posted on behalf of doug

1st once more very powerful article showing achievement almost totally SES driven.I will link to new American study showing private education meaningless, all differences SES once again.

Here is the dead proof that it is impossible to do better than the public school system. Any schools that do better are based primarily on student demographic selection, not on superior education. it is all demographics it is all SES based. There is zero doubt.

http://news.illinois.edu/news/13/1111private_schools_ChristopherLubienski_SarahLubienski.html

I beg to differ on the causes based on the cultural practices embedded within the public education system that are mostly professional middle-class values, that in the end creates a mindset of urging parents and educators to followed the pathway of the professional classes.doing it the progressive way minus the science.

Parents of the million dollar plus homes, will not wait around for the school to act, nor will the parents waste much time in arguing with the school to do something. This set of parents does have the means to provide, other than asking the school to provide. Ergo, there is less academic failure to the low number of SE students, because the schools with a high number of professional class, the cultural practices of the public education system, are attuned and agreed whole heartily with the cultural practices and values of the professional class. Not necessarily, the education practices and polices of the school, but rather the high value placed on the cultural practices of the professional class. Hence, the parents with the means, are told in subtle ways to looked after what the school will not looked after. It isn’t that much different than what is was back in 1923, at the upper middle-class schools of Toronto.

Manicure playground of the upper class versus the muddy with odd patches of grass growing here and there in the lower class school playground. Today, the new line would be – i-pads and the Mercedes model of playground equipment to scrapping the money together for six folding tables for the gymnasium so that students would not have to sit on the floor to eat their lunch, and no new playground equipment.

Not only are the cultural practices embedded within the public education system are asking all parents and students alike to be educated according to the idealism of the visions according to the professional class, it also imposes artificial lines of where parents/students must begin. The vast majority of parents/students are handicapped by the education establishment, according to their social-income status. Fundraising for the low-income school becomes the reckless game of providing the basic equipment, gear, and supplies that the school board will not provide. In the high-income school, it is part and parcel of what is provided by the school board, and so fundraising is all for the bells and whistles that go beyond the legal definition of what constitutes a minimum basic education.

I can’t wait for all day kindergarten and early childhood education to arrived in the neigbourhoods of million dollar plus homes. It should be a real sideshow of the have and have-nots in terms of resources and environment. 

Such as the last two quotes of the Globe and Mail article are revealing and code for restrictions and limits. “Principal Carol Cabral is new to Edgewood, and this year she started a home reading program and is working with staff to identify kids that need extra academic support. “We want the parents to be working with us. We want to give them the tools. We want to give them the strategies that we know will affect student achievement,” she said….........Is it enough to close the achievement gap? Long-time TDSB trustee Sheila Cary-Meagher has been heavily involved in the model-school initiative. “People like me like to think that we can. In our saner moments we know that we probably won’t. But the minute you say ‘You can’t really expect to do that,’ you lose the impetus, you lose the passion,” she said.”

Hum - a home reading program with the qualifying criteria of identifying students who have been identified as needing extra academic support. What is the number of students who won’t meet the grade to qualified for the help is a question that should be posed. Again, often the criteria is based on the cultural values of the professional class and the educational beliefs and practices of the educators. Pity, because the public education system would never imposed the conditions and criteria upon the professional class who lived in 1 million dollars plus home, and yet they see fit to imposed them upon children below the professional class.

So they like to think in their saner moments that it can be done but knowing they can’t. No, it cannot be done without removing the conditions and criteria of the professional class imposed by the education class. After all, it won’t be much fun for the education establishment defending the progressive education practices and policies, that allows children to sit on the gym floor eating their lunch, when there is empty desks in the classroom to a group of high-income parents who would considered it outrageous, and probably be calling to retained a lawyer…..........

Crazy eh?  Then parents no matter the social-income status are supposed to ignore the student academic outcomes by pretending everyone is equal by the edicts of the public education system.

It is because the schools don’t teach that gradually the student’s performance mirror more and more closely the parents’ social background and income.

One striking paragraph in the article described how the mother of the student attending elementary school in a lower income area talked to the teacher about her daughter difficulties in reading in grade 3. And how the teachers’s only answer was not to worry because it is rather normal. The mother from the lower income area still took it upon herself to rhyme words with her daughter and to do some other exercises; the reading problem was solved.

Of course, if children from less privileged households go to school and at school instead of being taught to read and to write and to do basic math are being immersed in experiences and expected to teach themselves they have no chance!

If the school expects students to be taught at home - whether direcly by parents or by tutors, or indirectly by parents “helping” with homework and projects that cannot be done by the students based only on what was taught at school - and the school only to evaluate the students of course the learning achievement mirrors the parent’s social background and income. If the students are taught at home and not in school of course the results will mirro the parents’ available time, educational level or the parents’ ability to buy outside help.

Let’s change things and level the playing field by expecting teachers to teach competently and by having the same expectations from all the students right from grade1 and in time you will start seeing the gap closing.

Yes, the reality is that there is a gap when children start school. A gap in what they have seen around them, a gap in how much time interested and competent adults were able to invest in them, a gap in vocabulary and confidence.
If a school no longer teaches, but just checks on what has been taught at home not only the starting gap doesn’t shrink, but it gets bigger. That’s exactly what we are seeing today.