I’ve lived in a diverse, inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood for over 30 years and want to say that my neighbors and I, of all colors/cultures, are deeply concerned about the way the education available to students dependent on public schools is increasing NOT getting the job done. Maybe it is good that COVID has focused attention on the seriousness of the situation. Our kids can do great things if properly challenged and supported; some of our public schools do this but it is critical that they ALL do so — the world’s future literally depends upon it.
Schools are violent beyond belief. If you want your child to be hurt by criminals send them to school. If you want them to be excluded because of socioeconomic indicators like not having trendy clothes, send them to school.
Democrats have zero answers to any of this, they think that calling the police on the young criminals who hurt other students is the 'school to prison pipeline.'
The institution teaches people to be greedy and mean. The culture reflects this.
Kids lost ground all over the world during covid. I have friends whose kids attend private schools and they say the same problem has happened in theirs school but of course the media could care less about private school test scores.
“ New international data on the persistent link between Covid school closures and learning loss”
Another problem is that we rarely see studies that match kids on their family’s SES status — the most powerful predictor of educational success.
All of my grandkids attend urban schools in the southeast and all are getting a solid education. Their schools are racially, economically and ethnically integrated and have about 30% of kids who are low income, many of whom do not speak English as their first language. Of course those schools average test scores are lower than schools that just have kids from middle class and affluent schools.
Meanwhile vouchers and charter schools are siphoning off more and more middle class kids but when those kids struggle with learning or have behavior problems those schools kick them out and leave them to public schools to deal with.
I am an older baby boomer and I know from experience that carping about public schools has always been a thing. I went to school in the Ohio region of Appalachia so my schools’ test scores were well below average for my state yet two of my schoolmates because presidents of prominent universities, several became successful doctors, one became wealthy by getting in on the creation of the internet infrastructure at the very beginning (starting in someone’s garage). We had kids that dropped out at 16 and some of us went to elite universities where we were able to hold our own against kids with elite private school educations. I know for a fact that all four of my grandkids are getting a much better education than either I or my private school educated husband had. Contrary to conventional wisdom our state’s curriculum requires civics education in their social studies classes in multiple years. For example my 2nd grade grandkid told me they had learned the 3 branches of government and was able to name them and give a reasonble explanation of what each does. That lesson was repeated in 4th grade when they studied our state government and visited the state capital. They take government in middle school and revisit topics in high school. That is far more civics instruction than we boomers had despite all the carping about kids today not being taught it like we were.
We need fair comparisons of schools that are based on matching kids on their family backgrounds but that almost never happens.
I’ve lived in a diverse, inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood for over 30 years and want to say that my neighbors and I, of all colors/cultures, are deeply concerned about the way the education available to students dependent on public schools is increasing NOT getting the job done. Maybe it is good that COVID has focused attention on the seriousness of the situation. Our kids can do great things if properly challenged and supported; some of our public schools do this but it is critical that they ALL do so — the world’s future literally depends upon it.
Schools are violent beyond belief. If you want your child to be hurt by criminals send them to school. If you want them to be excluded because of socioeconomic indicators like not having trendy clothes, send them to school.
Democrats have zero answers to any of this, they think that calling the police on the young criminals who hurt other students is the 'school to prison pipeline.'
The institution teaches people to be greedy and mean. The culture reflects this.
Kids lost ground all over the world during covid. I have friends whose kids attend private schools and they say the same problem has happened in theirs school but of course the media could care less about private school test scores.
“ New international data on the persistent link between Covid school closures and learning loss”
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/new-international-data-persistent-link-between-covid-school-closures-and
Another problem is that we rarely see studies that match kids on their family’s SES status — the most powerful predictor of educational success.
All of my grandkids attend urban schools in the southeast and all are getting a solid education. Their schools are racially, economically and ethnically integrated and have about 30% of kids who are low income, many of whom do not speak English as their first language. Of course those schools average test scores are lower than schools that just have kids from middle class and affluent schools.
Meanwhile vouchers and charter schools are siphoning off more and more middle class kids but when those kids struggle with learning or have behavior problems those schools kick them out and leave them to public schools to deal with.
I am an older baby boomer and I know from experience that carping about public schools has always been a thing. I went to school in the Ohio region of Appalachia so my schools’ test scores were well below average for my state yet two of my schoolmates because presidents of prominent universities, several became successful doctors, one became wealthy by getting in on the creation of the internet infrastructure at the very beginning (starting in someone’s garage). We had kids that dropped out at 16 and some of us went to elite universities where we were able to hold our own against kids with elite private school educations. I know for a fact that all four of my grandkids are getting a much better education than either I or my private school educated husband had. Contrary to conventional wisdom our state’s curriculum requires civics education in their social studies classes in multiple years. For example my 2nd grade grandkid told me they had learned the 3 branches of government and was able to name them and give a reasonble explanation of what each does. That lesson was repeated in 4th grade when they studied our state government and visited the state capital. They take government in middle school and revisit topics in high school. That is far more civics instruction than we boomers had despite all the carping about kids today not being taught it like we were.
We need fair comparisons of schools that are based on matching kids on their family backgrounds but that almost never happens.
How do public schools stack up against charters?
https://carolinaforward.org/blog/how-do-public-schools-stack-up-against-charters/