Everyone is outstanding in Cargo Cult High!

Notice that 8 of the top 10 are located in the South or in states with historically poor test scores?

Yeah, that does seem odd.  Anyone have any idea why that might be?

This is a big deal in Chicago. “Reform” of schools is focusing entirely on jerking teachers’ chains and kicking the problem students out.

Even ‘liberal’ Obama (and Arnie Duncan, etc) see it working this way: You get the best education and lift yourself into the upper middle class because you’re so damn smart.

Couldn’t it be the reverse? Maybe its that when people have decent jobs and climb out of poverty, they have the time, energy and inclination to focus more resources on their children, then the kids do a bit better in school, and then they get to go to college.

Why can’t the latter narrative get at least a hearing? I guess it violates the Horatio Alger myth or something, but I think the nuts and bolts causation favors the latter rather than the former for the vast, vast majority of people, including myself.

Really, Newsweek, would it be so hard to fucking note which of these schools has selective admission?

And I know it’s the bottom of the list and everything, but if they’re seriously including South Hamilton in Jewell, Iowa - it just confirms the list is joke.  I live 15 miles away and that school is a cesspit.

It’s Newsweek.  Newsweek has an institutional culture of not giving a rat’s ass about the truth, so these rankings are pretty transparent click magnets. 

But that’s the endgame isn’t it?  A permanent US caste system.  Separate the wheat from the chaffe.  School can screen on pedigree, with the rich who can mingle with the smart and let everyone come out looking educated.  Turn every high school into Harvard.

We’ll skim the cream of the crop from the poor and elevate them to the upper-middle class.  Then the rich kids can rule and the smart kids can do all the thinking and the poor kids can do all the manual labor.  Everyone (that matters) wins!

@KingElvis: the Official Narrative also contains a massive unexamined assumption: Can everyone, or even the vast majority of everyone, be upper-middle-class?  And So Damned Smart?

Anyways, I went to a magnet school for gifted kids, and not only was it great for me, but it also instilled in me a profound sense of gratitude toward the society that paid for me to be educated according to my needs.  I think that’s the biggest thing Illinois got out of that education, a vast cadre of smart non-sociopaths who don’t hate the world they’re part of.

The rankings are highly skewed even at what they’re looking at: notice that Stuyvesant and Thomas Jefferson high schools appear nowhere on the list. Bronx Science appears all the way down at number 35.

They place a lot of weight on the number of AP/IB exams taken per student, which I guess is useful, but it’s accorded such weight it throws everything else off.

In general, this list is only vaguely useful as a guide for parents to decide which schools they’d want to send their kids to, if that’s an option for them because on is nearby.

Idiosynchronic and Antigone - the sense that I get is that those are states with more lax regulations concerning qualification as a magnet school (which most of those are).  All of the top schools have incredibly specific admissions guidelines.

I don’t understand why we expect schools and teachers to be able to educate children when the home environment is total shit.

A much more useful task would be to rank those high schools that do not have selective enrollment and have to educate all comers, and then analyze the circumstances they are coping with.  You could sort by urban/suburban/rural, family income levels, ESL students, etc., and figure out which schools are best educating the student body they are given.  That would help figure out solutions for different problems in education—other schools could see what works best for different student populations.  Selectivity is fine for colleges, but high school education is supposed to be a right for every kid in this country, not just the wealthy and super-talented.

Notice that 8 of the top 10 are located in the South or in states with historically poor test scores?

Standard school district gerrymandering? The south doesn’t have private schools like the north. Most kids go to public resulting in some amazing public schools in affluent districts and the usual hellholes in poorer ones. There’s also quite a few charter and magnet programs pulling in better students from other areas. Finally, in Georgia at least, there’s the county school system which provides one high school for the whole county. Certain systems that work in symbiosis with good city schools like Athens/Monroe or Lowndes/Valdosta can be great but most of them exist in stagnant rural districts with limited funding and resources. It’s a little bit of have in a sea of have-not.

I used to work with a lot of these schools.  Not only do they select, many of them are residential, meaning that students at age 14 move away from home and live in dorms.  To compare these to schools that all are able to enroll in without restriction is useless.  And the commenter above that points out that a major part of the score is how many students take AP tests is right on.

The affluent suburban high school my kids went to is on the list.  My hard-driving daughters did great there.  My troubled, depressed, ADD son, not so much.  I went to countless meetings with counselors and administrators, who generally concluded that nothing could be done, he’ll just have to try harder, until it occurred to me that they were hoping he’d drop out before he took the SAT/ACT tests and pulled their averages down.  Then I told them that I was aware that the law required that they keep him until he’s 21, or he graduates, and we’re not going anywhere till he graduates.  Oh, and the state advocate for the disabled said that they were in violation of federal law, and they could either get in compliance with what the law requires, or their lawyer could tell my lawyer why not.  Suddenly, they were able to get him into special ed classes and get him the help he needed to start succeeding.  Before that, he was just the average-lowerer that they hoped would go away.  I found out that there’s not enough special ed money to go around and what little there is goes to the parents who fight the hardest.  I’m still kicking myself for thinking that we were all on the same side, just wanting to help him do his best, until he was a junior in that superior high school.  If I’d gone adversarial when he first started having trouble in 6th grade, maybe things would have been
different.

I don’t think Newsweek or much media attention is ever point at how to educate students well in the absence of massive buy in from the parents which itself is very self selecting. We have examples of good magnet schools which self select for the super talented, and we have successful charter schools like KIPP and Harlem Success Academy which select for involved parents who are going to push their kids, compensating for socio-economic factors. Those schools don’t tell us anything we don’t already know. What would be useful is what Kit-kat asks about—what schools have better performance using methods that are universally replicable: not just what can be used to rescue a few students in the community whose parents are going to seek out better opportunities for them.

FYI, Illinois’ entry at 19 is Northside College Prep, which also ranks as the best high school in the state.  I can see it from my bedroom window, and I hope my gifted kids can go there.

I say “hope,” because despite being a half block away, Northside only takes kids through a lottery, and you have to test into the top 2% to get into the lottery.  New Trier in the suburbs whines heavily about being #2 since they take all comers and NCP is so selective.

Gretchen, your story is exactly why I’d be afraid to leave CPS.  I’ve got my kids in the magnet school, and they have been so proactive when it comes to my Aspie child.  They’ve dealt with it before and have been ahead of the curve.  They fight with the district to make sure his IEP is followed.  It helps that they are a magnet school and get more money anyway.  It no doubt helps that my child’s issues are social and emotional while his test scores are through the roof: they want those scores and are willing to work to get them.

I hear nightmare stories from suburban and Indiana moms who are forever fighting to get any assistance at all.

My high school was really good.  We did better than the other high school in the district in, well, everything:  Test scores, atheletics, graduation percentage.  This is with the demographics in the two schools being similar as far as ethnic groups, socio-economic status, religion.  My school was the newer of the two so all the teachers were either brand new first or second year teachers and old teachers close to retirement or (in the case of the Most Awesome Math Teacher Ever Mrs. Ainsworth) someone who had been begged to come out of retirement to “substitute.”  The older teachers were kept hip and in touch by the younger ones and the younger ones had access to all the experience and knowledge the older teachers had.  It also didn’t hurt that the racial and gender make up of the faculty was a pretty good mix.  We had two openly gay teachers, too.  In Mississippi.  I think that diversity is what made and still makes it such a good school, honestly.  It didn’t hurt that we had all new, bad-ass facilities supported by tons of grants and donations by local businesses.  The other high school had the former, but not the later.  There’s a sense of pride in that high school that my town has that the neighboring town doesn’t have in their high school.  I believe the phrase on the booster club’s bumper stickers was “It’s hard to be humble when you’re a Gautier Gator.”

This story kind of reminds me of on an online discussion I had on facebook.  I was talking about easy things we can do to improve test scores in schools (mainly talking about this article: http://www.cracked.com/article_19254_5-surprisingly-easy-ways-to-make-kids-smarter_p2.html) and I included school breakfasts and year-round school calendars.  His was response was basically “If parents don’t suck, the schools are just fine, and we don’t need to do anything”.  In case someone thinks I’m misrepresenting them, I shall quote it in full:

How would they pay for year round school they are getting rid of teachers now to save money. Alot of schools already serve breakfast. I have to words that would fix our schools; invovled parents, good parents, how about parents who gave a damn. How about not allowing certain people not to have kids (call it social engineering or passing judgement on others, but think about it.) If they would of stopped that gal in FL from having a baby would there be all of that crap going on in FL. KIds are special and you shouldn’t have them until you want them and are ready to make them the center of your universe. I am pro life, but I would much rather see a gal have an abortion then raise a kid in an unloving home.

So there you have it folks: we just have to force “bad parents” to not have kids and our school system problems are fixed.  If you insist on having kids while being a “bad parent” or just poor in general, your kid deserves to fail.

This story kind of reminds me of on an online discussion I had on facebook.  I was talking about easy things we can do to improve test scores in schools (mainly talking about this article: http://www.cracked.com/article_19254_5-surprisingly-easy-ways-to-make-kids-smarter_p2.html) and I included school breakfasts and year-round school calendars.  His was response was basically “If parents don’t suck, the schools are just fine, and we don’t need to do anything”.  In case someone thinks I’m misrepresenting them, I shall quote it in full:

How would they pay for year round school they are getting rid of teachers now to save money. Alot of schools already serve breakfast. I have to words that would fix our schools; invovled parents, good parents, how about parents who gave a damn. How about not allowing certain people not to have kids (call it social engineering or passing judgement on others, but think about it.) If they would of stopped that gal in FL from having a baby would there be all of that crap going on in FL. KIds are special and you shouldn’t have them until you want them and are ready to make them the center of your universe. I am pro life, but I would much rather see a gal have an abortion then raise a kid in an unloving home.

So there you have it, folks: we just need to keep “bad parents” from having children and everything’ll be fine!

Thanks, Caren.  It took me years to get my son an IEP.  I asked why he couldn’t be in the special-help session in 7th grade.  He needs an IEP.  OK, let’s get an IEP.  No, he needs to be tested.  OK, test him.  No, he doesn’t qualify to be tested.  What would it take to qualify?  Nothing he’s got.  So I paid for private testing.  No, that doesn’t count, only our testing counts.  So give him your testing.  No, he doesn’t qualify.  Years and years wasted while I argued with them, thinking they meant well and just didn’t understand that he needed help and as soon as I could get them to understand, all would be well. I didn’t understand that it was all about saving the special-ed money.  It was only when I threatened lawsuit that they started caring about him, and he’s still suffering the consequences.  If only you could have a practice kid to learn how to do what needs to be done, and then get the real kid when you know how to do it.

Caren, gretchen - (and sorry for pulling it a bit more off-topic)  - my wife and I have been going through the same morass with our 7-year-old Aspie (or, I guess, the proper term now is high-functioning Autistic) daughter for the past year and a half.  We went through misdiagnosis, an IEP which really didn’t apply, a new IEP, “oh, we didn’t think to evaluate her verbal scores,” and finally when my wife kept slamming them with questions a full evaluation which revealed that there were indeed issues…and, of course, all the time dealing with the unspoken eye-roll from some school authorities who were just tired of dealing with “those hyperactive worrywart parents.”

At the same time, of course, our good-old-fashioned-corporate-GO USA PRIVATE HEALTH CARE-health care plan suddenly started denying the OT and therapy we’d been taking her to because, gosh, it costs money, and we slipped into this Kafkaesque nightmare of “we can’t give you services until she’s officially diagnosed, but we can’t diagnose because we have one doctor in three counties who can actually diagnose Autism Spectrum, and gosh I guess you’ll just have to deal with her increasing frustration with social situations and other behavioral issues which are making school and home troubling until we get around to the official diagnosis which will allow you to actually have services again and oh by the way it’ll be a year and a half before we actually DO get around to that diagnosis have a nice day go away and send us 15% of your gross take-home-pay even after employer subsidy.”

And, of course, the irony is that all things considered we’re lucky to have a fairly good school district and health care system.

Having grown up in Orange County, it wasn’t surprising to see Troy on that list. I was surprised not to see Mater Dei, but then MD is really just a prep school for football. That’s about all they recruit for.

So yeah, I agree with the earlier statement that this list would’ve at least held more context if they clearly listed which schools didn’t actually have open enrollment policies. Even a glance through that list popped some names out that just screamed ‘wealthy, upper-class neighborhoods’.

This just reminds me of all those yuppie parental panic stories from the eighties about the overwhelming need to map out a child’s school career before even going to a nursery school. It guess it was time for something like that to begin again.

tannenburg - I hear you.  It’s all about denying services and not wanting to pay for them.  The good thing is, you’re way ahead of me in understanding this, so you’ll get things in place for your daughter much earlier than I did.  You know what she needs, and if you keep making clear to everyone else that this is what she needs, you’ll be way ahead of where we were. You’ve got an IEP in place 10 years before we did.  That’s a very good thing.  Very good luck to you.

Thank you for this - My sister teaches at an inner city school, and she has voiced the same thought.  Schools can look high great when you get to pick the students, but my sister’s students come in with a whole boat load of problems that go beyond whatever magic she can do in the classroom.  So, in effect, there already is an underclass of people who have experienced nothing except disadvantages from the time they were conceived, yet somehow school administrators expect all of this problems to be solved by 8 hours with a nice white lady.
Plus, it get worse!  The senario that Jesse describes, where all schools get to pick who they educate, might actually become a problem in Wisconsin.  With the passing of that god-awful budget, voucher schools systems are expanding.  That means that Lord John’s prep academy, with the PHD teachers, can take only the smartest kids, while the rest of the kids end up at the horribly defunded public schools or Scott Walkers instatute of gud book reedin’

Correction - not necessarily the smartest kids - but the middle class kids who have advantages and have some drive.

Having grown up in Orange County, it wasn’t surprising to see Troy on that list. I was surprised not to see Mater Dei, but then MD is really just a prep school for football. That’s about all they recruit for.

Word, Santa Claustrophobia.  I’m also in Orange County, and wasn’t at all surprised to see University High School on the list at number 8, but couldn’t help thinking, “That’s not fair; all the University High School students live in Turtle Rock, so they’re self-selecting only rich people’s kids.” 

So yeah, it’s easy to have a really good high school, even a public high school, if the school won’t admit students from low-property-value areas.  Why can’t Newsweek just be honest in their reporting and admit that the number one indicator of school performance is the property values of the residential area supporting that school with their taxes?

Actually read the list this time and my high school is on it (which is strange but not to surprising) along with six other standard public high school from the heart of suburbia, five of them Atlanta suburbs. It’s kind of funny though because South Forsyth is on it and Forsyth county was country back when I was a young’in. Who knew the whites would just keep flight-ing.

“I don’t understand why we expect schools and teachers to be able to educate children when the home environment is total shit.”

This is the teacher’s union position. This is the liberal position. “How can you expect me to teach these kids when they/their parents don’t care?”

Teachers, as a rule, do not ask the question that KitKat and a few others here asked: How do you educate children well, even if those children don’t come from stellar circumstances? (And even if a few do ask it, there isn’t a system in place that would support efforts to find the answer.)

They don’t ask because that would be implying that teachers are (in part) a cause of those students doing poorly, and we just can’t have that. It’s teacher bashing.

And if you don’t believe me, you haven’t read ed blogs. This argument gets made all the time.

If you go to the article and select by state Louisiana, you will see three schools on the list: Ben Franklin, in New Orleans, a magnet school; Baton Rouge Magnet, in Baton Rouge, also a magnet… and the third down, ranked much lower, is the high school from which I graduated 20 years ago. 

It serves the rest of the state (as well as BR and NO) and is residential.  It has to be - it was four hours by car from where my parents lived, or about five hours if I took the bus (an hour plus to the bus station, then waiting around, then the slow bus up Hwy 71 before I-49 was built). 

It was the only college-prep option for most of the kids I graduated with - kids whose previous education had been in small rural schools that didn’t have the resources to offer math past algebra or more than the two years of a foreign language required at the time (I think it was required at the time, anyway; it’s been awhile.)  A lot of those kids really struggled and most of them succeeded.

I think that’s probably why my alma mater is in the middle of the top 500 list rather than in the top 25. 

One of the top 10 high schools is located at my university. It’s for gifted and talented kids only. Students take classes with the regular university students. They live on campus in a special dorm. They are great kids, but the admission standards are high and selective. I should note, our university also has a program for autistic students, but these programs just should not be compared (by implication) to public high schools. These kids pay tuition (or get scholarships and financial aid) that most public school students can’t get. They are 100% college bound because they are already earning college credit. Local area public high schools just can’t compete. Local school districts have to accept all students, regardless of ability. If students are homeless, working themselves, or in dysfunctional homes, they cannot properly study and achieve. To that extent, the report is meaningless.

See, I think there’s a balancing act here. IMHO well-run charter and magnet schools are a good thing for the students who go there. The problem is structuring the system in such a way as to give that same quality of education to students who are not quite so exceptional academically.

Gretchen, and all others similarly situated—It’s a shame to have to take this attitude, but if your kid needs something, you have to be a real pest (in most places) to get it for him or her, and you have to be prepared to know that getting your kid into a seat is keeping another kid out of it.  We adopted from abroad, a war-ravaged country where many children had not had a chance to go to school.  Our son needed intensive reading instruction, but we couldn’t get him into the special class.  For some reason, the school wanted to put our US-born son, who had been reading since he was about 18 months old into that class.  We said, “The only way you can have W is if you will also take T.”  They explained to us that a) the requirements to get a foreign-born child into the class were more stringent than the requirements for a US-born child.  They explained to us that there were only a limited number of spaces allowed.

So we explained to them that we were going to be continually pestiferous until they could see their way clear to let T into the class.  We said “One of us will be here every morning, asking you if you have worked it out yet.  We are sorry about the other children that need this class and whose parents can’t guarantee to come over and nag you Every Single Day.  We’re sorry the powers that regulate these things have made rules that are unfair to foreign-born children.  But this is Our Kid, and we know what he needs, and it is this class, and we’re going to nag you, and argue with you every day.”  It was not so very long until they managed to find a “rule” or something that allowed them to enroll T.  It worked out well.  Not much later, T said to us “I know how you can never be bored!  You just have to have a book in your backpack!”

A couple of years later, we had to fight with the school administration which wanted to pass our daughters out of high-school (where we had opposed placing them in the first place) without a diploma and without teaching them to read.  We mad such a carry-on that they scheduled them for testing to prove to us that they didn’t have to teach them.  They did fine on the tests, because the school called in a translator! and was thus able to determine that they were not “learning disabled”  and thus not entitled to any special consideration—like actually teaching them.  We felt that having not been able to attend school in any language before the age of twelve was a learning disability in itself.

Fortunately, our policy of being total pains-in-the-butt finally paid off when a new person from out of the district became the vice-principle.  She was shocked at the way our girls had been treated, and soon put things right.

Before I go, I’d like to comment on this view that kids have to “come to school ready to learn”, and that they have to have “good parents”.  in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, there were many immigrant children and children of black migrants from the South who did not meet these standards, and the schools, pitifully underfunded and poorly staffed by modern standards, took on the task of educating them, and did a splendid job in many cases.  So that’s enough blaming the victim, please.

Notice that 8 of the top 10 are located in the South or in states with historically poor test scores?

Only two of those states had historically poor public education.  Texas is middling as was Florida historically.  Bad education in the south is rooted firmly in the true rural states like Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and some others.  What the top-10 really prove is the continental (aka the British) education system never really worked.  The German system where students are divided by skill and desire into different middle and high schools has always made more sense fundamentally.  It appears that #1 & 2 are magnets based around this idea.  I don’t know how many are public vs. private (though it seems private outranks the public) but when a student does well and wants to go into X or Y field the school system should help them accomplish that.  That is partially our problem with the current system beyond the problems obviously laid out.  Our system is designed with a strong household pushing for a career.  Instead our school systems should be doing this through teachers and aids to develop a new generation of scientists, blue collar workers, and liberal arts people.

Ok, throwing this out there:  My state recently started online public charters.  In theory, it looks great for the non-average kid as they can work asynchronously across all subjects and at their own pace. This also cuts down on a ton of unnecessary bricks and mortar $$.  The downside is for two parent working families - who stays home to be the learning coach/parent in charge?  Then again, with a lot of parents laid off….

@31 Fuzzyegg - so you don’t think home environment matters, the teacher should just try harder?  My friend taught in an inner-city school, and when she tried to assign homework, the kids would ask whether she would send paper and pencils home because they didn’t have any.  Then she’d go home to her nice suburb, where all her daughter’s homework was online.  Do all the kids in your class have home computers?  Of course!  What chance does a kid in the inner-city classroom have to compete with the kid from the suburbs, despite having the most caring, hardworking teacher imaginable?  Which my friend is.

@31 Fuzzyegg I spent many years teaching in Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, a very poor neighborhood where many students were being brought up by grandmas or aunties because mom and/or dad were missing, or in jail, or in rehab.

I then moved to orange County, CA, and started teaching in extremely well-off Coto de Caza. Miraculously, my test scores shot waaaay up at that exact same time.

I’m sure it was just a coincidence.

My small suburban (wealthy, mostly white upper middle class) high school is on that list (as it is every year). Why? Because the kids who bring test scores down are so undersupported they drop out early and because the school offers a disproportionately high number of AP classes. I did really well, but I watched many of my friends flounder and give up on education because of how the school is run.

Yeah, UncleMike, that’s totally an honest representation of the point I was making. Way to go.

Gretchen, that’s interesting. You make two statements - one about teachers “trying harder” and one about the resources that students have. And you talk about them as if they were completely separate.

The conversation that isn’t being had is, How can schools help students that don’t have paper and pencils at home to acheive academically?

Currently, the standard response is that there is NOTHING a school can do - not improving instruction, not better teachers, nothing - unless and until poverty is eradicated. (Again, if you don’t believe me…)

This is essentially consigning children from poverty, or who have non-supportive parents, to a second-rate education. That’s why I’m appalled that the point above is made by by liberals. I’m liberal, and I find it antithetical to the very core of my moral being.

The answer to the question of “How can schools….” might involve budgeting for a longer school day so that students can do homework under teacher/aid/volunteer supervision, with supplies provided by the school, rather than investing in Smartboards in every classroom. But we don’t know, because THAT CONVERSATION ISN’T BEING HAD.

Yes, we could have that conversation if schools had the resources to make these things happen. But they don’t. So “having that conversation” just becomes code for “teach harder, teachers,” which is stupid and counterproductive. Perhaps you don’t mean it that way, but that’s kinda how it sounds.

The answer to the question of “How can schools….” might involve budgeting for a longer school day so that students can do homework under teacher/aid/volunteer supervision, with supplies provided by the school, rather than investing in Smartboards in every classroom. But we don’t know, because THAT CONVERSATION ISN’T BEING HAD.

Look, I agree, but what you point out isn’t something that falls under the responsibility of teachers to provide—rather those are decisions make by the upper management of schools. It’s a bit unfair to blame teachers for the sin of not teaching in the sort of school that would be better for poor students.

Fuzzyegg, your sarcasm button appears to be working. Great.

Actually, I wasn’t representing your point. I was showing you a counterexample to your point.

“Teachers, as a rule, do not ask the question that KitKat and a few others here asked: How do you educate children well, even if those children don’t come from stellar circumstances?” Actually, we ask this all the time, we just get a little stumped for answers when our funds are cut more and more each year (see #43) and things like after-school tutoring, in-class aides, and pencils and paper for those who can’t afford them (freaking pencils and paper!) fall by the wayside.

The same teachers that frequent ed blogs are the same ones who don’t spend their own money to provide these things anyway, and the same ones who are just putting in time until June every year. The rest of us teachers aren’t fans of them either.

But my point (thanks for ignoring it) was that there’s lots of crap I have no control over in students’ lives, and yet I’m held to account for how these things affect learning.  Feel free to leave the ed blogs and volunteer at your nearest school. It’ll be an eye-opener.

#31 Teachers, as a rule, do not ask the question that KitKat and a few others here asked: How do you educate children well, even if those children don’t come from stellar circumstances? (And even if a few do ask it, there isn’t a system in place that would support efforts to find the answer.)

They don’t ask because that would be implying that teachers are (in part) a cause of those students doing poorly, and we just can’t have that. It’s teacher bashing.

I don’t know that it necessarily implies that teachers are the cause.  It does imply that the Education Industry, as currently set up, is the problem.

My experience is that there is nobody in a position of any power in the Education Industry who has any interest in improving it.  Those who run the Industry are mostly interested in stuff that looks good in PowerPoint, because that’s what impresses the politicians and the media.  The parents with pull (=the rich ones) are mostly interested in whatever they think will give their kids a leg up on getting into Harvard (and maybe some bragging rights at the Country Club.)  Teachers are mainly interested in keeping their jobs, which means pleasing the parents and administrators and adjusting to the ever-changing winds in the Industry.

I’m sure that many or even most of the people in the Industry would like it if more kids learned more.  But spending a lot of time on finding ways to do it, or changing the system to better serve the kids who are having trouble now, may conflict with their interests.  E.g., is it reasonable to expect teachers to try things that might help children in their classes, if they risk losing their job in the process?

It would be super cool if we could de-couple funding for education from property taxes. That’s a huge issue with funding schools, in my opinion. It might also help if education standards were enforced at the Federal instead of the State level.

It might also help if education standards were enforced at the Federal instead of the State level.

On this one, we’re actually getting there (slowly). In Math and English, 44 states observe the National Curriculum Standards now. (Bet you can guess which six states don’t…) Hopefully science and the social sciences are coming along as well, though I bet those will be harder to get states to adopt, what with their fancypants evolution and such.

“I don’t know that it necessarily implies that teachers are the cause.  It does imply that the Education Industry, as currently set up, is the problem.”

AMN, I agree with you that it doesn’t imply that, but that is the typical response to efforts to improve student achievement.

I 100% agree: the education system, as it is currently set up, is the problem.

“what you point out isn’t something that falls under the responsibility of teachers to provide—rather those are decisions make by the upper management of schools. It’s a bit unfair to blame teachers for the sin of not teaching in the sort of school that would be better for poor students.”

I’m not blaming the teachers, Tyro.

“Actually, I wasn’t representing your point. I was showing you a counterexample to your point.”

UncleMike, I am a certified teacher, but not currently working in the field. I’ve taught at my nearest school. I’ve seen it. My nearest school gives a smartboard to any teacher that requests it, but “can’t afford” biology textbooks for non-honors students. How much is a question of having the funds and how much s a question of allocation?

I wasn’t ignoring your point. I’ve heard that same point too many times to count. I don’t disagree with it, I just want the conversation to move past that point.

Too often, outside-of-school factors are held to make any sort of improvement impossible. It’s the parent’s fault. No one even tries to find a way around that. Few people even think that a way *should* be found around that. That is my problem.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN ALERT

I was remembering last night about how my idol Veblen (coiner of the term ‘conspicuous consumption’) interpreted education - especially college/university/academia circa 1900 - as completely a status game. It’s a completely radical interpretation.

The point of education is not to enlighten anyone - the point is rank - so this list itself should be seen as the *GOAL* of ‘elite education.’

The whole enterprise should be looked upon as an excuse to make ‘invidious distinctions’ and solidify and create even more distance between low and high rank people.

The ‘knowledge’ is just trivia. He was writing when academia was more about philology, Greek and Latin - what he called antique trivia that has no bearing on the nuts and bolts of industrial production. He saw college professors themselves simply as a part of a rank system.

He emphasized the experiences many of us had in college - the social drinking, sports, mindless boosterism and the inculcation of students into their class through bonding - that’s the point of ‘education.’ 

The official conception of education as ‘unlocking doors’ for low status people to transform into high status people has it completely reversed.

Education is just a MECHANISM OF RANK, it exists to REINFORCE rank, not to overcome it.

“The point of education is not to enlighten anyone”

As an educator, my point is to enlighten and empower. YMMV.

Not attacking anyone’s vocation, fuzzyegg. This is straight out of his landmark “Theory of the Leisure Class” in 1899.

You could argue that ‘enlightenment’ can comes from being an autodidact, and internalizing ‘the quest for knowledge’ and identifying it as a central component of your character - and self teaching would cost nothing.

College education’s skyrocketing price over the last 15 years is linked to people’s desire to ensure their child remains ‘middle class.’ It’s almost like a ransom, since it would be an act of ‘rank’ masochism to eschew a college degree.

I wasn’t taking it as an attack on anyone’s profession. And I know who Veblen is. I don’t think he’s particularly relevant to the point I was making.

“You could argue that ‘enlightenment’ can comes from being an autodidact, and internalizing ‘the quest for knowledge’ and identifying it as a central component of your character”

And since that isn’t supported by reality, I *don’t* argue that.

The ‘knowledge’ is just trivia. He was writing when academia was more about philology, Greek and Latin - what he called antique trivia that has no bearing on the nuts and bolts of industrial production. He saw college professors themselves simply as a part of a rank system.

Except that he was writing during the heyday of the expansion of land grant colleges whose purpose was to give students an education in what they would need for the future. This was the era in which, outside of elite colleges, it was no longer the norm to spend time translating ancient Greek and have a knowledge of medieval French, and we started to rethink university education as the place to learn engineering, communications, industrial chemistry, “scientific” management, etc.

Not saying your arguments are wrong about the current time, when, you’re right, colleges are basically engaging in hostage-taking when it comes to parents’ desire to find a place for their kids in the middle class, but the great story of the late 19th/early 20th century America was the massive expansion of university education in order to create that middle class.

self teaching would cost nothing.

True, but self teaching isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be, for various reasons. Some of the smartest autodidacts I know still fall into cliched thinking, which teachers normally serve a role in beating out of you. Autodidactism is especially irrelevant to the issue of public secondary schools—no one questions the fact that young students need to be educated—the question is how we reach people who lack the middle class social capital that makes schooling much more accessible.

i’m guessing that at least 50% of the listed schools are “take-all” schools, rather than specifically selective ones. my guess is based on the names of the schools (“magnet” or “gifted” is kind of a giveaway). that said, those required to take everyone may well all be located in high income/highly educated areas, which make the schools self-selecting by definition. this is how we segregate ourselves, we want to work and live among those just like ourselves, because it’s comfortable. how you fix that i couldn’t tell you.

@ TYRO #56

Veblen’s critique posited that ‘practical’ knowledge about mechanics or biology were indeed not trivial because they contribute to industrial production. He’s ‘marxist’ only in the sense that he’s a relentless economic determinist. I can’t emphasize enough how ‘alien’ his perspective was. Heilbronner’s famous biography of economists makes it a central thesis that Veblen wrote about culture as if he was a Martian, observing humanity without being human himself. That partly explained why it was such a sensation for a time, and why it so deeply offended the mores of our status system. These mores we still retain to this day.

Look at the education picture today. “Nuts and bolts” vocational training in medical imaging, auto body, whatever, they remain at the bottom of the scale of rank.

Hifalutin universities still pride themselves on just how impractical they are.

Consider Elaine Pagels and her books on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Veblen would say her entire enterprise fits quite well within the model of the pursuit of antique trivia - and she’s a real feather in Princeton’s cap, if not the crown jewel. Is a PhD thesis on the cars the Jack Kerouac drove across country, or the meals that James Joyce ate really much different?

Princeton is at the summit and community colleges are at the bottom of a spectrum describing the concrete utility of the knowledge imparted.

Lots of well-off, presumably highly motivated people tell me that money in schools doesn’t matter, and if the parents are motivated then their kids will do well.

I always ask them why they select expensive schools or schools in high-revenue districts if that’s true.