[quote=livinincali][quote=CA renter]
Also, you’re underestimating how important classroom management is, especially if students are going to be working on their own. An aide will not be able to deal with all of the questions and situations that will arise in the classroom, especially if students are left to their own devices.[/quote]
But if kids are working on their own through content at their own pace then you don’t need to put 30 kids in a room with 1 aide. You could take 100 of the kids that this type of teaching works really well for and put then in a room without the disruptive kids. You could put disruptive kids in isolation or in smaller groups. You’re not forced to commit to this 30 people in a room dynamic.
The biggest problem I have with the education system is there has been absolutely 0 improvement in efficiency or effectiveness with the technological advancements we’ve made over the years. In my opinion I think there would have been some improvements if the School Districts weren’t so resistant to change. A private company that resistant to change would have failed by now, but because it’s public and supported by tax dollars they don’t have to change. That is where the biggest problem lies. Tenure is just one of the numerous barriers that protect the school district from having to change.
Say something that’s been fairly successful like the Preuss school. Naysayers want to dismiss those results because they don’t have to deal with the challenges that exist in poorer neighborhood schools. But maybe that’s exactly what the public schools should be doing. Take the smart kids in the poor schools and put them together with good teachers and accelerate their learning process rather than just teaching to the middle with disruptive kids causing problems for everybody. Segregate the students not by race, color or background but by IQ or desire to learn.[/quote]
We’ve discussed the Preuss example (and other related issues) here:
[quote=CA renter]As to the rest of your post, you’re still working from the assumption that it’s the **teachers** who are failing these students, when those who are familiar with education will tell you that it’s the **students** and **parents** who are failing themselves. Sticking a private school where a public school once was — and educating the same population there — will not likely yield better results. As a matter of fact, because of a private school’s inability to meet the needs of special ed and higher-needs students, they would likely perform worse than the public school that was replaced.
Regarding Preuss, it’s the third requirement that explains why they do well. The first two simply mean that they accept the **highest performing students with the most dedicated parents** from low-income families where the parents don’t have college degrees. The students need a teacher’s recommendation from their previous school, and, “student applicants must demonstrate high motivation and potential to attend an academically competitive university or college,” which most likely means they have a better-than-average I.Q.
You cannot compare Preuss with a typical public school in a low-income neighborhood. They are not even close. Preuss enjoys the benefits of having VERY wealthy, private donors, in addition to the typical funds given to public or charter schools. They also have use of the UCSD campus and many of the university’s ammenities (there’s a cost component there), and UCSD students who provide FREE tutoring to these students — we use tutors for our kids, and I can assure you, it is EXTREMELY expensive. They have top-of-the-line classrooms, technology, sports facilities/equipment, and materials. Do you have any idea what all of that costs? I can assure you, their program costs more than twice what the typical public school costs.
As I’ve mentioned before, you have to consider ALL sources of income when comparing what schools spend on students. With traditional public schools, most of those income sources and costs are public information; there is very little private money, compared to what private (or special charter) schools get. Read the bottom of the piece linked here, to see how much things cost, and how they are trying to get PRIVATE funding to provide these things. It’s nice when you’re a high-profile component of a very wealthy community, with nice, wealthy people who want to “do good” in their communities. How many rich people are willing to consistently donate millions of dollars to support a single school in the gang-infested parts of the inner city?
Here is a small sampling of what Preuss offers (regular public schools can’t even begin to offer all of this, or the state would have been broke decades ago):
The Tutoring Program
To give its students extra academic help with its challenging curriculum, the Preuss School also conducts a tutoring program in partnership with the University. The program employs two different groups of tutors. One is enrolled in a class through UCSD’s Teacher Education Program; the class awards credit for a certain number of hours of tutoring per month. The other is made up of UCSD student volunteers from Thurgood Marshall College. Through these avenues, the Preuss School typically has 150-200 tutors available to help assist students at any given time.
Counseling Program
The Preuss School’s counseling staff plays a central role in the school, seeing to it that those students who are lagging behind get academic help as soon as possible and providing guidance in the college selection and application process. Students living in poverty often confront many difficult issues that call for support beyond regular school counseling, however. To help them, UCSD professor Peter Gourevitch established an endowed fund in memory of his late wife, Lisa Hirschman, a teacher and psychologist. The Hirschman Fund enables two psychotherapists and an intern to work with Preuss School students, providing them with the psychosocial services they need to overcome the problems they face.
Mutual Benefits
The benefits of the relationship between the school and UCSD are extensive and reciprocal. For example, University students volunteer at the Preuss School as tutors and mentors, and many have found the experience so rewarding that they are now considering careers in teaching. Preuss School students do internships on campus with UCSD faculty to gain experience in fields that interest them and also interact with professors when they are researching senior papers. At the same time, UCSD mathematics faculty have been turning to the school to help determine how students best learn the subject, and social sciences faculty have been examining the academic performance of Preuss School students compared with that of peers who were not selected by the lottery. Preuss School teachers have received training at the University, and students in UCSD’s teacher education program observe classes at the school. UCSD undergraduates serve as tutors for students and interns for teachers. Engineering faculty help with the school’s robotics teams.
Shared Resources
Access to such outstanding University resources as its library, athletic fields and San Diego Supercomputer Center translates into unprecedented opportunities for students and teachers. As one example, in 2003, the school dedicated a visualization center that will provide a virtual reality gateway to the world, eventually enabling students to interact in real time with images stored thousands of miles away, such as a fly-over of the surface of Mars and navigating deep inside a human cell. The center, part of the National Science Foundation’s OptiPuter project, has brought together the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (a partnership between UCSD and UCI) and the Visualization Center at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Connected to a high-performance network, it will permit students to work collaboratively with University faculty and graduate students on research projects.
From that same link, some possible evidence that “old, tenured teachers” are NOT the problem:
Master Teachers/Teacher Supplements
While the teachers at the Preuss School are dedicated, enthusiastic and innovative, a high percentage are comparatively new to the field. The school’s limited funds for personnel have hampered its ability to attract more experienced teachers, who command higher salaries. As a consequence, the younger teachers on the faculty, who could benefit from mentoring by the most experienced, highest-caliber teachers, lack access to this important resource for career development.
To address this need, one of the Preuss School’s highest priorities is to generate private support for teacher salary supplements and/or hiring bonuses in order to add more veteran teachers to the faculty. Specifically, the school is seeking funds to hire teacher leaders in all the core subject areas, including a literacy chair, who will be responsible for mentoring other teachers in the area of literacy.
In addition, the school is seeking contributions to implement a formal resident scholar program, providing release time for UCSD professors to work with the Preuss School faculty in their subject areas to ensure that curriculum and content are state of the art and preparing students properly for college.
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