To Cut Failure Rate, Schools Shed Students

[kskiska]

Growing numbers of students — most of them struggling academically — are being pushed out of New York City's school system and classified under bureaucratic categories that hide their failure to graduate.

Officially the city's dropout rate hovers around 20 percent. But critics say that if the students who are pushed out were included, that number could be 25 to 30 percent.

The city data make it impossible to determine just how many students are being pushed out, where they are going and what becomes of them. But experts who have examined the statistics and administrators of high school equivalency programs say that the number of "pushouts" seems to be growing, with students shunted out at ever-younger ages.

Those students represent the unintended consequence of the effort to hold schools accountable for raising standards: As students are being spurred to new levels of academic achievement and required to pass stringent Regents exams to get their high school diplomas, many schools are trying to get rid of those who may tarnish the schools' statistics by failing to graduate on time. Even though state law gives students the right to stay in high school until they are 21, many students are being counseled, or even forced, to leave long before then.

more…
http://nytimes.com/2003/07/31/nyregion/31PUSH.html?hp

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

1. 'Pump Up The Volume'

It was a little-seen movie starring Christian Slater as a high school pirate radio d.j. One storyline was that the principal was finding reasons to expell undesirable students so her school would get great evaluations.

If you make learning a numbers game, some people will find a way to cheat. Human nature.

[kskiska]

2. There was a highly rated school in Fairfield, CT

that consistently got high grades on student testing. Turns out the principal had been changing the kids' scores to keep that high rating.

[dArKeR]

4. 'GOP (Christian) nature'. Let's be clear on that

http://www.geocities.com/darkerxdarker/index.html

[I AM SPARTACUS]

18. from the mouth of Smirko himself - "At risk - means they can't learn."

Remember Campaign 2000...??? In Oct of 2000...quoth the babbling idiot...

"...so-called at-risk children. It's how we, unfortunately, label certain children. It means basically they can't learn."

http://www.lasculturas.com/aa/aa100400a.php

[I Lean Left]

3. My father was a high school teacher in Los Angeles

Said the school would talk low-scoring students into signing up for the night-school. Then their scores wouldn't count against the school, and when they inevitably dropped out, it wouldn't affect their drop-out rates. Any kid who tried to drop-out was signed up for the night school first.

Education reform: It's not just for freepers anymore!

[SteveG]

5. Brewing scandle in Houston

The City of Houston, Tx. has come under fire lately over cooking the books on it's dropout rate, claiming that students who told the schools that they intended to further their education when they left the school, were not dropouts. In fact, a huge percentage did not persue any further education.

Of course this took Place when current Sec. of Ed., Ron Paige, was Superintendent of the Houston Schools.... so we shall hear no more about this.......

[yellowcanine]

7. Yep, this is known as the "Texas Plan" for improving schools.

Say that dropouts have transferred, then your dropout rate decreases, test scores go up, and graduation rates and college attendance rates increase. More federal money flows and everybody is happy! What a country!

[jiacinto]

6. Savage Inequalities

That book is kind of dated--it was written around 10 years ago, but it clearly shows how bad all too many urban and rural public school districts are compared to their surburban counterparts.

[Tansy_Gold]

9. Inequalities still savage; book still relevant

Jonathan Kozol's moving testament to the nobility of those who labor in poverty -- and the callous cruelty of their better-off neighbors -- is far from "dated." If anything, Savage Inequalities is more relevant now than when it was published.

Kozol ought to be on tv more; he could give a lot of repukes heavy lessons in compassion.

[jiacinto]

10. Well the book is old

That's what I meant by "dated". No doubt, the problems are still there.

It is just sad how little people care about the poor condition of our public schools in this country.

This is a major issue for me.

[salin]

11. Kozol's book aimed to challenge the conservative mantra

that the problem isn't that schools need more money.

Fine, he says, buts let look at how much money is spent per child where YOUR children go to school, compared to some poor children. Now lets look at those schools, and their conditions, and compare it to YOUR schools.

In the end what do you have? Not just inequalities, but Savage Inequalities.

I read this shortly after it was written. Had an impact on some career/academic decisions.

[Muddleoftheroad]

13. Money

Money sure as hell won't solve all the problems. Look at D.C. where the per pupil spending is third in the nation according to Education Week's 2000 numbers.

That means they spend more than 48 states. Yet most if not all have better education systems than D.C.

The problem is money fails to take into account parental involvement, home life, troubled children, etc.

To say it's just money is an oversimplification.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=39spendbox.h21

[salin]

19. No one said that

just said that the point was to demonstrate that there are often huge disparities and to illustrate how some of those disparities play out in actual schools.

Read the book. It doesn't claim that "money is the answer" but it does demonstrate that there were then (and remain) some schools that are in such horrid circumstances that it is hard to imagine how any education can occur within them. Read the chapter on East St. Louis.

Suggests that one can not - at a certain level of very inequal funding (I am talking the most extremes) use the argument "well we can't just throw money at the problem" as a means to justify the level of underfunding in some places.

In ed policy circles there is a line of debate about state level school financing. Is the goal to have educational equity (some uniform level of funding across schools) or educational adequacy (that there is a bare minimum that needs to be in place from which schools can build up - ie through local taxes).

Savage Inequalities, I believe, makes a case that we should at a minimum consider educational adequacy in funding.

That said, it does not suggest that there are huge numbers of schools in these conditions. And it is dated. But having studied poor schools (urban and rural) that the issue still exist - even if not at a grand level (that is - it is not pervasive that schools/districts are in these states).

Btw, Please do not put words I did not use, or even imply, into my mouth.

[Muddleoftheroad]

20. Adequate

So what is adequate? How do you make up for one-parent families, parents in prison, horrible neighborhoods and crime with school funding?

Answer: You can't. You can't just fix education without fixing other urban and rural ills.

Look at the D.C. per pupil funding at $9,933. It's almost 50% above the national average and D.C. schools are the pits. How much more would it take to make them good? $20,000 per pupil? $30,000? What good will that do when children return to drug-infested neighborhoods where drive-by shootings and crime are rampant?

Now look at Utah where school funding is only $4,331 and tell me you wouldn't rather have you children in that school system over D.C.

You see, it's not just the schools, it's the communities. It's the families. It's the crime. It's the neighborhoods.

[fortyfeetunder]

12. I think the date was 1986.

When I read Savage Inequalities, I thought, heck things were like that when I was in the DC public schools a decade before that.

And from what my buds still back there have told me, reading the Washington Post and a somewhat recent visit since reading the book, I don't think things have changed much at all!

[jiacinto]

8. Leave every poor child behind

nt

[underpants]

14. Supplyside education

Don't like the population of your schools? Fine just cut off the supply of "bad students".

There are some seriously misplaced priorities going on here.

[realFedUp]

15. I think this is the Texas model

don't count em and they don't count.

[joshcryer]

16. I like "Don't count 'em if they can't count" better. :)

:D

[slackmaster]

17. Unintended consequences

Of making school administrators' job security dependent on standards-based performance tests. Create a system in which your success of failure as a principal rides on students' ability to answer objective tests and principals will use any means at their disposal to get test scores up.

Very predictable.