Visual_Spatial_Learner

[westlib]

Well, et - you have put me in an interesting position. The schools I was talking about making so much progress are the 92 most at risk in my state. Technical support people like me were available for 6 years to come in and help, and thousands of dollars were spent to provide on site professional development and brand new researched based materials. The results were phenomenal. These schools now have some of the most highly trained teachers in the state.

Now, however, I am at a school with only 14% free and reduced lunch count (poverty count) and the difference is striking. These teachers have some of the oldest materials (books, workbooks, overhead projectors instead of document cameras) I have seen in years. Any new things have come out of teacher's own pockets. Professional development is provided when teachers agree to do book studies (voluntary), as they don't have the money to go to state and national conferences unless - again - they pay for it themselves. Ironically, this school was supposed to get new reading and math books for their students, but the funds for this disappeared in the budget cuts. It is early days yet, but I am sure there are teachers that have not updated their curriculum in years.

Now that OB is promoting his "Race to the Top", the funding again will go to the most disadvantaged schools - only this time it is large districts, which will leave out the rural schools. The same 92 schools (less rural schools) will get the "goodies"  - if my state is lucky enough to get one of these competitive grants. Don't get me wrong - it is not that I want to deny these very challenged schools some much needed help - however, what is the equity across all the schools in the state? 

FYI - My state will probably not be competitive in the "Race to the Top" grants because we have such stringent requirements on charter schools, and unless we loosen up on that, the money will go to other states with less control.

[Wolfie]

We are not spending thousands of dollars on remediating 4th grade to high schools students who could not read. We are being challenged by our students who are saying "give me more to read".--Westlib


An observation.  My son entered the 4th grade. His teacher from 3rd was also moved up, so he has her again. She is about 50 yrs old and she was moved down from 5th or 6th grade to teach 3rd last year.  She admitted she did not know much about 3rd grade and was having to learn all over.  During the third grade year, my son observed that only about 5 or 6 of the 19 kids in the class were able to read well, and looking at the test scores for the year it appears that (sure enough) 60% could not read at their grade level or better.   Now in 4th grade, with the same teacher, my son sees a larger classroom (28), all facing the blackboard while his teacher positions her desk in the back and speaks through a microphone all day.  His schedule says he and 4 or 5 other kids spend most days out of this classroom in special classes for "advanced" students  while the remainder stay behind with the homeroom teacher all day.

Something ain't right here.

Are the large majority of those kids hispanic? I'm not picking on hispanic kids, but if their parents cannot speak english and they can't speak english, they are going to be behind the rest of the kids just for that reason alone. This isn't just something I am pulling out of the air here, it shows continually on tests results not only in our state but across the nation.

The influx of immigrant kids, some who can't even speak good english let alone read it, some who are even illegal is increasing classroom sizes in rural schools and it is creating an extra burden on a system that is already struggling due to economics. Not only that, teachers are still some what ill prepared for the multiple languages that are coming into our schools and are having to be trained to learn the various languages in order to communicate with these kids.

The influx came much faster than we as a state were prepared, due to economics and due to teachers who do not speak several different languages. We are definitely showing some signs of a system that is suffering from growing pains and cultural changes.

[et]

No, I would say there are two Hispanic kids; 12 Black kids; three Asian; the rest Caucasian.   Our particular school has a Hispanic component and I would say it is hovering around 8%--I have not looked up the numbers. There are other schools in the system with a higher percentage of both Black and of Hispanic students.  We have a fair number of Asian (Japanese, Chinese, and Indian subcontinent), but as a percentage in the system, it is probably no higher than 1 to 2 %.  Our school last reported about 47% "non-White" . 

I may have mentioned this before in another post, but a colleague at work  says what happens to inner city schools in our town is this: the academic "middle" leave for the suburbs.  He means the average school student---the B-C students-- leave in disproportionate numbers. What remains are the so-called "gifted and talented" and those who are struggling. That skews all the test results each year and creates a quandry for most homeroom teachers.  They have to spend most of their time helping the kids to who need it (and those teachers are under-resourced) and the "gifted" students get hustled out to a specialty teacher/curriculum (which is also undersourced).  Come test time, the scores skew down making the school look "bad" compared to suburban schools.  But these are good kids ---all of them---and the school can't make a better showing on paper; they have no middle-band of scorers. It is not sustainable without the middle being present.

[Wolfie]

The county I am in does the old "shuffle" too. Busing kids to the county from the city. I never have liked that, I think a kid should go to the school closest to their home, and all schools be treated equally as far as resources go. Because what seems to happen is, the afflluent areas don't really participate in the "shuffle roo" just every body else. I think that boils down to politics and who is on the school board, and crap like that, rather than what is good for the kids in general.

What your friend said about the middle kids is what I was saying earlier, on paper NC might not look like we have that high of test scores, but if you look at each school individually, you do see their are some pretty high scorers, unfortunately their are some pretty low ones too, so the average does make it look worse than it really is sometimes.