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Wee Tinkle Wand posted:The school system in my city does this, I figured it was just "a thing" that they all did. A month or so before the test they take all the worst students and in little groups start cramming with them, it's semi-mandatory depending on the student. Then right before the big standardized test, like a day or two before, there will be a "walk through quiz" which is open book and the questions are suspiciously exactly the same as the ones on the standardized test. That's the standard, and the correct course of action (also what makes public school increasingly useless as they devote more and more time to teaching to the test). The crimes committed in this case are miles beyond.
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Apr 17, 2015 04:35
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Mandy Thompson posted:Not immunity exactly, they had to admit guilt and I am pretty sure they lost their licenses. Some teachers wanted to fight it because they were put in a no win situation. They could have become whistleblowers but instead decided to collaborate. I know you don't believe in free will but that was a personal choice they need to be held accountable for in some way, if only so the next batch will be more inclined to report fraud instead of participating. Though yeah it was a raw deal for them. on the left posted:If we got rid of standardized tests, we could pretend that all schools are equal, and just let it be an open secret that some schools will destroy the future of a child. Inequality solved. In a sense that's happening now anyway, with the DOE and state officials mostly turning a blind eye to what everyone seems to know happens on a massive scale in underperforming or marginally performing districts. wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 13:41
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They took money away from failing schools if they didn't pass tests. What did the NCLB writers think was going to happen? It might be important to remember that the education sector fought NCLB tooth and nail. People saw this coming.
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Apr 17, 2015 14:26
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wateroverfire posted:They could have become whistleblowers but instead decided to collaborate. I know you don't believe in free will but that was a personal choice they need to be held accountable for in some way, if only so the next batch will be more inclined to report fraud instead of participating. Yeah, gently caress them for trying to preserve the money used to educate students. Those assholes! This whole thing where people want to take the moral high ground like the law is legitimate is really tiring. That law removes funding from the schools that need funding the most. It's hosed up, and it's immoral. People trying to prevent that from happening are not the bad guys. They were responding to the tremendously hosed up incentives imposed by the law. They did what any rational moral actor would do in order to protect their students. Mentioning "whistleblowing," like it would have been effective. Give me a break. People have been blowing as hard as they can on loving whistles since before that law was passed, and nobody has listened. A case like this does more to demonstrate why the law is hosed up than other methods that would not have gotten smacked down by Rico. ErIog fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 14:50
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Arglebargle III posted:They took money away from failing schools if they didn't pass tests. What did the NCLB writers think was going to happen? It might be important to remember that the education sector fought NCLB tooth and nail. People saw this coming. De-funding public schools in order to funnel money into the owners of charter schools while both weakening the teacher's union and also making it easier for tax money to pay for teaching "conservative values" was the point devised by the NCLB writers.
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Apr 17, 2015 14:57
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ErIog posted:Yeah, gently caress them for trying to preserve the money used to educate students. Those assholes! Give me a break. This is not satyagraha, it's fixing test scores. At best it's stupid but morally neutral, at worst a craven attempt to protect one's own job. NCLB is a terrible law but I don't see why this is in any way a good response to it. Bureaucracies fixing stats is not a noble phenomenon.
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Apr 17, 2015 14:59
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Arglebargle III posted:They took money away from failing schools if they didn't pass tests. What did the NCLB writers think was going to happen? It might be important to remember that the education sector fought NCLB tooth and nail. People saw this coming. Yup. It was totally predictable. Despite the scandals it's kind of doing its job if it puts a spotight on failing schools. And idk...outcomes could hardly get worse for children in really bad public schools, so maybe encouraging the development semi-private charters is the best option for them in a world were money is the main tool the feds have to exert influence. ErIog posted:This whole thing where people want to take the moral high ground like the law is legitimate is really tiring. The law puts a lot of pressure on teachers, for sure. In a lot of ways it's a lovely law. In a different political environment congress would probably change it. But it's the law nonetheless and what the teachers did was a serious breach of professional ethics, not to mention straight-up fraud. Situations where people have to make difficult decisions, for instance about whether to comply with pressure (and the incentive to look good on a performance review) to cheat on standardized tests, are why codes of professional ethics exist and why enforcing them is important. Like...I can see understanding it but you can't excuse it. edit: I agree with SedanChair wtf is happening in this degenerate world.
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Apr 17, 2015 15:09
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And yet, the failing of public schools is still a myth and charter schools are still a scam.
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Apr 17, 2015 15:19
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But definitely jail those teachers for not surrendering to it. Professional ethics means failing everyone around you because someone in Washington planned it twelve years ago.
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Apr 17, 2015 15:27
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Some schools are failing to teach their students adequately due to lack of funding -> tie funding to the performance of the students at schools -> funding decreases -> student performance decreases -> funding decreases -> student performance decreases etc... It is a vicious cycle and it appears to be specifically designed to be a vicious cycle. All the protests, letter campaigns, public statements about how this was a bad idea went unheeded so now people have to go outside the system to try to keep the schools from being replaced by charter schools which will just drop the worst students when they can or simply shut down with no plan to set up an alternative. In my opinion education shouldn't be a profit driven enterprise. The profit is having an educated community. Space Skeleton fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 15:34
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I don't know why it is necessary to get caught up in a legalism argument when it is extremely uninteresting (do the crime, do the time yadda yadda). That said, I see this is part of the slow but steady return of Jim Crow, using "progressive" adjustments to law code and policy as a way to squeeze any route upward for African-Americans. The war of drugs is the comparable example here, find a crisis then come up with a draconian enforcement policy that ultimately damages the community far more than the initial crisis. "Voter fraud" is an even more blatant example where the initial crisis which was completely manufactured.
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Apr 17, 2015 16:14
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The fact that the legislators passing laws to solve these "problems" never have any actual evidence that they are occurring is all you need to see that these are intended to resurrect Jim Crow laws but of course SCOTUS is racially blind and innocent as a newborn child so they can't comprehend such tactics.
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Apr 17, 2015 16:18
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SedanChair posted:And yet, the failing of public schools is still a myth and charter schools are still a scam. Like, America is a huge place with thousands of independent school districts, some of which are horrible and acknowledged to be horrible. Where is the myth?
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Apr 17, 2015 16:47
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wateroverfire posted:Like, America is a huge place with thousands of independent school districts, some of which are horrible and acknowledged to be horrible. Where is the myth? You've just repeated it in its entirety. However bad any public school may be, charter schools have failed to show better results. Any numbers to the contrary are cheating because they can pick and choose which youth they serve.
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Apr 17, 2015 16:51
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SedanChair posted:You've just repeated it in its entirety. However bad any public school may be, charter schools have failed to show better results. Any numbers to the contrary are cheating because they can pick and choose which youth they serve. The thing about the charter vs. public debate is that it's really, really easy to show that charter schools and private have better results. People who don't wish to think critically about the situation will see this, and read into it that the schools themselves must be better if they're producing better results, which is, of course, completely false.
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Apr 17, 2015 17:19
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Arglebargle III posted:They took money away from failing schools if they didn't pass tests. What did the NCLB writers think was going to happen? It might be important to remember that the education sector fought NCLB tooth and nail. People saw this coming. Destroy public education so all education funding could be redirected to private schools/charters, of course.
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Apr 17, 2015 17:35
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Wee Tinkle Wand posted:Some schools are failing to teach their students adequately due to lack of funding -> tie funding to the performance of the students at schools -> funding decreases -> student performance decreases -> funding decreases -> student performance decreases etc... If schools were funded inversely to test results, couldn't the smart kids be instructed to do badly on the test and be more capable of doing so than the dumb kids?
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Apr 17, 2015 18:15
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It's not particularly true that failing to meet NCLB benchmarks means a school loses funding. Here's the process: States set up testing regimes and set growth targets for schools where students do not show proficiency on those tests. This is called Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP. If a school doesn't make AYP for 1 year, the district must: Place school on “watch” list develop a school improvement plan If a school doesn't make AYP for 2 years: ` Listed as “needs improvement” school. ` District must provide any student attending the “needs improvement” school the option of attending another school that has met adequate yearly progress. If a school doesn't make AYP for 3 years: ` Listed as “needs improvement” school. ` District must provide any student attending the “needs improvement” school the option of attending another school that has met adequate yearly progress. The district pays transportation costs. ` The school district must offer “supplemental educational services” to any student who qualifies for free or reduced lunch. One option for supplemental services must be from an outside provider. If a school doesn't make AYP for 4 years: ` Listed as “needs improvement” school. ` District must provide any student attending the “needs improvement” school the option of attending another school that has met adequate yearly progress. The district pays transportation costs. ` The school district must offer “supplemental educational services” to any student who qualifies for free or reduced lunch. One option for supplemental services must be from an outside provider. ` The school must change its staffing or make a “fundamental change” such as restructuring the school. If a school doesn't make AYP for 5+ years: ` Listed as “needs improvement” school. ` District must provide any student attending the “needs improvement” school the option of attending another school that has met adequate yearly progress. The district pays transportation costs. ` The school district must offer “supplemental educational services” to any student who qualifies for free or reduced lunch. One option for supplemental services must be from an outside provider. ` The school must convert into a charter school, turn management over to a private management company or be taken over by the state. School funding is tied to enrollment and attendance. The only way NCLB can reduce a schools funding is if parents choose to move their students to a school with higher test scores, and it mandates that districts spend money on outside services for students in failing schools.
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Apr 17, 2015 18:21
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And how exactly is each year-by-year step not a hollowing out of that school that leaves them with the kids that are most challenging to educate, hastening their closure?
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Apr 17, 2015 18:27
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Yeah the system looks deliberately designed to be a slippery slope that makes it largely harder not easier to arrest a school's decline.
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Apr 17, 2015 18:34
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Some special interest groups who do things like promote/support/enhance extracurricular activities also stop working with or skip over any school appearing to have a problem. In a system designed to cause problems a school can't fix that leads to less support from them. Less activities to enhance the learning process means worse students and we're back to that cycle.
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Apr 17, 2015 18:41
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My favorite part is the "listed as needs improvement," the bureaucratic equivalent of Jesus in the Big Lebowski having to notify everyone in the neighborhood that he's a convicted sex offender.
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Apr 17, 2015 18:43
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Private schools are often worse when it comes to cheating and grade inflation. Private schools are very competitive with each other and rely on their stats to attract customers, so it's extremely important for them to always show better "results" than their competing public and private schools. They do this by often not letting in students that might drag the average down, pushing and drilling the kids to perform well on the tests, and outright cheating or cooking the books. Also as we all know the main aspect for academic performance isn't the school but the kid's family life. Have poor parents, you will do worse in school. Private schools by their nature only allow richer students to attend, which of course makes them look better. If you took a city and randomized all the students into different schools public or private you'd see an averaging out of grades. Where I live there aren't really good schools or bad schools because our schools are not funded at the city or neighbourhood level. Obviously a school in a poorer area will be seen as slightly worse than one in a richer area, but the difference is not extreme enough that anyone but the most driven tiger mom would send their kid to anything but the closest school. It's also sometimes tricky to send your kid to the wrong school, you need a good reason and they can deny the request. Some schools though do have special programs that may attract certain students. Maybe you live between 2 schools, one is technically closer and in your catchment area. The closest school is known to have a really good music teacher while the other school has been trying out a new sports program that your kid is pumped about, so you manage to send him to sport-school. Or in my case for highschool I was between two but most all my friends were going to the other one, that was enough to let me switch. But still, despite going to the "rich" highschool our grades were little if any better than the highschool in the more working class area. To make a good school all you need are teachers paid well enough and supported/respected enough to give a poo poo about their jobs and a decent curriculum. Beyond that it's the economics and social problems of the school's catchment area. In many cases if you want to improve school performance you're better of throwing money at social programs for the adults in the community rather than a new computer lab at the school. Or you know, be an actual civilized country and do both.
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Apr 17, 2015 18:59
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Wee Tinkle Wand posted:Some special interest groups who do things like promote/support/enhance extracurricular activities also stop working with or skip over any school appearing to have a problem. In a system designed to cause problems a school can't fix that leads to less support from them. Less activities to enhance the learning process means worse students and we're back to that cycle. NCLB actually forces districts to spend more money on outside providers at failing schools. SedanChair posted:My favorite part is the "listed as needs improvement," the bureaucratic equivalent of Jesus in the Big Lebowski having to notify everyone in the neighborhood that he's a convicted sex offender. I'm struggling to be offended at regulations which force districts to inform parents if their school is failing. I also struggle to be offended by regulations which force districts to allow poor parents to enroll their children in better schools, which is otherwise the privilege of families with the means to move to a home served by a better public school. SedanChair posted:And how exactly is each year-by-year step not a hollowing out of that school that leaves them with the kids that are most challenging to educate, hastening their closure? This is exactly the problem, and not just with NCLB but with school choice in general. It's not "NCLB takes away funds", it's "NCLB encourages a redistribution of students which tends to reinforce existing inequalities"
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Apr 17, 2015 19:31
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SedanChair posted:And yet, the failing of public schools is still a myth and charter schools are still a scam. Yep. And keep in mind, literally just throwing money at schools is more effective than charters. So charters as a solution after defunding underperforming schools is pretty hilarious.
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Apr 17, 2015 19:36
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Those requirements don't seem onerous at all, though. Having to pay to transport kids to a better school might suck if it causes an exodus of decent students, but it still makes sense as a requirement. Other than that they have 4 years to fix things before they actually have to change anything. I've always read about how bad NCLB is but if that's all there is to it, doesn't seem that bad after all. SedanChair posted:And how exactly is each year-by-year step not a hollowing out of that school that leaves them with the kids that are most challenging to educate, hastening their closure? The alternative is trapping good students in with awful ones (or more realistically for these schools; less bad ones with the really bad ones). And even if you do that and your school keeps its scores above whatever the minimums are, it doesn't actually help the worse-off students because they're still going to be in there failing. Smarter kids bringing the average up doesn't change that. semper wifi fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 19:50
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[quote="semper wifi" post=""444182497"] The alternative is trapping good students in with awful ones. And even if you do that and your school keeps its scores above whatever the minimums are, it doesn't actually help the worse-off students because they're still going to be in there failing. Smarter kids bringing the average up doesn't change that. [/quote] This is intuitive but untrue. peer effects
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Apr 17, 2015 19:54
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Yeah I don't disagree that having the higher-achievers there will help the other kids a little, but in the NCLB scenario whatever effect they have clearly isn't enough due to the school failing to meet minimums with them in the classroom.
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Apr 17, 2015 19:58
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semper wifi posted:Yeah I don't disagree that having the higher-achievers there will help the other kids a little, but in the NCLB scenario whatever effect they have clearly isn't enough due to the school failing to meet minimums with them in the classroom. May as well let the achievers bail out while they can do something to improve themselves. They'll do even better in new schools with better peer groups.
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Apr 17, 2015 20:02
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wateroverfire posted:May as well let the achievers bail out while they can do something to improve themselves. They'll do even better in new schools with better peer groups. We need to consider public schools basically a farm system for the top 1% of students
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Apr 17, 2015 20:16
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Zeitgueist posted:We need to consider public schools basically a farm system for the top 1% of students Can't save everyone but putting the promising students in good environments would probably go a long way toward pulling them out of poverty.
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Apr 17, 2015 20:26
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wateroverfire posted:May as well let the achievers bail out while they can do something to improve themselves. They'll do even better in new schools with better peer groups. The students who switch schools tend to be ones with positive peer effects, and there are a variety of mechanisms--particularly available to charters-- which allow schools to avoid or rid themselves of students who require disproportionate amounts of resources to educate (kids with behavior problems, English language learners, kids in SpEd ). So the kids who require the most resources tend to be concentrated in schools which become less and less able to meet their needs. Solutions which provide marginal improvements for some of the disadvantaged where the costs are borne by the most vulnerable in society are not acceptable.
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Apr 17, 2015 20:28
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JeffersonClay posted:The students who switch schools tend to be ones with positive peer effects, and there are a variety of mechanisms--particularly available to charters-- which allow schools to avoid or rid themselves of students who require disproportionate amounts of resources to educate (kids with behavior problems, English language learners, kids in SpEd ). So the kids who require the most resources tend to be concentrated in schools which become less and less able to meet their needs. Why should disadvantaged students who could do better given the chance be held back because we don't have a global solution to a problem which probably has no global solution? That is dooming thousands of children, who also deserve the best chance possible, to lower lifetime achievement in the name of equality.
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Apr 17, 2015 20:36
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wateroverfire posted:Can't save everyone but putting the promising students in good environments would probably go a long way toward pulling them out of poverty. More or less the idea behind historically black universities during Jim Crow.
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Apr 17, 2015 20:36
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wateroverfire posted:Why should disadvantaged students who could do better given the chance be held back because we don't have a global solution to a problem which probably has no global solution? That is dooming thousands of children, who also deserve the best chance possible, to lower lifetime achievement in the name of equality. It's entirely possible that by concentrating the highest need students in the worst schools, that overall average achievement will decrease despite the increase in achievement in the subpopulation of students who switched. It's also conceivable that the consequences of providing terrible education to the most at-risk, high need students are more severe. A student who could have gone to college but didn't due to failing schools loses out on about a million dollars in lifetime income. A student with an emotional disturbance who receives a terrible education might inflict significantly more damage in the community.
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Apr 17, 2015 20:53
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I "enjoy" the canards that accompany school choice. In these canards, kids don't fail because of unreliable transportation, homelessness, hunger and special needs. They fail because they are menaced by "bad kids" that they can only escape by attending wealthier, whiter schools.
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Apr 17, 2015 21:28
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Heard a good interview on local Atlanta radio today - apparently the seven year sentences were handed down after a long back-and-forth of the judge just asking some of the more egregious ringleaders to admit guilt and responsibility. Everyone who took a plea deal got off pretty light. So it seems that the individuals who didn't feel like they did anything wrong and stuck to that are the ones who got punished hardest. I can't say I disagree - regardless of why I ended up in court, if the judge told me "admit guilt and walk or plead innocence and leave it up to the jury" I can't blame anyone but myself if I stick to my convictions and eat a higher sentence.
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Apr 17, 2015 21:38
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SedanChair posted:I "enjoy" the canards that accompany school choice. In these canards, kids don't fail because of unreliable transportation, homelessness, hunger and special needs. They fail because they are menaced by "bad kids" that they can only escape by attending wealthier, whiter schools. I've attended two public schools in my life, the former which was real bad, poverty etc. and nobody gave a poo poo about school, there were a lot of fights and everyone was rowdy as hell and also dumb as poo poo, you were encouraged not really to achieve lol I was in all the gifted classes and when I moved to the wealthier school i was definitely average so idk maybe there is something to the environment that you are in, and if there are a ton of bad kids doing drugs, fighting, etc. its not really good to become a scholar, there.
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Apr 17, 2015 21:59
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"Bad kids around you make it harder to learn" is not a controversial statement in the education world. It's also the best line of attack against statistical research that indicates charters are more effective.
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Apr 17, 2015 22:04
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JeffersonClay posted:It's entirely possible that by concentrating the highest need students in the worst schools, that overall average achievement will decrease despite the increase in achievement in the subpopulation of students who switched. It's also conceivable that the consequences of providing terrible education to the most at-risk, high need students are more severe. A student who could have gone to college but didn't due to failing schools loses out on about a million dollars in lifetime income. A student with an emotional disturbance who receives a terrible education might inflict significantly more damage in the community. That's all possible. Then again, that's cold comfort to the parents of the students you condemn to poverty, and to the students' eventual children, for the sake of bringing up the average of the students for whom a good outcome is simply not ending up in an institution. How sure are you about the cost/benefit analysis?
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Apr 17, 2015 22:31
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