This guy's sense of entitlement is shocking. He wants his kids to just take something built by the hard work and sweat of middle class and upper middle class parents without giving anything back. Good schools are built by fundraising, paying money through high property taxes, volunteering in the classroom and the PTA, and parents who instill the importance of education i n their children. Why doesn't he work on improving his kids' own schools? Why aren't schools that are majority Latino good enough for his own kids?
Mr. Cruz-Guzman is implicitly saying that white schools are better solely because white students attend them. It's not about money, because an equally well funded school that is Latino/black majority wouldn't be good enough. So a school is solely better because of the students' race? Isn't that racist to imply that white is just better?
There are innumerable examples of majority black/Hispanic schools all over the U.S receiving more funding per capita than white schools but still performing poorly. It's not about differences in money. It's about involved parents who care about education. If people like Mr. Cruz-Guzman just worked on improving his own kids' schools instead of coveting something built by others, then all schools would be better.
34
If a state wishes to have their state-supported schools mirror their population, they can simply take the most recent state census and have school admissions match those percentages. It is very simple mathematics.
At the same time, in support of the state's taxpayers, I hope they demand that all scholarships of all types be restricted to residents of their state.
4
How come I don't see poor Asians demanding that their kids be bused to rich white districts? Because it's not a matter of money. Poor Asians put energy and efforts into making their
own schools good, and some of the best elementary schools in NYC are dominated by poor/working class Asian families, in Chinatown and Queens.
It's not just a matter of raising money through the PTA. It's simple things like making sure their kids get to school on time and do their homework. Many of these parents have language barriers as well.
Putting a poor-performing Hispanic kid into a white school isn't going to make that Hispanic kid a better student. What will happen is is that resources will need to be expended to put that Hispanic kid into a remedial class. But then the parents will cry racism and then the whole curriculum will need to be dumbed down, so that high-performing white/Asian students have to suffer. Then there will be white/Asian flight, and the poor-performing Hispanic and black families will try to follow the high-performing whites/Asians again, instead of making their own families and culture better.
You can't follow success; you have to make it for yourself, because wherever you go, there you are.
26
"'If the entire seven-county area is part of a remedy, there won’t be white flight,' Mr. Shulman said. 'Where are they going to go?'"
I will answer this: to private school. My mother went to Harvard law, and several years ago she said an informal poll was done at a reunion-- how many of you went to public school? Almost all hands were in the air. How many of you sent your children to public school? Fewer than half of the crowd raised their hands.
40% of Stanford and Harvard undergrads come from private schools (which enroll only ~10% of K-12 students). In 2003, 21 of the top 25 feeder schools to the UC system were private. The list goes on.
The reality is that parents want their children to attend schools with active Parent organizations (that give accountability), good student groups (extracurriculars for college), a focus on college (that is largely dependent on the median parent education level at the school) etc. None of these attributes will suddenly appear when their children are bussed to a different school, and so their natural inclination is to remove their child from the public school system entirely and place them in a school that meets these standards.
Bussing demographics that tend to perform well (children of well educated parents / wealthy families) to underperforming schools has never worked, as those demographics simply flee.
29
Funding schools by local property taxes violates the equal protection clause -- if has any meaning (which it does not in our age).
7
Secular trends in the overall economy show increasing income and wealth inequalities. A recent study covering rural counties in NC, showed that low income individuals in these counties had only a 1 in 4 chance of escaping into the middle or upper income tiers of the economy. With these stagnating incomes and wealth, how exactly do talented but impoverished people gain the needed skill sets to better themselves economically; except via public education?
Like many stock market analyses, too many new educational plans, and their critiques, demand immediate, undeliverable results. With elected leaders having a time horizon of at most 4 years, a measurable Return on Investment (ROI) for new educational spending must show instantaneous improvements, which often results in white noise in the data (often forcibly) being declared definite, positive inflection points by the purveyors of these costly plans.
IT and Artificial Intelligence devices will often dominate new spending initiatives because of the goodwill engulfing this sector; and its reputation for delivering instantaneous ROIs from the stock market. As a result, the student hurdle rates that these devices clear are often obfuscated and, like most educational expenditures except for good teachers, difficult to quantify. Yet, data provided by the corporate suppliers of these devices will almost without exception support such expenditures, without the need for costly longitudinal studies.
8/21 2:48p Tu Greenville NC
3
Mr Guzman's kids received a good education because he is a good parent. Rather than relying on the education system to raise his children, he took it upon himself and became his kids' best advocate. This issue has nothing to do with the amount spent per child in any school district. This is about VALUES: realizing that your child's upbringing is a priority no matter your race.
23
I have been a teacher for more than 52 years (still going strong). Most of my experience has been in NYS, but I've also taught in China and Malaysia.
My first teaching experience was in 1965, when I was a teaching assistant to Prof. Fred Luo at St. John's University. I was had been in his class in spoken Mandarin and discovered that it was a very easy language to learn to SPEAK. Prof. Luo told me that everyone could learn to speak Chinese because the grammar was very simple and the verbs never changed. If you try to teach them to write Chinese characters before they can speak, they'll drop out. He knew what he was talking about. Most of our language students are taught and tested with written tests, so they never learn to speak.
In 1968 I taught science and math in two schools in Borneo for the US Peace Corps. I taught biology and physics in a government middle school. All students had to take these subjects. They wanted to learn, and they did, because the school expected them to succeed. I also taught trigonometry and calculus in a high school. Again, ALL students had to take these subjects (which very few of our kids have the CHANCE to learn), and they all learned.
When I came back to the states I started teaching Chinese (mostly spoken) in Middle schools, high schools, community colleges and universities. Almost all did well.
We MUST stop thinking that only a few of our kids can learn important subjects. If we let them, they can. If we don't?
19
Minneapolis schools spend $18,026 per student and St. Paul schools spend $16,770 per student. Edina schools spend $13,385 per student, Minnetonka schools spend $15,978 per student and Wayzata schools spend $14,030 per student. Edina, Minnetonka and Wayzata are very affluent suburbs have highly coveted public schools and among the top schools in the state for ACT scores - approx. 25.7. This is not about affluent suburbs outspending the city schools.
25
As a public school teacher with over two decades of experience in Los Angeles, I'd like to see us follow the example of Finland, which has the most successful national school system in the Western world. Their entire system is based on equity: equality of quality throughout the entire school system.
Finland goes light on the homework and eschews the sort of standardized tests with which our country is obsessed and which in my opinion does nothing except enrich testing companies. Yet when Finnish students do take their one test, which compares them to students in other Western countries, they rule.
Hint - If we are not following the example of successful systems, then it's not about the kids. Follow the money.
26
@Vesuviano You mean you want all white schools. That is what Finnish schools are - 97% native Finns.
15
It would have been useful if the article had referred to states where lawsuits had been successful and discussed the results.
In Vermont the Supreme Court found in 1997 that funding schools through property taxes resulted in an unfair distribution of school resources. I cannot speak to the results, but reviewing that decision's effect on student performance would have been illuminating. I believe other state Supreme Courts have held similarly.
8
We fund our schools more by local taxes, so the higher income districts get better school funding. Contrast the effects where other countries use national standards for funding, and for teacher training thus students get more equality in education. And they can more easily get college degrees at low cost, or get apprenticeship training from unions leading to jobs after graduation.
Here college is a big debt creator. Unions are weak, and apprenticeships reduced. Millions of jobs are shipped overseas. Students see few role models for success, among their peers and elders.
Countries that fund their schools more equally, also have policies promoting more economic equality and security.
US school problems of racial/ethnic/national groups are related to the larger political problems of our society.
Pres Eisenhower and the Court reversed the separate but equal doctrine after many generations. Combined with other govt policies, the middle and working classes had upward mobility and increasing financial security.
Now after all these generations, various ways are found to separate students, as school problems are worsened by economic inequality. This results from our politics set up for wealthy mega donors that sets norms that don't represent the citizen majority, as it did in past generations.
The economic gap widens. All this has a negative effect that trickles down into schools segregated by economics and class. That's the real Trickle Down effect.
22
@Meredith, our delightful corporate masters prefer to hire people on H1b visas in preference to Americans with serious education debts.
12
The Supreme Court did not go far enough in
Brown vs Topeka, they should have mandated equal
funding for all schools in any state.
On the other hand it is difficult to understand why,
if there is no such thing as "race", why that concept
is being used by the Courts to force "integration".
5
"“The focus shouldn’t be ‘Let’s get the white kids into this black school,’” she said."
We don't have the luxury of "should". These kids will never get another chance at education in their youth. Let's get a diverse ( economic, racial, ethnic) group of students into ALL schools - here's the great part - the (let's say) "privileged" kids will benefit from that, too. Growing up with people from different backgrounds is the best way to end ongoing segregation and race-centered fear and distrust.
8
@Corey In China all students are Chinese and they are doing OK without integration. In Finland - same. In Nigeria no one speaks about segregation and students are doing fine. What is so unique about US schools?
6
@Corey This argument is completely wrong. In my town's public high school, the principal got on his soapbox and decried as racist the fact that the lowest academic track had disproportionate numbers of black and Hispanic students. The remedy: eliminate the lowest track altogether, compelling all the lowest achieving students to take only college prep level courses (the next highest track the school offered), making the teachers teach two different levels of instruction within the same class. Meanwhile, the lower achieving kids got to take easier exams than the true college prep kids for the same classes, but we all got to feel good about eliminating "racism" despite the obvious failure of the charade foisted on the town. And there's the out of town black student who brought a taser to 8th grade. You'd think bringing a deadly weapon to our town schools would disqualify her from attending them further, but oh no, diversity is a much more important objective than something as pedestrian as safety. So no, forcing diversity on whites doesn't always benefit them.
13
Special Education spending is eating school systems alive. The 20% who will benefit little from education are receiving 80% of the attention while school systems have to report (and over-report) on all the nothing they're doing in the name of political correctness. That said, the property tax method of funding school systems is completely unfair and needs to be abolished. All children regardless of economic circumstances need a safe school with a decent environment in which to learn...but why is it that, say, the Washington, DC school system spends more $$$/student than just about everywhere else yet its students perform poorly by any national measure?!?! So, it's not merely $/student spent but how that $ is spent. Prescription: Slash special ed funding, slash school administration (as in eliminate the overhead and reporting requirements driving administrivia), invest in basic building infrastructure and school safety, guarantee that every child has a right to at least a minimum quality public education regardless of where they live.
12
Washington DC spends about $19K per student per year - second highest in the nation - and its academic standards are abysmal. So money is not the answer. I'm just a layperson putting in my two cents but I bet if these academic "experts" ever got around to doing a study on it they would find that there would be a direct academic achievement disparity between students entering first grade who were taught to read by their parents and those who weren't. Maybe the activists should take the parents to court for malfeasance?
26
The real solution is FINANCIAL INVESTMENT.
Cut tax loopholes for major corporations and enforce the rate that these already wealthy groups are supposed to pay.
Then spend this money on all public schools so all of our kids can get a good education from teachers who have adequate resources so they can become successful members of the workforce that companies who go out of their way to dodge taxation seem to need.
11
The school funding court case in Kansas has been going on for years. The state court says the state is under funding education, the Republican dominated legislature pushes back and the cycle continues. Of the four school districts that are officially part of the lawsuit, two of them reside in counties that went for Kris Kobach. And yes, Kris Kobach will be even worse for education funding than Sam Brownback was. Republicans like to give a cost per pupil funding amount that includes KPERs retirement costs, for example, to try to position the spending as more than adequate. If you take it down to funding that hits the classrooms, we're at 1990s level funding. My last kiddo is going through high school right now, thank goodness, but I suppose I will keep voting for the candidates who support education spending even if those who will benefit from it continue to support candidates who want to cut it.
7
If, and this is a big if, we want to equalize educational outcomes for every student we must recognize that students don’t come to school with the same levels of readiness. It is no secret that students in less affluent schools are neither talked to nor read to as much or as early as those in more affluent schools, nor do they have the many kinds of diverse experiences that ready them for the rigors of modern schooling. Less wealthy families just don’t have the luxury of focusing resources on preparing children for school in the same manner as more affluent families.
If, I say, because it isn’t clear that more affluent voters view equality of opportunity with the same urgency as do less affluent citizens. In fact it may well be that affluent citizens see these barriers as a feature, not a flaw, because they might view their wealth as a tool to insure that their children have greater opportunity to succeed. Yet, we are all in this together, and the better all students are prepared, the better off we all are.
Assuming we are in agreement that every student has access to a high quality education, the obvious remedy is recognize that waiting until students get to school at age five is too late. What must first be equalized is the learning that happens from birth to school age. The focus should include wider opportunity for quality day care, certainly, but it must also seek to address parenting skills, which obviously means working not only with kids, but with parents.
If...
10
@Marshall Doris, whatever latent talents a person has are likely to be lost if not exercised when they emerge.
3
First, I really hate when someone makes this a political party issue. It isn’t.
We are supposed to be the greatest nation on the planet, but when you hear, “Last month, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that “access to literacy” was not a fundamental federal right for students in the troubled Detroit school system.” it is so easy to see that we are not even close to being great. In the wealthiest country in the world, we elect leaders from mayors, county commissioners, governors, to the presidency whose common goals are enriching themselves, corporations, and the other mega-wealthy. We deny adequate funding for public education because if you keep the low-income and middle-class and poorer and stupid they are easier to control and manipulate. We deny free college education, free healthcare to all, no-cost or low-cost housing to the homeless or those who cannot afford the rent they are forced to pay, even though many other nations provide these things and we can certainly afford it. The hundreds upon hundreds of Billions of dollars spent on continued, non-winnable, wars could easily pay for all of this, but our “leaders” have no interest in providing for our people. They scream “government handouts” convince so many that the poor don’t deserve anything and have brainwashed the vast majority of the population that we should fight each other over everything from government assistance to immigration to education and the destruction of our planet all in the name of wealth!
12
Nations that are serious about quality education don't leave it to silly states acting as playgrounds for crooked lawyers and real estate developers.
11
While funding should certainly be adequate, funding levels and results often don't correlate. In 2016-17 Hartford CT spent $19,141 per pupil for percent of students at Level 3 or higher proficiency on the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium test of 25.8 % English and 15.9% Math. Groton CT spent $15,813 per pupil for mastery results of 54.3% English and 45.2 %Math (http://ctschoolfinance.org/assets/uploads/files/2016-17-Net-Current-Expe... and http://www.courant.com/education/hc-state-smarter-balanced-test-scores-g.... Many similar comparisons can be made. While this is a simplified exmple
(details such as percent of English language learners can change the details) the overall data shows that funding and results have lower correlation than family involvement.
Family circumstances and involvement and test scores have high correlation.
Read about this ad-hoc experiment in a school in England. When poorly performing students moved in with high performing students from the same school, their test results skyrocketed.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/moving-in-with-a-families-transforms-...
6
So this guy supposedly has kids that got a good education and then sues the government that provided the education so the government has less funds because Guzman doesn’t want to drive his kids too many miles to school? He should be sued.
2
Why does everyone of dark skin keep wanting to only send their children to schools with the most white kids? Even the white kids want to go to school with other white kids. What gives?!?!?! Why does everyone want their kids going to school with white kids? Is it better? Someone explain and enlighten us.
7
I wonder if Cruz-Guzman ever recognizes his own behavior as a part of the problem. Imagine if every family sends 5 children into the public school system. It would take just four or five families to fill an entire classroom.
12
I don't understand the mindset where Hispanic and black parents believe that their children would do better by being in the presence of white (and Asian) classmates. Do they think that the white/Asian kids' study habits and culture will somehow rub off on the Hispanic and black kids? This all comes from the family.
Even if schools are funded equally, Hispanic and black parents still insist on integration. Why? Because the white/Asian schools are "better" because the test scores are better. Why are the test scores better? Because of the students who attend them and the parents of those students who stress education. Once those schools become more racially integrated, the average test scores drop and then they become worse schools.
In other words, if you took black and Hispanic kids from a failing school and just put them in a white/Asian successful school, and the white/Asian students were all forced to attend the failing school, and you didn't change anything--exact same building, same teachers, same facilities, same funding, same curriculum--suddenly the formerly successful school will become a "bad" school and vice versa.
It's like the blacks and Hispanics want to follow the success of the whites and Asians around, but wherever they go, there they are. You can't follow success, you have to make your own success.
17
@A L
Fully agree. It is not school, it is responsibility of individual student and his/her families. It looks Hispanic and black parents cannot well manage their school system / community. Is nothing to do with integration.
8
All of these problems could be solved if education NORMED all tests and curriculum, encouraging deep input from the cultures and communities each school serves. The current curriculum is male white washed all the way. For example, the rich heritage of African Americans in music, literature, language and more is only a politically correct byline in a text book. A child coming to school from an Asian community will find little information pertaining the world she knows. Female students continue to struggle to find authentic inspiration, instruction, and understanding in curriculum and assessment. White males, no matter how politically correct (Bill Gates-Common Core, G. Bush-NoChildLeftBehind) have got to get their votes, technology/text book and corporate profits somewhere else. Get them out of the classroom. Teachers must to be taken seriously. Universities need higher standards for instructing teachers that are researched based demonstrating proven results on a variety of student populations. Education needs to get rid of buzz words and latest fads, especially in technology, and focus on building long term researched, standardized, and normed ideas before implementing them into the classroom. Teachers must be given a professional salary and research opportunities as university professors receive. The good teachers, which are many, will know how to solve this complex problem and by working within the rich and diverse communities they serve. IT IS NOT A ONE SIZE FITS ALL.
7
I like when a Mexican immigrant comes in and starts suing to change our school system. Immigrants expect the best of everything I guess. Immigrants are not shy about their demands - open borders, benefits, DACA etc. In any case, funneling more money into bad schools only serves to prop up the unions who have never opposed a raise but always oppose standards. I'm just waiting for my kids to graduate before the liberal agenda flushes their school down the toilet too. Then I'll start saving up for my grand-kids private school tuition.
10
On the other extreme are schools in San Jose and Cupertino CA which are intensely competitive with predominantly Indian and Chinese American kids where football has been canceled in favor of badminton and golf and students suffer from serious academics related mental health isssues.
7
Trump’s activist conservative courts have a three part strategy to MAWA (Make America White Again):
1. Reduce/eliminate legal and illegal immigration from non-white countries
2. Reinterpret the 14th Amendment for natural born citizens to include only those whose parents were here legally, and then revoking citizenship and deporting
3. Leverage Freedom of Religion to segregate schools and services. In effect finding separate is equal
6
The question to ask is why schools with majority of Latino students or with majority of black fail. Is it because of resources limitation in these schools, I don't think so. It is culture brought by students and their parents. It is parents responsibility.
Why a community with majority of Latino or Blacks fail in managing itself.
10
Good parents create good schools. You can throw all the money in the world at the schools and if you have bad parents you have bad schools.
7
The people suing are not black and the states are not from the old Confederacy, so I don't understand.
3
Playing right into the money grubbing hands of Betsy DeVos and her corrupt, exploitative agenda. Yes, public schools desperately need a lot of work, and the administrative bureaucracy is where most room for improvement is prevented entirely.
The manner by which religious fundamentalists have choked public schooling until it yielded to their own respective demands is repulsive. Now, privatized schools are being championed over public schools by those same fundamentalists. Do the math.
13
He didn’t want his children to attend an all Latino school. Can you imagine it was white and said that? Apparently he thinks Latino students are not a good influence. Substitute his ethnicity and he would be called horribly racist.
5
@Shamrock
“I wanted to have my kids exposed to different cultures and learn from different people,” said Mr. Cruz-Guzman, who owns a small flooring company and is an immigrant from Mexico.
You obviously missed that part of the article.
4
the message to black kids that "the only way you are going to succeedis to leave this ghetto and get out of your neighborhood." has largely proved to be correct. the ghetto was not created by it's residents, it was created by the white landlords who refused to rent better housing to black people. In some places, African Americans have been able to improve the places where they were forced to settle. In other places, African American communities have failed. this should be a call to reexamine and remedy those failed communities.
5
“It sends a message to black children that the only way you’re going to succeed is to get bused to a white school, leave this ghetto and get out of your neighborhood.”
Yup.
11
@Connecticut Yankee "'It sends a message to black children that the only way you’re going to succeed is to get bused to a white school, leave this ghetto and get out of your neighborhood.'
Yup."
What's your point?
1
NJ stands as mute witness to a simple truth: money has nothing to do with performance. If it did, every student from Asbury Park (cost pressing $38K per year per kid) would be recruited by every Ivy. Curiously, this does not happen. Indeed, one of our most successful private sector educational programs -- NJ SEEDS -- exists expressly to remove promising students from the most expensive public schools in NJ and send them to private schools, at which they have a chance.
The ONLY people who benefit form additional spending are the unionized public employees who work there. Kids benefit not at all. And, as NJ's status as the nation's premier tax hell demonstrates, taxpayers CLEARLY get no loving.
The solution is akin to what Mr. CG did: let parents choose their kids' schools. Equal vouchers benefit everyone - except the teachers' unions.
So, what position do you suppose the left will advocate: that which serves kids, parents, and taxpayers, or that which serves said teachers' unions?
6
Interesting that My Cruz-Guzman wants his kids to go to integrated schools, but he doesn't want to live in an integrated neighborhood. Schools tend to be local, and student composition tends to follow neighborhood composition. My kids go to a Minnesota charter school that has a cosmopolitan look and feel. Otherwise they would be bused far, out of our neighborhood, to a low-performing school where my daughter was routinely bullied. So my experience in Minnesota is quite the opposite from Mr Cruz-Guzman's.
7
@AB The Left has always had an antipathy to the neighborhood school, even while it lives in economically gated communities. Have spent time in Falls Church, Virginia, where the locals preen about their "social justice" commitments and their fights for "American values" vis-a-vis the rest of Virginia. But try to built a house there for less than $700,000 and see just how "welcoming" they are.
5
I'm surprised there is no mention in the article of Washington state's long-running court case on this issue. The state supreme court ruled that the school system was underfunded and held the state legislature in contempt for many months until the problem was sufficiently remedied. This case seems more developed than many that the author cites here and would have been instructive about the limits of what courts can do -- even if they rule for the plaintiffs, how do states come up with the money deemed to be necessary to fix the problem?
4
We need a national definition of grades, that can be enforced by malpractice suits for false-grading:
A "B" (3.0) should mean that teachers are certifying that a student is fully prepared for the next grade or next course in the subject matter. (An "A" would be any mastery above this level.)
A "C" (2.0) should mean that teachers are certifying that a student is minimally but sufficiently prepared for the next grade or the next course in the subject matter.
A "D" (1.0) simply would mean that the student deserves credit but is not prepared for the next grade or course that builds on this one. ("F" is below this level.)
Then these national definitions should be enforceable. "Social promotion" would come to an end.
I taught for nearly 20 years. (I now work as an attorney.) My worst-prepared 10th grade class had 30% of the entering students testing at a 3rd grade level or below in reading comprehension.
Education is like exercise. It takes work. Others cannot do it for you. Good teachers are good coaches who provide lessons at the right level to challenge, but not demoralize, students, and get them working. There is no substitute for work.
All "reformers" look for the "Magic Bullet," but the key is work, and the other key is memory. The 1960's "attack on memory" increased educational disparities because "smart" students memorize "naturally," while lesser students must drill to master foundational facts and concepts, or 10th graders remain 3rd graders forever.
17
I wish both policymakers and journalists would expand their way of thinking regarding student learning and where they go to school. Throwing money at the situation and suing has done little to make things better--decades of evidence suggest that these things alone will result in little to no change. One topic that has been continually ignored, despite studies showing strong evidence that it is an important factor, is the role and contribution of parental views towards education.
No amount of money or suing is going to make things better if (1) parents don't value education and (2) kids face harsh living conditions that aren't conducive to learning (e.g., being hungry, living in unsafe neighborhoods, etc.). If the parents don't change their attitudes towards education, there's nothing the school system can do and they certainly shouldn't be sued for it.
Also, the NYT also ran an article today saying that black patients might do better health wise by only seeing black doctors. There have been articles in the past that have suggested black students will do better in school if they were taught by black teachers. It doesn't make sense to say that segregation is bad but not in these other cases. You either believe in full integration or you don't but no one should be able to cherry pick.
9
It can't be about race. Parents who care about their children's education will make sure that their kids go to school where learning is honored. Children who don't allow learning to take place need to be removed from the classroom. Stop focusing on the 'rights' of children who disrupt the classroom and start focusing on the students who want to learn.
Families of all races who care about education want their children to be in schools with students who value education. Middle class families of all races will move their children away from schools that allow learning to be constantly disrupted.
19
A great many people in our country care deeply about education and would like their children to receive quality instruction. The issue is that they are unable to do so if their school district is low income. Being able to move to a better school district is a luxury, not a choice for many. This leads to a cycle of children of low income parents getting poor education and the cycle continues.
Our country does not value education otherwise, they would pay their teachers far better and invest in quality supplies in every school. A much higher salary would make the jobs more competitive and attract individuals who currently choose careers that are higher paying. This, in turn, would make schools a better place for learning.
1
Everyone says that teachers are the most valuable resource that schools have, but no one puts their money where their mouth is. In the last school year we saw teachers striking and protesting for an extra $10 K to be added to abysmally low salaries. Most of those teachers were working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet, not to have vacations or decent cars. Yes, to the average American worker a $10K raise sounds very substantial (although I know it's laughable to many people who work in finance and got hundreds of thousands of dollars in one tax cut), but at those very low salaries all it means is that MAYBE those teachers can just work one job instead of two or more. But, it's a start.
Wake up, America. You get what you pay for. Teachers, Teach for America interns and teachers from similar programs almost never stay in education because, as I've heard them say a thousand times: "Teaching is way too much work for WAY too little pay."
Reporting on last year's teachers strikes focussed on the shockingly low salaries of teachers in certain parts of the country. Salaries in the Northeast and California were held up as an example, which made me laugh. The cost of living is a lot higher in those regions, so those salaries are really not good. Another try-not-to-laugh-or-cry point is: "But after 25 years you could be making $70K!" Salary is a major way of showing respect and improving commitment. But Americans give tax cuts to Wall Street and lawyers.
19
Until social attitudes about childhood education leave the industrial era's educational objectives behind, and teacher's are paid much more, schools will remain a mismanaged, harmful, social setting fueled by alienation and confusion. Kids can tell when they are being manufactured through an educational process slanted toward industry, not humanity.
5
Alabama had a judge rule to try to equalize public school funding over the state. I have never known for sure why the ruling was never followed.
1
"greater fairness in education". Yes, that's a good goal. How about a full court press to get that done?
3
I find the outcome of the Michigan case shocking. Access to literacy may not be a specific law but don't the states and the country want to create literate informed citizens? Unbelievable. Public schools are just not worth it and private schools are no better. If I had children, I'd homeschool them.
1
The most cost effective solution to our education problems would be to raise the level of expectations, from teachers, students, parents and the overhead management. Focus on the basics and demand excellence. No more exceptions for bad behavior to massage the statistics, a la Obama. No more worthless testing that only transfers needed money to corporations. Let's get back to the 3R's and help these kids have a better future.
6
The children should be put in classrooms with others of their age cohort. Instead of a teacher lecturing or attempting to explain concepts s/he is clueless about, give the children a lesson on a computer. Reading/literature, math, history, geography, etc.
Let each child study the day's lesson and then, in the last five minutes of the class period take a little test on the lesson. If s/he passes the test, the next day s/he gets the next lesson. If s/he fails the test, the next day s/he studies the same lesson. S/he stays on the lesson until s/he passes the test and can more on.
Some of the children in the room will be ahead of or behind others. No problem. Let them learn at their own pace. No interference from a teacher. Each child is responsible for her/his own advancement.
This continues through age 18. At that point, the school may hold a graduation. The children have self-selected the future. Some may go to a traditional college. Some may go to a trade school. Some may go into the military. Some may go to work. Etc.
Don't make them rely on a teacher. Don't hold them back because others in the age cohort are better at history. Don't push them ahead because they are better at math. Make them responsible for themselves.
3
Underfunding education?
Total U.S. spending averaged $16,268 per student is 51% more than the average for all of the countries included in the OECD study.
Over 30 years, federal spending on education has grown by 375 percent with consistently declining performance results -
the U.S. scores below average in math among the 34 OECD countries. It scores close to the OECD average in science and reading.
I don't think funding is the problem.
12
I work in the schools and like most here, have ideas for improvement:
1. Quit diverting money to charters, we're losing our best students to charter schools and these students had huge influences on the lower performing students, serving as role models to the lower students. (In turn, our charters do not have higher test scores than the regular schools.)
2. You can't enforce this, but parental involvement is key and probably should be priority one. I work at a poor school and the kids that perform best aren't the richest, they have the most engaged parents. I can think of the single-parent or two-parent/blue collar families, whose parents really get after it in homework, reading to their kid, showing up to teacher meetings, and giving a da-n. Their kids succeed.
8
@TRS
The problem with expecting the "best students" to serve "as role models" for the "lower students" is that it's not the JOB of the best to do anything for the worst.
They're not being paid to be role models. They're students. They deserve teachers who are able to challenge THEM, move them along at THEIR pace, not at the pace of the slowest.
Ever notice how teachers and parents and administrators dislike gifted students and do whatever they can to impede their progress? How few, if any, resources are made available to help gifted students. What prejudice and jealousy stand in their way.
17
@Pecan I would agree with what you wrote and it's not the job of students to be role models, but they sometimes are just by being there. I've worked extensively with gifted students and there does need to be more help for them. These fly-by-night charter schools -- most in our district are here one year, gone the next -- aren't the answer, in my opinion. They also pay their teachers horrifically, thus getting a sub-standard faculty. I think the answer is to properly fund the current public schools -- and yes, add more gifted programs -- instead of diverting public money all over the place. Ever wonder why Major League Baseball doesn't have 95 teams? They don't like talent dilution either.
3
I have often wondered how people in states with poor schools regard public education as anything other than a fundamental right.
Why aren't schools in Alabama as good as those in Connecticut or Oregon? It is clearly a question of due process and equal protection.
Instead, we have great swaths of states that refuse to raise the revenues to properly educate their children.
How is this fair?
10
The notion that you can protect your kid from conflict is noble but self-defeating. The kid is going to grow up and go I to the bigger world of work someday and it's better to prepare them for the challenges earlier than later.
As for funding: of course funding rises. There is something called population growth and price inflation. The question is funding even matching that rising demand? Even if the funding matched, if your system was underperforming before, keeping funding at the same level GUARANTEES failure to meet the realities of the 21st century.
4
Want your kids to get a good primary public school education? Move to Connecticut, New York or New Jersey. Per student annual funding in these states is three times higher than the rest of the country. This keeps children in these states in a high position on the Gatsby Curve. Alternatively, move to a town with high value real estate. High taxes = high school funding. The wealth gap and Gini index are tightly coupled.A national common core curriculum is a good idea but does not work when there are vast differences is school funding and thus, quality of instruction.
11
Correction:three times higher than the lowest funding states. The national average is $11, 450/per student/year.
Using the courts to fight for better schools is nothing new. In 1997 the Ohio supreme court declared in DeRolph v. State that Ohio's system of funding schools through property taxes led to inequality and was therefore unconstitutional. In 2009, after 12 years of inaction by Ohio's governors and legislators, the court surrendered jurisdiction. So while I applaud these states and communities for trying to improve their childrens' education through judicial action, I would warn against putting too much faith in the courts to fix the problem of inequality in America's schools.
8
MS PRINGLE, perhaps inadvertently, got right to the point. It takes extraordinary teachers and financial support to overcome a culture of academic non achievement , and it may well be cost effective to bus students than try to change an entire neighborhood with few two parent families and the level of parental/sibling/peer where academic achievement is low and has been low for generations. We Need honesty and commitment from all sides if we are to address the financial, pedagogic and yes cultural and community aspects of this problem. I would submit Children will have plenty for opportunity for "self affirmation" once they get the education the deserve.
2
School desegregation is no panacea. Countless studies have shown that doing so does little to improve test scores. Instead, what is known to improve test scores is parental involvement, which Mr. Cruz-Guzman has shown, and quality instructors. Neither one will provide success unless there is a atmosphere of learning embedded into the school culture. Schools that allow disruptive behavior or chronic truancy will not provide an environment that can fuel success.
If people want meaningful changes in their schools, hire quality instructors and pay them well. Teaching doesn't necessarily require a degree in education. Instead, as many other countries have discovered, hiring quality educators requires a degree in their chosen area of instruction and couple this with a lengthy mentoring program.
https://www.economist.com/international/2007/10/18/how-to-be-top
15
@Mike The priority of education in the US is evident in its teacher salaries.
3
Students in the US, including those in college, waste an incredible 3 months of summer, a relic of our bygone agrarian heritage. In order to remain competitive on the world stage, our society has to figure out how to make those 3 months more productive. Sure, some kids go to coding camp. But most parents can't afford that luxury. Some college kids do productive internships..but most probably don't.
I've read research that at the k-12 level, it's not during the school year that kids in different systems fall behind, but rather during the summers. Our thinking on how we use the school year needs to change dramatically.
If funding is the deck chairs, maybe we need to get a new ship.
7
@Scott Cole I'm a teacher and I can tell you that summer is 2 months long now, not 3.
6
@Scott Cole
Some kids work summer jobs.
1
Early childhood education, I.e. intervening before school age so that children don’t start 1st grade with a learning handicap, is a documented cost-effective approach. It seems especially apt when parents or other caregivers are either incapable or absent. Any serious approach must give it serious consideration.
15
Unfortunately those gains evaporate if not followed up in succeeding years with high standards, quality teaching and parental involvement.
2
Counterarguments against increasing school diversity and funding point to the oft-quoted statistic about increasing school funding in the U.S. over time. This kind of reasoning fails to account for basic economics -- if one's salary increases but fails to keep up with rent changes, one is still underfunded. Furthermore-- it ignores the palpable reality on the ground for many teachers-- which includes having to self-fund supplies in the midst of often non-functioning or crumbling school infrastructure.
Lastly-- anything that increases access to services and support is likely to counter the impacts clearly present in research studying the socio-emotional impacts of poverty. It is also the right thing to do.
10
In schools where funding and educational performance are issues, here is a compromise that should be considered:
Funding will be provided while at the same time the school year will be gradually extended until these schools catch up.
If extended school years are not enough, or if the personnel balk, then it's time to consider closing or decertifying the school.
3
There are kids at highly funded schools in places like NJ who can't read.
And my question--maybe simplistic to some--is, why?
How can kids sit in classrooms for hours every day. For weeks, months, years, and not be able to read?
Is it because they have lousy teachers year after year? Do they need smaller reading groups based on performance, so the kids struggling the hardest get more concentrated attention?
Do they need volunteers to come in and sit with the kids for some time every day, one on one, to practice? Do some kids need phonics? Do they need to apply what's used in adult literacy programs, where someone not able to read for decades can finally do so?
That's what I would focus on.
22
Overcrowded classrooms can be causes of many of those problems. With up to 29 kids per class up to 6th grade and unlimited class sizes in 7-12, at least in my state, a single teacher is unable to give struggling students individual attention. Schools with more funding who apply it well can afford smaller class sizes so teachers have more time per student, dedicated school psychologists who help address behavioral problems, reading specialists and other aids who can work one-on-one with struggling students and introduce a variety of different teaching techniques that may not be available to classroom teachers because of time or space constraints, etc. Additionally, wealthier districts often have parents who have the resources to volunteer their own time in the classroom or pay for tutors when their kids are struggling even when the school system can’t or won’t, which isn’t something school funding can fix but is an often overlooked benefit associated with parental wealth.
7
@Talbot. It isn't that simple. My daughter struggled to learn to read. Even to recognize letters of the alphabet, though she excelled at everything else. We had to work our tails off to get get the help she needed, for her severe dyslexia. Hours and hours of specialized, one on one instruction that we paid for it if pocket. She would have never learned to read well with standard instruction or tutoring. Phonics doesn't work if your brain isn't wired in a certain way. I've spoken with adult dyslexics who barely read, learning mainly how to fake it. The issue fundamentally is that we do not want to pay what it takes for many of these kids. Letting them fail keeps our taxes lower.
2
@Lauren When I was learning to read, there were 30 children in my class. We were well behaved and co-operated so the teacher could split the class up into small groups by instructional need and give that personal attention while we worked in our zone of proximal development. No one was socially promoted. All were taught to use the dictionary, and every grade school classroom had enough dictionaries for each student.
Now students are placed by age, socially promoted, and the teacher does a one-size-fits-few lesson which is not differentiated...the result is most of the class goes to remedial instruction with a 'reading coach' or a 'specialist' and a few read at home with a parent or are privately tutored at their level of instructional need. And those dictionaries...one teacher asked for them on the school supply list, the rest had none. No instruction given.
You don't get to Carnegie Hall by taking lessons you don't need, and you sure don't get there without learning to practice correctly.
Education is one area where I partially disagree with my party - Republicans. If we're going to say that every child has an opportunity to succeed, then we've got to address the reification of socioeconomic inequity through property-tax based school funding.
Having said that, it's not just money. I was raised in NJ where for decades, the state was compelled by the courts (called Abbot cases) to give so much money to poor districts that some now outspend (per pupil) any school district in the country. Yet, graduation rates have barely budged and are often below 50%. Spending must be joined by reforms - school choice, longer school day and year, tenure reform, etc. But that will not work as long as Dems are beholden to the teachers unions.
It's also unclear that the answer is more racial integration. I'll concede that the greatest gains we've seen in NAEP scores were during the 1970's with forced integration through busing. But more recently, the NAEP has studied the connection between integration and academic performance. "Achievement for both Black and White students was
lower in the highest Black student density schools than in the lowest density schools. However, the achievement gap was not different."
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/studies/pdf/school_composi...
We know what it takes to provide effective education for poor students. Now, it's just a question if we have the political will to deliver it.
9
@Princeton 2015, as a fellow New Jerseyan and former NJ Department of Education employee, I couldn't agree more. Before the famous NJ state school funding court case, Abbott v. Burke, spending in wealthy suburbs was significantly higher than in the poorer cities. Now the reverse is true, yet performance has not increased in these poor districts. In one set of comparison districts in the court case, Cherry Hill and nearby Camden, the two districts spent $13,448 per pupil vs. $21,789 in 2016. And, these figures don't include pensions, transportation, construction, etc. If you include those expenses, per pup costs rise up to over $31k in Camden and $19k in Cherry Hill. During this time, teacher salary and benefits in all NJ districts have skyrocketed compared to the private sector, adding to the high costs. We need to find solutions that work and must recognize that the public schools can't do it all in the face of large concentrations of broken families that maybe have not learned the values it takes to succeed. Showing up on time with homework completed is not something money can buy.
8
A lawsuit? We had one in South Carolina that took decades for the courts to decide, and the result was...nothing. Good luck.
8
A cautionary tale: In my school district races are not evenly distributed among the elementary schools. However, the budgets and teacher quality are consistent. The white kids at the black majority school do as well as the white kids at the white majority school, and the black kids at the black majority school do as well as the black kids at the white majority school. However, the black kids don't do much better than the state average for blacks, while the white kids excel. In a neighboring blue-collar town, there is less of a gap, and the black kids and white kids are uniformly mediocre. However, the Asian kids excel. Integration is not a panacea, and outside-school factors such as socioeconomics, family and culture matter a tremendous amount. The school systems shouldn't be held accountable to the extent that they are for equality of opportunity. I'm not arguing that nothing should be done, but rather that we shouldn't dump on the schools.
53
@JS This is really interesting. A link to the source of the data would be nice in comments like this.
2
PG County in Maryland has a majority African-American population and African-Americans control the county council and school board, and have for years. It receives funding from the state under a formula that grants it a higher share per-student than all but one other jurisdiction (and the long-time president of the overwhelmingly Democratic state senate hails from the county, and exercises enormous political power over the legislature). Yet with all that, it has the second-worst school system in the state, behind only Baltimore City. You could drown the system in state money, and it would still be terrible.
34
HEh dont pull your punches Stratman - Baltimore is the only more generously funded district and the only district with less achievement. Money is only a starting point, and for PGC and Baltimore City, must implement a new personnel system in order to raise their achievement, one that probably will require even more money, but spent wisely on ONLY excellent teachers.
5
Better schools
Two things...
1. Eliminate teacher tenure
2. Increase teacher salaries
6
@Luciano: I am sorry, but you have no experience with schools to repeat the canard that tenure is a problem. It only requires due process before firing. If an administrator has his or her facts straight, it is easy to fire a teacher.
1
@Luciano
These are simplistic proposals to complex problems.
You also have to address:
-an institutionalized conservative mindset against taxation.
-Addressing how schools are funded: if by the county or city, then poorer areas can simply never raise salaries.
-Addressing the rise of societal instability, such as divorce, chaotic family life, drug and alcohol abuse, and student emotional issues.
One of the biggest divides? Summer. This is where disadvantaged kids fall behind.
1
Better schools
1. Smaller class sizes
2. Schools devoted to academics, not sports.
3. Parents and guardians ( all of society, really) who hold education and the educated in the same esteem they hold sports and athletes
6
If we want better academic results, schools need more funding AND we need to extricate schools from all the wasted education money spent on sports teams and facilities. Football does nothing to prepare them for academic rigors of college and the new global economy. They spend more time practicing on the athletic field and weight room than they do on their studies....no wonder we're a nation of increasing numbers of ignorant misfits.
41
Students who participate in extracurricular activities (sports, arts, music, drama, clubs, and work) are better prepared for college through the extra learning opportunities they get. They usually develop more discipline, greater self-leadership, and interpersonal skills through being part of those groups.
7
There’s is a growing trend in schools for the arts and music. Kids are demanding it.
3
@cttCDGA Extracurricular activities also keep some kids in school, when they otherwise might drop out.
2
Underfunding education to keep taxes low is one of the greatest crimes against Americans ever perpetrated by politicians in this country. It is graft in a different way, and it is disgusting that citizens need to bring law suits against their own state governments to secure good schools. But more power to them and hopefully better educated voters will someday rebalance our tax/spend priorities.
28
A couple decades ago, when politicians told us approving state lotteries would solve school funding issues, we believed them. The same argument was made for casino gambling. Where’s the money going, football?
The local school board has become a place where aspiring partisan politicians can begin their careers. Agendas are more important than education.
I applaud the family at the beginning of the story for fighting to get their children quality educations despite systemic barriers.
11
Back in the 1970’s, my younger brother was struggling in school. Turns out he is dyslexic, and the school system told my mother he was retarded and would never read. My mom had him tested and it turns out he has an IQ of 146. Then my mother sued our school system and the state of NJ over the lack of education for children with learning disabilities, and now all schools in the state must have special education programs. My brother went on to college and university and today is a research scientist in California.
Sometimes, a lawsuit is just the right thing.
64
Interesting that the NYT would leave out the fact that the elected school board in St. Paul are Democrats - as is the political make up of the other schools being sued. If the boards were made up of Republicans we would be seeing over-the-top outrage and charges of racism. Geez.
9
True, when it comes to self interests there ultimately is no party difference.
2
None of this, of course, will make any difference.
The only “roadmap” for which this will be the basis is the one where affluent whites families decide to abandon public education and send their kids to private schools in Minnesota.
13
Hard to believe circa 2018 people insist upon having five children. I don't doubt each and every one will become fine individuals who contribute to the economy, yet isn't it time to wake up.
34
@Bess Perhaps those families with five children include a parent employed by Hobby Lobby.
1
Will families of "means" be forced to send their children to these newly integrated schools or will they be able to take their kids to what they consider "better" schools and defeat this whole purpose?
7
This is disgusting. If there is anything that is a pure legislative issue, it is this. People should not be bypassing the legislature in hope of finding an activist judge to legislate their priority. If the voters of a state don’t vote for more funding, then that’s their prerogative, not some unelected judge. This is exactly why we need more conservative judges who will refuse to make law.
6
When has this worked? Honest question.
Kansas city Missouri is the famous case against literary unlimited funding. And everywhere it's tried is the case against busing. Maybe you can physically force white children wherever you want them. Is that the innovation here? At what level of coercion would that become a kind of reverse ethnic cleansing? Also I can't think of a more racist position. You are saying minority children are incapable of learning by themselves. Not even the KKK would be that harsh.
13
@Brian
Whether you are right or wrong, I think that we still have to address the decision in Brown v. Board of Education which found that separate but equal is never equal and required, at least in the case before it, integration as the remedy for the inferior schools which minority students attended. Of course Brown has been applied to many subsequent cases (mostly in the 1960's and 1970's) and still constitutes precedent that courts must follow.
@Schneiderman Brown (which was well decided) dealt with de jure segregation not de facto segregation. And the cases being litigated right now depend on state constitutions education clauses not the federal constitution. So, no integration is not the mandated answer.
@Brian, you cannot separate the historical connection between economics and race. The mixing is meant to deal with the economic side of things (as clumsy the approach may be).
If you have an alternative solution, let's hear it. But reality is that most people groan about things but have no alternative either.
Differences in children's education outcome by and large reflects their home environment, teachers are the same everwhere. If the majority of a school's children come from single parent families, the school will perform poorly no matter what the resources given. The so called segregation happens because there is a flight away from these poorly performing schools by parents who can afford it. You may desegregate the schools all you want but the poor performance is going to follow these students.
20
@Rahul If you have any data to support any of the many assertions you've made, I would appreciate a link. Your credentials/experience to make such statements would be welcome, as well. Or, as I expect, does n=1?
1
School reputations are primarily the artifact of privilege – the greater the privilege, the better the reputation of the schools in the neighborhood – the deeper the poverty, the worse the school’s reputation. This demographic sorting is nothing new. It’s just worse now. And reputation plays an ongoing role in deepening the chasm of inequity. Folks with capital and credit buy homes in neighborhoods with “good” schools. Real estate listings in communities of privilege almost always brag about the schools. This desirability factor drives up prices, thereby hastening America’s re-segregation by race and class. Higher prices mean higher property values, which yield higher property taxes, which are still the primary funding mechanism for public schools. So not only do the schools have more resources, they have families in the community who are able to provide a variety of enriching experiences for their children.
People think their communities have "good" schools. The truth is that their schools have "good" communities. Until and unless we address economic injustice, we will continue fighting this battle. These lawsuits are important and can help, but the problems will persist as long as we have social injustice.
And by the way, NYT, why quote Eric Hanushek from Hoover? Economists know nothing about education and the conservative think tank's value added/merit pay for teachers argument has been fully discredited.
44
@Barking Doggerel
I think that you are right but this will take a while. The Civil Rights movement has been actively engaged since the 1940's and we are still far from where we need to be. That's about 70 years. This educational equality issue is going to be an even longer slog because the entrenched interests of home ownership and the desire to provide the best for their children understandably make people resistant to change. If we are lucky, we could see material changes on a national basis by the turn of the next century.
Years ago, a college classmate asked me to attend a brainstorming session held by the NAACP LDF to discuss new ideas for making the organization more relevant in the modern civil rights environment. I suggested that it pursue litigation against under-performing school systems to attack union protections for teachers and administrators that impede educational attainment and misallocate public resources from children to adults. The polite but very clear reaction was that I was suggesting that the NAACP bite the hand that feeds it. The teachers' unions -- pre-Janus -- were a key pillar of progressive funding and political muscle.
There are probably some bases for a new wave of school integration suits, but the post-Brown experience tells us that forced integration works only until parents can find new ways to direct their children into successful schools. It is not a racist act to fight to get your child into the best situation possible.
As a Black American, I would much rather see resources directed toward strategies -- including litigation, if necessary -- to improve schools, irrespective of their racial composition. There are just too many examples of experimental schools achieving stellar results with minority and underprivileged children to keep allowing unions and other self-interested forces to impede progress.
6
Sad that suing is the only way to get schools and districts to give equal access to education. Most overhauls in any organization are due to lawsuits or threat thereof. If only we started looking out for the common good and could get there ourselves...
1
Parents, teach your children well. When I poll my college students asking who has had the biggest influence in their academic lives, the A students will invariably answer their parents. No amount of money thown at the school system can overcome the power of a homebase that instills the will to learn.
57
Why are we so quick to allow unelected judges to decide such things? I hate that the 'Super legislators' on the bench, with no accountability, and no responsibility to balance taxes and spending across multiple categories, are dictating public affairs. This smacks of dictatorship. It is also smacks of dictatorship on just who brings these suits. By bringing the suit, if they win, the plaintiffs are the citizens dictating policy, not the legislators elected by the people. A regular citizen is at the mercy of whatever 'remedy' the court imposes on the people. I find all this profoundly undemocratic.
4
@shermanmcmurray Judges in nearly all states are in fact elected. Only judges on the federal bench are appointed, and that appointment process is in the US Constitution.
I understand there is another kind of test case also currently in the court system. A person is suing a state because the state allowed his parents to home school him, accrediting with the curriculum his parents used, and he is smart enough as a young adult to recognise that he received no education at all.
That’s the case I want to see succeed.
22
Eliminate provincial school boards and centralize funding so access to quality education is not dependent on where you live. Reintegrate vocational education and take away the power of testing companies to dictate the school year. That’s a start....
10
In 1997 the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio ruled in DeRolph v. State that the state’s method of funding public schools, which relies primarily upon property taxes, violated the state constitution. Republican governor, and later US Senator, George Voinovich condemned the decision. The Republican controlled General Assembly refused to address the issue.
Eventually the Supreme Court of Ohio threw in the towel and relinquished jurisdiction over the case. Ohio never changed its method of funding schools primarily through property taxes leaving an ever widening disparity in funding between wealthier school districts and those suffering in economic despair.
With guidance from the office of now governor and faux-moderate Republican John Kasich taxes from school districts where citizens decided to raise their own taxes to suppor the children in their communities and distribute it to poorer districts and the worst charter schools in the nation.
That legislatures can refuse to act on the lawful decisions of courts and executives can refuse to enforce the laws has been clearly demonstrated here; there is only one remedy and that is not going to court but going to the polls.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeRolph_v._State
1
In the meantime the NYT is claiming that people receive the best medical care from doctors of the same ethnicity. So hospitals should be segregated and schools integrated?
Courts are not competent to set educational policy because "quality" is a fuzzy concept and because they are not competent administrators; their skill is deciding questions of law, not of policy.
Nothing can change the fact that people usually choose to live near people like themselves. If someone wishes to live elsewhere, the open housing law guarantees him the right to buy or rent there. What is being demanded in a suit like this? That the government assign housing? That thousands of children be involuntarily bused many miles to achieve someone's ideal of "racial balance"?
15
Read Hanushek comments again. The truth sneaks into the piece that the most important controllable factor in education quality is teacher quality. Sue the schools for contractual conditions of employment that are an obstacle to selecting and de-selecting teachers to obtain the best possible teaching workforce.
1
We expect far too much from our public schools. We want them to solve a host of social problems -- residential segregation, income inequality, low social mobility, etc. We expect our teachers to teach, and also to do to the work of social workers, psychiatrists, career trainers, guidance counselors, and more. And of course, we don't want to pay the full cost of any of it.
I agree that social problems like residential segregation demand a solution. But I don't see how forcing your local school district into costly legal proceedings will fix it. Let the teachers teach, and focus on the politicians who actually have the power to solve systemic problems.
13
Want to improve our entire public education system in one fell swoop? Stop funding via property taxes and instead fund each student the same via federal tax dollars.
Building repairs etc should come from a separate federal fund and be doled out as needed to maintain same quality of educational infrastructure across the nation.
Lots of countries fund all their public students equally. The United States is as backward in our education system as we are in our healthcare system and more taxpayers are discovering this every week.
Time to demand change.
35
@KKnorp
The US already spends more to educate each student that the vast majority of OECD countries. Money is not the problem.
3
The public schools are an exact reflection of the state of the nation--mainly characterized by vast numbers of poverty stricken families who are just barely getting from one day to the next; woefully lacking enough help from the government. These are the children walking in the public school doors, and they are usually well-educated but have two strikes against them.
Despite highlighting nearly 15 articles on school segregation this summer, this progressive overreach is going to produce a backlash (as it always does).
Parents will NEVER accept substandard education for their kids no matter the good intentions. To demonize this maternal instinct as a tool of oppression will be resented and people will vote accordingly.
36
Achieving the best education outcomes for all of our children shouldn't even require lawsuits and it is depressing that patriotism in this country is more about winning wars than uplifting all American children to reach their potential.
Patriotism only works when it connects a nation into the idea that we are all one tribe and that our success is based on the success of all of our people.
In the long term, this is the only path to American greatness- spiritually and economically.
Parents will always have some desire to game the system to the advantage of their own children, but we can't allow this instinct to continue the 3 tiered education system we have now with poor children at the bottom, the middle in the middle and the children of the very wealthy at the top (who's private schools often hold back students one year so they eventually do better on college entry tests).
7
There is a simple piece of the solution - stop siphoning off funding from publics into charter schools. This is self-evident. The correlation with the failure of publics with the increase of publicly funded charters is telling.
13
Instead of blaming teachers, schools, administrators and states place the responsibility squarely on those that have the largest impact on children. Their parents.
Parents need to take an interest in their child’s educatuon for them to suceeed.
36
@Vance Kojiro
And if parent(s) do not take an interest in their child's education does that mean that the child should necessarily suffer the consequences?
1
All of the evidence is that the prime predictor of student performance is the socio-economic class of the parents. Wealthy parents tend to be better educated and believe that education is crucial for their children's success. It is not race, but wealth that determines outcomes.
Kids from both wealthy and poor homes see what their parents do for work and assume that those occupations will be right for them. Both see the academic achievements of their parents and use that as a model.
We have always tried to substitute race and ethnicity for wealth. While certain demographics tend to be more or less wealthy, there are always plenty of people that are substantially richer or poorer than their group. Placing a poor African-American child next to a Caucasian child that is equally poor will make no difference. Sending both of them to a school in a wealthy community will improve school performance, but still the results will not equal the children of the wealthy. The rich folks expectations for their children and the resources they have to add to formal schooling make all the difference.
17
Funding is important, but the best solution I can see is to hold parents accountable for their children's academic success. If you can charge parents for their kids' truancy, why can't you fine them when their kid fails kindergarten? Of course, schools would actually have to be able to retain kindergarteners (and all the other grades) without fear of losing all funding. I was a teacher (very briefly) in a rural middle school, and most of my students should not have been allowed to move on to high school (because they were working at maybe a 5th grade level), but retention was basically not an option.
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The problem is not revenue. Take a look online at the 2018-2019 Newark, New Jersey school-district budget. Well over $1 billion in revenue (80% from the state and federal governments) spread over some 50,000 students. Then scroll down and read by name how many administrators who never see the inside of a classroom are on the payroll. Name after name with six-figure base salaries and a work year of all of 260 days. With all that, maybe we'd actually see some decent results if the students consistently showed up to class. In these urban school districts, 70% attendance is a good day.
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The biggest predictor of SAT scores is household $income. Why? That defines the type of neighborhood a family lives in and the $funding for the local schools. As the gap in $income levels has grown in the past 40 years, the differences in school funding has also expanded. Better teachers, principals and books are a function of how neighborhood schools are funded. Great legal initiative here to get more fairly funded schools for all kids.
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@Bascom Hill I agree with much of what you say but high income is also correlated with highly educated parents. We literally have hundreds of books in our house, read for pleasure all the time, watch high quality nerdy TV, use engineering principles and calculations for house hold projects and to answer the kid's questions, use a high level of grammar and vocabulary in daily conversation - the list goes on. Of course our child is going to do better on the SAT. So money is important but how do we compensate for all the things our kid gets each and every day that other children don't?
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Local control means politicians win. In my district there is no honors or AP level, all the money goes to ENL, security, and remedial. Most remedial is transfer students from countries that didn't offer education to poor children. The local area doesn't have enough business to fund the educational and medical and security needs of all the transplants. We need the state to fund each student by need, and we need classes for students who aren't first gen.
8
Two easy ways to get better schools are:
1. Stop shifting funds for public schools to non-public school charters
2. Stop shifting funds for public schools to private schools via vouchers
3 Support vocational education - college is not for everyone.
After that, you have to deal with poverty and the education levels of the parents. Schools can't fix many of these fundamental problems. Schools can help, but unless a child is raised in a family or community that repeatedly tells them that education comes first, all the other actions will be muted.
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There is no shifting of funds to charter schools or vouchers. Why not give parents and children a choice? Each child excels in different types of environments. Public schools have been burdened with having to cater to all children, thereby bringing down their ability to meet the needs of any one child. As our population becomes more heterogeneous, the need
1
Charter schools are public schools. They report to the public schools’ Superintendent and Board of Education. They follow the same legal constraints as other schools, but do not use the administrative infrastructure. They only siphon money away to the extent they remove students from state administered schools. Typically, numerous NYT commenters cannot grasp these concepts.
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In general, American education is capable of and often provides innovative, high quality education. Where we fall down is in providing equity in access to education. So these plaintiffs are trying to push the system toward equity which is laudable. But unfortunately, it is still tinkering at the margins of the problem. To achieve real equity, and to do so in a more market-based way, would require a radical solution: unfettered school choice where anyone can go to any school they want at taxpayer expense - but all schools are public schools. In other words, eliminate private schools and require every child to attend a public school. In a New York minute, every public school would have to improve or perish. In 10 or 15 years, we would have both quality and equity. And our arguments about paying teachers and adequately funding schools? So last year. Can’t be done? Ask Finland. They do this and their students consistently score at or near the top of the heap. And the best part is, universal public schools would, like the armed forces has to a great extent for those in its ranks, give us a common culture and better level differences in race, ethnicity, and economic advantage. See, instead of the privileged and the underprivileged, we’d all be Americans. Still opinionated, but better informed about what unites us.
1
That’s an easy solution for someone from Connecticut to have. In states like WV, or worse states in the West like Wyoming and Montana, the population density is inherently too low to allow for true school choice that would function as a free market of sorts. Some counties here only have enough students to support a single high school that graduates fewer than 100 students per year. How can a family choose a different school when there’s not a school close enough to be a realistic competitor? And how would you suggest transporting students to the school of their choice in places that don’t even have a functioning public transit system because there aren’t enough people to support one? At that point, being able to choose a school rather than going to the closest school becomes an option only for the wealthy with the resources to transport their kids themselves, which ultimately will exacerbate the problem. Such a system could work in a place like Connecticut that is more densely populated and has at least some places with public transit systems already built that could be modified to facilitate this type of system, but there are large swaths of the country where it’s just not a reasonable solution.
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Our excellent local HS has graduation classes that number in the 70’s, so Connecticut is not as urban as you think. In fact more people live in the borough of Queens than in Connecticut. The dirty little secret is that in America, our wealthy suburban schools are the best in the world, our urban schools not so much. Exurban schools are often at one extreme or the other depending on how wealthy or impoverished is the community in which they sit. But just because making rural schools in areas lacking the funding to provide a rigorous program is a challenge (a challenge of funding not resolve), that is a poor excuse for consigning millions of urban and inner-core suburban schools to their sad fate because the advantaged can pull their children out, enroll them in private academies, and then vote down the public school budget. We are all in this boat together as Americans or we are not. And if there are enough children to have both a public and private school system, then the students would invariably be better served by a single public school system where the parents demand good schools and put their votes where their children’s futures are.
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I'm back in my 5th grade class today...filled with wonderful children from all backgrounds. This year we started a "breakfast in the classroom" fix-all that supposedly will help students achieve greatness. So far, after about a week, most food is left untouched.
What teachers fight nowadays is apathy. Why? Students see their parents struggle and ask themselves why an education is going to matter. It's a fight worth fighting, and I will do it again today. Why? I love what I do and love my students.
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@Scott Franklin what you complain about with the breakfast Sounds like a lack of nimbleness - tech companies use that term to describe making rapid changes to market forces...might help morale?
God bless you Frank
1
Fifty two percent of America's public school children are poor enough to be eligible for free or reduced lunch, an all time high. Health and mental health issues, homelessness, trauma, family challenges, language barriers, are pervasive. If schools are going to successfully educate the next generation -- our community leaders, tax payers, voting citizens -- they are going to have to be funded sufficiently to provide the resources that are known to help kids overcome these challenges so they are ready to learn, gain skills, and contribute. Adequate school budgets, access to quality early education and care, approaches that broker existing programs and services to address comprehensive needs, and afterschool opportunities are critical -- and smart investments that pay big social dividends. The courts have an important role to play in helping legislatures to recognize the problems and act in favor of evidence-based solutions.
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This should be a bi-partisan issue as having an educated citizenry benefits all. The right wing has long tried to counter the left's call for social justice by speaking of what they call "equal justice." They define the latter as 'equality of opportunity not of outcome.' Well, here is a clear issue which speaks to opportunity. We are doing very poorly in offering 'equality of opportunity.' That said, the devil is, as always, in the details.
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That's bc the Right is Pro-Birth and it stops from there.
4
I am not an expert on education but as a senior now, everything I have seen, read or heard about proved to me the involvement (or lack thereof) of the parent is the biggest predictor of whether a child will do well in school.
While voluntary integration is preferable, it (or especially forced integration) will do little good if the parent doesn't care about the child's education.
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So many comments about the lack of parenting. Doesn't it take a village to raise a child? The first question I would like to ask is...if children are our future, how are we nurturing our children and affecting our future? I believe strongly that this is why we are having societal problems. We are ALL morally responsible for every child; we are all responsible for the education, health, welfare and safety and that is what a healthy society does.
Educating our young is everyone's responsibility. So...regardless of what your politics are it is all hands on deck, and let's get together and stop this blame game. We need to do what needs to be done for us ALL.
4
Doesn’t care or doesn’t have time.
@pam- Thank you for your reply. Your post is easier said then done. For your wish to happen we will have to live in a socialist/communist country where the state runs the family and education.
It is not feasible since we live in a country with free enterprise.
Again, assuming a minimum amount of funding is put into the school district, the parent is the key.
Just look at Asians and Jews. First the Jews and then the Asians had public schools in poor districts and they excelled because the parents cared.
Other ethnic groups including classic minorities don't share that zeal for education as much.
1
Schools should be integrated for the benefit of the students, but integration does not mean tokenism. In reality, however, it is how schools are funded that makes the difference in student outcomes. Smaller classes and more personalized support and challenge for students do make a difference in student learning. Funding for teachers, support, and enrichment personnel are critical for academic achievement. In many states, local property taxes are the main source of revenue for schools, and if neighborhoods are not integrated, schools cannot naturally (without bussing) be integrated. Neighborhoods reflect the racism, economic disparity, opportunity, and clannishness of the localities within the United States. I don't think there is one solution for all or that the emphasis on forced integration is helpful. Parents choose the diversity and opportunity they can afford. There should be more choice within public school systems, for instance, a neighborhood school or a magnet school within the district or across two or more districts with a lottery system for transportation. The choice systems and charter schools are unpopular, however, because of the instability of funding and the requirement to meet fixed costs within each locality. I don't think the funding should follow the child. Out tax dollars don't follow us as individuals, but there can be a better general fix for funding schools.
3
I am baffled by this article and evidently I am not alone, most commentators are similarly baffled.
Kids become proficient at subjects by having a teacher, a book, and some sort of after school assignment to complete.
I could see that efforts to provide a teacher or a book or an after school study program were expanded and successful, most kids would be proficient.
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The core issue for public school systems is the future. If every child had equal access to an equal quality education regardless of where they live, America would be better off.
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@tom
you do realize that bad schools are bad because the students are not very good?
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@Think based on what data?
I was a special ed teacher almost twenty years ago. What I found is that districts will defund these programs- if their feet are not held to the fire. This requires active parental involvement AND the threat or reality of law suits. Further, this applies both to wealthy and poorer school districts. It is a sad fact that compassion's limits are defined as much by resource constraints as bureaucratic indifference- particularly if the families are poor and disempowered.
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A waste of funds and time. Just read about Virginia's Massive Resistance to school desegregation to see some of the tactics of resistance.
I was never taught and I never taught my children that they need to sit near certain students to learn and have always felt that was a dangerous self defeating message. Instead of all that effort going into WHERE your children attend school it should be going into HOW they are being taught in their neighborhood school.
The only real lasting solution is to demand with the same fervor and determination that changes are first made in the offices that allowed disparities to exist. Clean that house first. Administrators are the same ones who put the worse principals and teachers in poor and black neighborhoods. Often these are staff that are politically connected or have family connections and would never be allowed in white wealthy districts. They often lack qualifications which receive waivers and there is no oversight or consequences for their infractions or failure to teach. Shuffling kids around will just see the same tactics eventually in their new schools.
Put the same effort into demanding changes in schools in your own community. To the point where people will be trying to get into those schools. It will also teach your children that their ability to achieve is inherent in them and not based on the color or wealth of the student sitting next to them. Get real change, not superficial change.
20
I do not understand this, if all the teachers are required to achieve a certain grade level ( B or C+) in college to become a teacher, and are required to pass a state teachers exam for their subject why are the kids failing. It should not make a difference if you go to a all white, black, Indian, or Spanish school. If the kid was in Spain, then they would go to a school that was Spanish, and in Africa a school that was black, etc. So this suggest that the kids are pushed to learn.
12
@herbie212
Students are not machines, and learning is a social enterprise. Passing tests does not make one a teacher, or even a good student. It's a baseline to show that you are not totally unprepared in a specific area. Teachers do not just teach their subject, they have to prepare students, manage behaviors, teach and evaluate students, complete administrative requirements, and communicate effectively in a variety of formats with administrators, colleagues, parents, and students all day, every day. Teaching is the fun part! Many students are have special needs, don't speak English, are homeless, have interrupted schooling, may be bullied, etc. Teachers have to make sure that students feel safe and respected so that they are emotionally able to learn. They have to be able to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of students. So they also have to really know their discipline or subject well to able to modify or create new curricula to meet the needs of students. It absolutely makes a difference where you go to school and who your classmates and teachers are. And, of course, how your parents help you and how they show you that they value education, your learning, and your academic future.
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@herbie212
Requirements can be waived at the discretion of the administrators and even the principal. Poor performing schools have a disproportionate level of under qualified and under performing teachers. They also face less disciplinary actions. The same is true of the facilities and enrichment programs offered, there is a wide disparity. By no stretch of the imagination is the playing field equal.
I disagree with the tactic and feel the emphasis should be on improving the schools ( you know like the billions we spent building schools in Iraq), which benefits all students in the community.
1
Herbie-you dont get it, teachers dont even have to major in the subject they are teaching in most grammar schools, hence we have e.g., English majors trying to teach math. Seriously ?
4
A very large component in a child receiving a better education is the involvement of the parents and the resultant effort the student puts in.
How is a lawsuit going to change that?
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@Kam Dog
The funny part is I remember the same thing being said about drug addiction until it became epidemic in certain communities. Public transportation first fell apart and was shut down in poor or black communities and kept telling people its going to spread. Education in America has become increasingly about profit and communities that think they are immune are going to be sorry in the future. The real solution is real changes for every community or keep believing the disparities are racial. That use to be the brushoff response about drug addiction.
4
Good point, Kam Dog. Community outreach, after-school programs, and good parenting classes can help, but those require funding too. If it takes a lawsuit to get it, so be it.
Improving public education is a community effort, and it’s important to remember some parents are less involved than others due to circumstances out of their control.
1
@Kam Dog Yes, but parental involvement does not necessarily—or even often—lead to improved resource allocation. A strong society cannot ensure parental involvement, but it can and should guarantee equal access to educational opportunity.
5