

NY releases grim stats on percentage of grads who are "college ready" - msabalau
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/nyregion/08regents.html?ref=education
New York released statistics that show that only 41% of NY students graduate prepared to get at least a "C" in college level math and writting classes.<p>Charter schools do much worse--only 10% of charter school students meet this "college ready" standard.
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jtbigwoo
Let's pretend that an assistant manager at best buy had to deal with the same
working conditions as we find in the schools:

-First off, she would be required to get a college degree and a state certification in retail management. She wouldn't necessarily be paid any better, however.

-A large minority of her customers would never actually buy anything, but mostly just nap in the store, harass and occasionally assault employees and customers, deface and damage the store.

-Many of her customers would never have seen DVD players or computers and so most of her customer time is spent trying to explain basic concepts like what a television is.

-Anything short of actual assault would not be enough to remove a customer from the store, though he/she might be required to sit in the store office for a few minutes.

-She would be required to review hundreds of pages of paperwork each week on her own time.

-She would be expected to maintain a profitable store that also improved the community and made her customers better people.

Why do we tolerate conditions at our schools that we'd never tolerate in any
other employer? (Other than prisons, I guess)

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hubb
If you want to complain about the behaviour of children, you should simply do
so: masking it with a shallow comparison to a for-profit retail chain is more
than a little silly. Any child is entitled to attend a public school for free,
and that entitlement is protected by the government -- what can I get at best
buy for free, and why would I ever be entitled to anything there?

~~~
zach
Aww, you're no fun. The point of the metaphor is how different and crazy the
school environment is, after all. So let's just add your argument in!

\- The customers are given personal gift cards to purchase products, yet few
are motivated in doing so, so they just let them expire. These cards are not
valid at any other store, though, and similarly cannot be used for any other
merchandise than the store offers, even if the store's products aren't very
good.

Good point!

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Alex3917
For comparison, nationwide only 9% of 16- to 18-year-olds are able to read at
a 'proficient' level, meaning they can read well enough to figure out a bus
schedule or compare and contrast two different editorials. (And what they call
proficient is really only an 8th-grade reading level.)

<http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF>

~~~
klbarry
That is surprising and saddening.

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WillyF
The article says that 23% of students are "college ready" in NYC. That's
probably way too low, but what is the goal? I hope it's not 100%. College
isn't for everyone, and I think that it's misguided to make college
preparation the primary goal of high school (isn't that what prep schools are
for?).

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xxpor
Not everyone who should go to college can afford a prep school.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...or even college. Same issue.

~~~
xxpor
There is much more financial assistance available for college though.

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uptown
I'd like to know what percentage of college graduates are "real-world ready".

Certainly some schools prepare their students better than others with skills
and experience applicable to the types of careers they're likely to enter upon
graduation, but I still feel that too-high a percentage of colleges in this
country leave graduates with a mountain of debt and questionably-marketable
real-world skills.

It's a difficult challenge ... to educate the masses with employable skills in
an subject that these people hopefully hold some amount of interest or passion
for ... but the benefits to the individuals and the nation's work-force of
achieving that goal are immeasurable.

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jackowayed
> _the current graduation rate of 64 percent, a number often promoted by Mayor
> Michael R. Bloomberg as evidence that his education policies are working._

It is so sad when a 64% graduation rate is seen as proof that policies are
_working_.

~~~
jhamburger
True it is sad. But to be fair, almost everyone who isnt poor in new york
either lives in the suburbs or sends their kids to private school...so NYC is
basically one big inner city district.

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JonnieCache
If civilisation is to survive, education requires a total shift in thinking
and perspective. Unfortunately I think it is too much for a lot of people to
accept, as our notions of how education should be are too interwoven with our
notions of our place in society.

We need to stop thinking about academic education and vocational education as
separate. We need to stop thinking, 'clever kids to the universities, the rest
to apprenticeships if they're lucky.' This is a bad meme.

We do not need to 'repair' the distinction between academia and the trades, we
do not need to put them on an equal footing, we do not need to stop treating
less-academic kids as less important than more academic ones.

We need to recognise the distinction for what it is, a myth, a cognitive
dissonance, and destroy it.

We need _everyone_ to have both aesthetic skills and dextrous skills. We need
_everyone_ to be comfortable with interpersonal skills as much as they are
with technical, or manual skills. We need that dreaded[1] term, a holistic
approach.

Most of all we need to stop educating our children in factories using the
logic, language and paradigms of industrial manufacturing. We need to educate
our children to be happy and adaptive human beings. The employability part
will follow from that, we don't need to worry about it directly.

[1] Damn you hippies, for ruining our perfectly good words.

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DanielBMarkham
Lately education has become a bit of a cause celebre, but a few years ago,
when the numbers were just as bad, whenever this problem was mentioned there
were two immediate responses: 1) It's the parent's fault, and 2) Need more
money to get better results.

At some point, the American public started believing that the cost of
something purchased with public funds was directly proportional to the value
it gave. So it was like "New aircraft carrier? That thing costs 2 Billion
dollars! Must be really valuable to national security"

But the amount of money you pay for something and the good that it provides --
especially in systems that are immune to the retooling and re-engineering
effects of recessions -- are completely independent of each other.

Especially with the U.S. budget crisis coming, maybe this issue will open some
eyes, but I doubt it.

~~~
yardie
1) It's always been the teacher's fault, then other people's kids, other
parents, but never our snowflake.

2) I don't know if the money spend has actually increased. My state, Florida,
used to use lottery profits to complement state spending, then used it to
supplement state spending cuts.

Luckily, I graduated before the bubble popped (the surplus years) because so
much of the state and county budget was based around building fees, property
taxes, title transfers, etc.

~~~
wmil
Between 1985 and 1997 Kansas City was ordered by a judge to vastly increase
spending. There was no educational improvement.

<http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html>

~~~
yardie
_With that money, the district built 15 new schools and renovated 54 others.
Included were nearly five dozen magnet schools, which concentrated on such
things as computer science, foreign languages, environmental science, and
classical Greek athletics. Those schools featured such amenities as an
Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room; a robotics lab;
professional quality recording, television, and animation studios; theaters; a
planetarium; an arboretum, a zoo, and a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary; a two-
floor library, art gallery, and film studio; a mock court with a judge's
chamber and jury deliberation room; and a model United Nations with
simultaneous translation capability._

Looks like they were spending money just to spend it. What did they demand
from the students? parents? teachers? Were disruptive students (what I
consider the biggest problem) isolated and punished for bad behavior? Were the
parents required to review the child's work, meet the teachers, provide a
proper meal? Were the teachers asked to give feedback, meet goals, try new
techniques?

The main thing the report wants to speak about is the Imperial federal judge
(typical for a CATO report) while the real problem lied in the way the
district was run. Shitty management doesn't get better with more money. Money
just makes it worse.

~~~
yardie
EDIT: I finally reached the end of that report and it asked the same questions
I did. There was nothing demanded from the teachers, parents, or students. The
district was top heavy and little of the money actually went to learning,
instead it was funneled to more infrastructure, more computers, more
administrators.

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forkandwait
Not to be OCD or anything, but isn't it time to break the teachers unions and
eliminate tenure?

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Anechoic
As has been pointed out before, if teachers unions are the problem, one would
expect that states without collective bargaining requirements would outperform
states with those requirements. They don't: <http://shankerblog.org/?p=895>

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sample is massively skewed - southern poor states. Other variables absolutely
wash out "collective bargaining" as an important factor.

~~~
Anechoic
From the article: " _Now, some may object to this conclusion. They might argue
that I can’t possibly say that teacher contracts alone caused the higher
scores in these states. That there are dozens of other factors besides
contracts that influence achievement, such as lack of resources, income,
parents’ education, and curriculum, and that these factors are at least
partially responsible for the lower scores in the ten non-contract states._ "

" _My response: Exactly._ "

There was also a followup: <http://shankerblog.org/?p=980>

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HilbertSpace
None of this makes any sense:

Nearly all the people in NY are in areas of high cost of living and, thus, are
relatively well paid. That should also make them relatively competent and
relatively good as parents with relatively accomplished children.

In Manhattan, the cost of living, etc. are higher.

In contrast, I went to a public high school in the South; nearly everyone
graduated; and 97% of the graduates went to college. I did well in math and
science, but English literature didn't make much sense to me, and somehow the
way French was taught I just didn't 'get it' (my father and brother were both
quite good at French but somehow didn't help me). My SAT total was over 1400;
still, except for math and science, high school was not so easy for me; my
high school was not really easy; in some of the courses, a lot of the students
did better than I did.

I did well enough in college, especially in math and science. I went to a
relatively good college, and there the girls in the humanities classes were
much better than I was; my only retaliation was to totally blow them away in
math and science, which was easy to do.

So, not doing so well in a public high school in the South, I was plenty
successful in college.

So, I don't 'get it': If my public high school in the South did so well, then
why are NY and Manhattan having so many problems? Where are they missing it?

At one point, here in NYS 70 miles north of Wall Street, my wife and I were
considering having children and wondered about the quality of the schools, so
she called a local high school and asked to visit. She was brilliant,
Valedictorian, PBK, 'Summa Cum Laude', Woodrow Wilson, and research university
Ph.D. In college once she wanted to take a history course, didn't need the
credit, so wanted just to audit. The prof asked audits also to take the tests,
so she did. It was a lecture hall course with 300 students. At the end the
prof told her that she should have taken the course for credit since she got
the highest grade in the class. Brilliant. So, with her credentials, she got a
good reception for a visit. She sat in on a senior class in history and
concluded that it would have been challenging for her.

I'm not 'getting it': Where are these really bad schools in NY?

Just what is it about college the students can't do?

I've taught undergraduates at Indiana University, Georgetown University, and
Ohio State; except for one 'special' collection of students at Georgetown, the
students were from good enough down to not so bad. Just what is it about NYS
students that are much less good?

What is all the screaming about in NY? Just trying to get more money for the
teachers?

Maybe we need to see the some distributions of SAT and CEEB scores for some
representative samples of students from Manhattan, the rest of NYS, and some
other states.

