Educational Bureaucracy gone mad!

[monster]

Words pretty much failed me on reading this article this morning

http://www.annarbor.com/news/educati...r-parents-say/

Our School district gets the highest test scores locally and a very valuable commidity for house sales. People who live outside of the district lie and give relatives' addresses just to send their kids to school here. But almost all of the schools have been designated as "Focus" schools because the gap between the top achievers and the struggling kids is "too big". So parents have been contacted about transfering to other school districts where this is not the case .........because so few of the kids are high achievers! This is a state mandate. Ummm.....???

[ZenGum]

[piercehawkeye45]

Monster, I'm curious, does your school have "fast tracks" in math and English for higher achieving students?

[Clodfobble]

Does this policy apply to the charter schools to? Or are they just asking for transfer "volunteers," so far?

[monster]

Which School? This is the whole damn district! And yes, you can do AC classes. My kids' elementary middle school is an alternate program where all kids work at their own level, so absolutely yes in that case. My kids' school is also never going to pass any of these type of assessments, but we don't care. We pay no attention to the standardized test scores either.

[monster]

CF I think it does. It's a State thing, courtesy Rick Snyder, I don't think they're asking people to transfer so much as inform them that they can as their school is clearly failing them.

[Clodfobble]

Sorry, I just read the article more closely. I thought at first that the state was moving towards mandatory transfers of good students to bad schools in order to balance the various districts. It's really just that they were insulting and wasted a ton of money, right?

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by monster

Which School? This is the whole damn district! And yes, you can do AC classes. My kids' elementary middle school is an alternate program where all kids work at their own level, so absolutely yes in that case.

I misunderstood the article when I posted earlier but I agree 100% with your kids' school. The school I grew up in has been dropping in the rankings and from what I have heard, there has been a push to drop the AC classes to keep everyone on a more equal level (for self-esteem reasons apparently), hence why I asked.

This equalizing push doesn't make any sense to me. The only reason I am in my position right now is because of those AC classes. I was good at math and not English, it doesn't make sense for me to hold back the good English students while I would be held back in math. Not every student has the same skills.

Also, self-esteem comes from improvement, not flattery. Equalizing everyone discourages competition and improvement, and people wonder why my generation has so many psychological issues when they leave the safety of high school...

We pay no attention to the standardized test scores either.

Good. Teach kids skills that will be needed in the 2030 - 2040 job market. Skills that can't be automated. Screw standardized tests.

[ZenGum]

We all know where 85% of problems come from.

In this case, it is lazy and dumb management. They want to make schools better. Good. Instead of getting to know each school and its specific challenges, they come up with a few statistical definitions which - for a perfectly normal school - probably do indicate quality (or lack of this). Then they apply that statistical definition across the board, without considering the special circumstances of each school. Things like this result.

Bad managers just want their decisions boiled down to comparing two numbers to see which one is higher. A great manager can see past that to the qualitative issues behind it. Great managers are very rare.

[monster]

But it's not, Zen. The management is actually OK. The problem is the state government who has no fucking idea and don't manage at all, but feel that applying a business financial model will sort everything out quicksharp. You don't meet the ideal we'd like to present to the public? well, then, we'll find a ho who can and you'll call her madam.