EDIT: This blog will stay up, but will no longer be updated. Only the WordPress blog will be updated, so please follow!
I've moved to WordPress! As of last night, in a fit of pure impulsivity. Yeah, that's not a real word.
So please follow me over there at http://michelle391.wordpress.com/. Same address only 'wordpress' in place of 'blogspot'. This blog will probably come down in about a week or so, but all posts, comments, and tags have been imported and now exist on wordpress. I've also put out an all-call, taking requests for topics to write about - so go over to wordpress, click the follow button, and leave me some ideas!
Monday, August 1, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
In Boxes Made of Ticky-Tacky
I've written a lot about higher education, money matters in particular; The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions (the "worth" of college education), Life Has Meaning Only in the Struggle (my very first post; about financial aid), and, well, everything that has the tag "college" on it. Which is a good 60% of my posts. Yeah, I did the math.
But now there's something that never really struck me as an issue - secondary education. As in, everything that leads up to college, starting with middle school. The idea of a sub-par high school whose students lack opportunity was, to be perfectly honest, unfathomable to me until very recently. And it's almost entirely because I was fortunate enough to graduate from one of the fabulous opportunity-ridden high schools in America, Auburn High School, who was ranked as the 77th best public high school by Newsweek in May 2006 according to Wikipedia, but this number is most likely much higher now - Schooldigger calculated AHS to be 23rd out of the 359 schools on the site by combining the average test scores in math and English. And AHS has steadily produced above-average test scores; City-data.com has every statistic you could think of from 2006, 2007, and 2008 in individual bar-graphs. I've linked it for anyone as curious as I am, but it's rather tedious (seriously, if you've charted that 97% passed, do you really need a separate chart stating that 3% failed?), and even breaking the distributions down by ethnicity, gender, and grade level.
But we're actually a whole lot luckier than we think, because public schools in the South in general are struggling quite a bit just to pass their kids off as proficient. If I remember correctly, the documentary Waiting for Superman alluded that Alabama has one of the lowest percentages of proficiency in math in the United States, with 18% of 8th graders passing as proficient, and going on to peg more southern states as fellow stragglers. And in the CNN documentary, "Don't Fail Me: Education in America" (available in six parts on YouTube), Soledad O'Brien's interview with now former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen, actually revealed that parents had been lied to about the proficiency of their students. In particular, for 8th grade math (no idea why this particular age group and subject is so focused on), parents were told that 84% of students were proficient, while the number was actually 22%.
But here's a more relatable (spellcheck tells me that's not a word, but I like it anyway) example, this kid Shaan Patel, the CNN documentary, had a similar naive mindset (Best thing, btw, when O'Brien said to Shaan, "Your brother is autistic?", he reflected, "My brother has autism, yes." @Kayla Coggins/Special Friends). On the subject of calculus, he was under the impression that most kids in high school take calculus - not that ridiculous of an idea, right? But it turns out that only about 16% of high school students in America get to take calculus [According to Soledad O'Brien in the documentary; I have actually found a statistic that cites the U.S. Department of Education's finding that 14.1% of graduating seniors in the class of 2004 took calculus (that article is not to be confused with David Bressoud's earlier article which claimed that the statistic was, in fact 16%. But I trust the former [and the Dept. of Education])]. Disclaimer: My parenthetical usage was unintentionally reminiscent of Jonathan Safran Foer.
Waiting for Superman was a documentary that criticized a number of public schools who are "failing" their students - by not providing an adequate education that would prepare them for higher education, which in this documentary actually refers to high school, then ultimately college. It suggested is that there exist a number of schools in the US that practice something called "tracking", where students are divided early on into "tracks" based on test scores. Remember when we had to take that math test in the 6th grade that assigned us into Algebra, Pre-Algebra, and basic math for the next year? Yeah. It happened. The documentary explains it perfectly in 54 seconds. And the cartoon is pretty cute. Basically, there are three main tracks: the high track leads to becoming doctors, lawyers, and business executives, the middle track leads to "skilled" jobs like accountancy, and the lower track is for menial labor. But this system was devised for a post-war era, where the majority of jobs were, in fact, menial blue-collar positions. Therefore, only 20% of students were expected to go to university and be put into boxes made of ticky-tacky. This is the high track; another 20% would follow the middle track, and the remaining 50% would be directed to the lower track. Unfortunately, times have changed and now demand is high for ticky-tacky - but because the US isn't producing enough, they look overseas for engineers and researchers. This is why unemployment exists - there are jobs, but in the high track, and people just aren't qualified enough to fill them. It isn't enough to have 50% of the population be farmers anymore. Looks like we're all made of ticky-tacky in the end.
So here lies secondary education, between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Honestly, I don't see a clear, effective solution to improving the education system. Many thought that Bush's No Child Left Behind act in 2001/02 was the answer; it mandated that, in exchange for regular funding, each state set standards for education that are to be met by designing standardized exams for students. But the thing is, the states can alter the standards that they set - so if the students are underperforming, they simply lower the standard for the next year and say that the kids are up to par. Or they just don't get money. Like in that one episode of Family Guy.
President Obama has proposed a blueprint, outlining reform of the NCLB act. Honestly, the talking points just seem like powerfully phrased statements in favor of making things better. Throw in some large monetary figures, and you've got yourself some pretty heavy promises. Obama's got this idea called "Race to the Top", in which states submit applications for grants - essentially pitting states against one another in hopes of getting them motivated to make changes - but each state's application is just another set of powerfully phrased goals and promises.
Many efforts have been made for education reform - and many efforts have crashed and burned, been shot down, or slowly faded away. Google Michelle Rhee, for goodness sake, the now former D.C. Chancellor of Education. She had passion, confidence, and huge ideas. But she was also involved in a scandal concerning the suspicious alteration of standarized test answers in DC. And she fired a crapload of people. And she has since tendered her resignation as chancellor. Go big or go home. So maybe Obama's plan isn't so bad after all. He seems to make a lot of promises with considerably less delivery - but the thing is, eloquently phrased goals have an inexplicable emotional effect on people. He promised change, and it made people listen to him - because they wanted change. Inspiration can have a lasting effect on people. So maybe "Race to the Top" will crash and burn. Or get shot down, or slowly fade away. But at least I can have faith that someone will try again.
Try again, fail better.
But now there's something that never really struck me as an issue - secondary education. As in, everything that leads up to college, starting with middle school. The idea of a sub-par high school whose students lack opportunity was, to be perfectly honest, unfathomable to me until very recently. And it's almost entirely because I was fortunate enough to graduate from one of the fabulous opportunity-ridden high schools in America, Auburn High School, who was ranked as the 77th best public high school by Newsweek in May 2006 according to Wikipedia, but this number is most likely much higher now - Schooldigger calculated AHS to be 23rd out of the 359 schools on the site by combining the average test scores in math and English. And AHS has steadily produced above-average test scores; City-data.com has every statistic you could think of from 2006, 2007, and 2008 in individual bar-graphs. I've linked it for anyone as curious as I am, but it's rather tedious (seriously, if you've charted that 97% passed, do you really need a separate chart stating that 3% failed?), and even breaking the distributions down by ethnicity, gender, and grade level.
But we're actually a whole lot luckier than we think, because public schools in the South in general are struggling quite a bit just to pass their kids off as proficient. If I remember correctly, the documentary Waiting for Superman alluded that Alabama has one of the lowest percentages of proficiency in math in the United States, with 18% of 8th graders passing as proficient, and going on to peg more southern states as fellow stragglers. And in the CNN documentary, "Don't Fail Me: Education in America" (available in six parts on YouTube), Soledad O'Brien's interview with now former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen, actually revealed that parents had been lied to about the proficiency of their students. In particular, for 8th grade math (no idea why this particular age group and subject is so focused on), parents were told that 84% of students were proficient, while the number was actually 22%.
But here's a more relatable (spellcheck tells me that's not a word, but I like it anyway) example, this kid Shaan Patel, the CNN documentary, had a similar naive mindset (Best thing, btw, when O'Brien said to Shaan, "Your brother is autistic?", he reflected, "My brother has autism, yes." @Kayla Coggins/Special Friends). On the subject of calculus, he was under the impression that most kids in high school take calculus - not that ridiculous of an idea, right? But it turns out that only about 16% of high school students in America get to take calculus [According to Soledad O'Brien in the documentary; I have actually found a statistic that cites the U.S. Department of Education's finding that 14.1% of graduating seniors in the class of 2004 took calculus (that article is not to be confused with David Bressoud's earlier article which claimed that the statistic was, in fact 16%. But I trust the former [and the Dept. of Education])]. Disclaimer: My parenthetical usage was unintentionally reminiscent of Jonathan Safran Foer.
Waiting for Superman was a documentary that criticized a number of public schools who are "failing" their students - by not providing an adequate education that would prepare them for higher education, which in this documentary actually refers to high school, then ultimately college. It suggested is that there exist a number of schools in the US that practice something called "tracking", where students are divided early on into "tracks" based on test scores. Remember when we had to take that math test in the 6th grade that assigned us into Algebra, Pre-Algebra, and basic math for the next year? Yeah. It happened. The documentary explains it perfectly in 54 seconds. And the cartoon is pretty cute. Basically, there are three main tracks: the high track leads to becoming doctors, lawyers, and business executives, the middle track leads to "skilled" jobs like accountancy, and the lower track is for menial labor. But this system was devised for a post-war era, where the majority of jobs were, in fact, menial blue-collar positions. Therefore, only 20% of students were expected to go to university and be put into boxes made of ticky-tacky. This is the high track; another 20% would follow the middle track, and the remaining 50% would be directed to the lower track. Unfortunately, times have changed and now demand is high for ticky-tacky - but because the US isn't producing enough, they look overseas for engineers and researchers. This is why unemployment exists - there are jobs, but in the high track, and people just aren't qualified enough to fill them. It isn't enough to have 50% of the population be farmers anymore. Looks like we're all made of ticky-tacky in the end.
So here lies secondary education, between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Honestly, I don't see a clear, effective solution to improving the education system. Many thought that Bush's No Child Left Behind act in 2001/02 was the answer; it mandated that, in exchange for regular funding, each state set standards for education that are to be met by designing standardized exams for students. But the thing is, the states can alter the standards that they set - so if the students are underperforming, they simply lower the standard for the next year and say that the kids are up to par. Or they just don't get money. Like in that one episode of Family Guy.
President Obama has proposed a blueprint, outlining reform of the NCLB act. Honestly, the talking points just seem like powerfully phrased statements in favor of making things better. Throw in some large monetary figures, and you've got yourself some pretty heavy promises. Obama's got this idea called "Race to the Top", in which states submit applications for grants - essentially pitting states against one another in hopes of getting them motivated to make changes - but each state's application is just another set of powerfully phrased goals and promises.
Many efforts have been made for education reform - and many efforts have crashed and burned, been shot down, or slowly faded away. Google Michelle Rhee, for goodness sake, the now former D.C. Chancellor of Education. She had passion, confidence, and huge ideas. But she was also involved in a scandal concerning the suspicious alteration of standarized test answers in DC. And she fired a crapload of people. And she has since tendered her resignation as chancellor. Go big or go home. So maybe Obama's plan isn't so bad after all. He seems to make a lot of promises with considerably less delivery - but the thing is, eloquently phrased goals have an inexplicable emotional effect on people. He promised change, and it made people listen to him - because they wanted change. Inspiration can have a lasting effect on people. So maybe "Race to the Top" will crash and burn. Or get shot down, or slowly fade away. But at least I can have faith that someone will try again.
Try again, fail better.
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