Baltimore schools are well-funded. The cost per pupil is about $14,000 per year.
Beyond that, I'd suggest that the teachers are well-trained, motivated by good intentions and work hard. They'd have to have those characteristics in order to go to work every day in that environment.
Further, the American education industry, whatever its faults, isn't trying to screw up. In fact, it's constantly trying to improve. There is no doubt in my mind that American education techniques are, for the most part, superior to ones from 100 years ago or even 20 years ago. That's the nature of a skilled profession where a lot of work is put into improvement.
So if it's not money, it's not motivation and it's not incompetence, what is it?
Maybe if your kid can't read or do math, you need to do something about it.
I don't know about you, but I didn't have access to anything remotely like this when I was learning fractions for the first time. It looks like if you want to learn, there are lots and lots of ways to do it.
You're missing the point.. now that there are cool tools like Youtube, the goal for the kids isn't to excel at the topics covered, but to be the Youtube star..
ReplyDeleteIt's rare that I disagree with you and in this case I agree that individually what you say applies but when in all the schools there isn't one student proficient in math then there is more to it. I can think of many things to blame, prog teaching methods, disallowing teachers to discipline students' bad behaviour, bad home life and so on. Democrat 'leadership' since 1967 lies behind all of it. The real puzzle is why the Baltimorons keep electing them.
ReplyDeleteFor anyone who is really curious about the Baltimore Public Schools, here is a site for information about them:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.baltimorecityschools.org/schools
A cursory look suggest that, out of the 45 high schools, while there may be 13 that perform very poorly, the others generally do pretty well [1]
In any case, this sort of thing reminds me of the fact that the "news" has a way of focusing on specific bad events to make things look worse than they are. Like, some years ago, when I met a couple who had been living in Israel for some years. They were bothered by the fact that everyone they met in the US was under the impression that Tel Aviv was some bomb-riddled murder hole, and they assured us that it was a perfectly nice city that was pretty much like other cities. I'm wondering if the current hooplah about Baltimore is similar: there are a couple of bad spots, but everyone is focusing on them to the exclusion of everything else in the city.
[1] I don't have direct experience with this, since I have always lived in rural areas where the only alternative to the public schools has been homeschooling, but anyway: I have heard that in cities where you have a lot of schools in close proximity, parents who care about their children's education will see to it that their kids go to the "good" schools. This ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the "good" schools appearing even better because they get the motivated students with supportive parents, and the "bad" schools looking worse because they are left with the uninterested kids with negligent or absent parents. And then the teachers at the "bad" schools get blamed for it. It must drive them crazy.
And then the teachers at the "bad" schools get blamed for it. It must drive them crazy.
ReplyDeleteMost of the homeschoolers I know who didn't start out in homeschooling didn't win the lotto for the "good" schools, so they were in the normal schools.
Tried to be supportive.
Were basically milked if they weren't flatly told their involvement was not wanted.
That's why they became homeschoolers.