here, and my evidence is that no one quits. People retire at retirement age but there is no quitting.
We've been told that the teachers have never been evaluated. That's pretty much the way it was put.
I think I understand this correctly: our union contract states that nothing can be put into a teacher's file without the teacher's consent.
I believe that the superintendent can put something in....but no one else? (I'll check with Ed. He attended the Board meeting at which this was discussed.)
Parent comments cannot be put into the teacher file and, by contract, student evaluations cannot be used as a basis on which to make tenure decisions.
Of course you can move someone out if you want to. But we don't do it.
Our superintendent has stated publicly that it is "impossible" to fire an ineffective teacher.
Sometimes tutoring is the only teaching.
I agree.
conventions don't lend themselves to discovery
I love it!
To my amazement he couldn't multiply 10x10 in his head and started multiplying using the lattice method of all things.
This is causing me a great degree of discomfortability.
[I find that there is more discovery going on when I directly teach my son. I don't just tell him what do do. I ask a lot of questions.}
That's also my preferred method. I would call it the Socratic method. I don't think educationists mean the Socratic method when they talk about discovery.
[Mastery of content and skills are not incompatible with discovery, so their talk of discovery is just a cover for low expectations and no accountability.]
I strongly suspect that discovery is also a cover for non-instruction, the favored educationist teaching method. It's convenient. No need to know anything, no need to make the teaching effort. Just say: Research has shown that discovery is the best practice. Sit back and relax while furious discovery is going on.
concernedctparent,
I think using parents to tutor is a wonderful idea, however, it depends on the person doing the tutoring. One tutor I know tells kids that she isn't good in math either and that it is okay not to understand math. (When she told me this, my mouth fell open.) Now, this is a college educated adult with three kids in the school system.
I would not want this parent working with my children. This person loves math investigations, yet questions why second and third graders are counting on their fingers. Um, could it be the math program?
Privacy is an issue when you have parents go back into the community and tell stories of what certain children don't know. Sometimes you can hear them talk at soccer and baseball games. Of course, they blame the child and the parents. It is never the school's fault. Ever.
I'm sure there are parents that are clueless enough to discuss the students they help. At my last district we signed confidentiality agreements and had a background check if we were going to volunteer in the classroom on a regular basis. We were also trained in what we were tutoring. This was what I'm talking about when I say tapping into capable parents and doing it in a responsible, organized manner. Of course, this seems beyond the imagination of our current adminsitration.
I don't know of any confidentiality agreement or background check at our school. I know there is training provided for tutoring in reading which is balanced literacy in our district.
They do tell you that if you should volunteer that you are not to divulge anything, but I don't see this as a deterrent.
One tutor I know tells kids that she isn't good in math either and that it is okay not to understand math. (When she told me this, my mouth fell open.) Now, this is a college educated adult with three kids in the school system.
ZILLIONS of adults feel this way. I can't tell you how many people here have told me this. These are highly educated people.
My neighbor told me just today that her friend P., who went to Williams, regards my neighbor's liking for math as a weird quirk.
This was what I'm talking about when I say tapping into capable parents and doing it in a responsible, organized manner. Of course, this seems beyond the imagination of our current adminsitration.
Our district would fight to the death before it allowed parents to tutor.
You weren't around back when they shut down my afterschool Singapore Math course.
Now they've taken over the entire afterschool program. I'm pretty sure parents aren't allowed to teach in it at all and the PTSA no longer runs it.
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