"What do private schools offer that public school can’t? And why do you think that is?"
Choice and accountability for each family's notion of "success".
There has been a high level of frustration with agendas in public education. With school choice a family can "vote with their feet" without having to actually relocate.
It is also why people move to the suburbs and other cities. This is true for every income level and is certainly part of the reason for the declining population in many of Chicago's lower income neighborhoods.
Well that happens every year in Chicago Public Schools when kids apply to high school. They can always go to their attendance area school, but that may be much less preferable than the schools most desired or suitable for a student. So what happens is people take what they can get. That is the case for both public and private schools.
That's like asking, what if I want a restaurant that serves top notch vegan food, and every time I go to one, it's full. What do you think will happen?
Right, so supply-side capitalism. Works pretty well for most goods and services with some regulating to avoid monopolies and danger to the community. Still, it’s a poor analogy unless you want to blow up the school model, both public and private, and create dozens of tiny boutique schools (let’s go vegan today) in every community that may be accessed or abandoned for another. Regardless, I just don’t think we should subscribe to the “if it’s profitable it works” philosophy when applied to the education of children, who would be at the mercy of those profit margins.
What are the “agendas” in public education with which there has been a “high level of frustration”? And who is it that is frustrated with these “agendas”?
Narratives associated with American history, topics related to race, gender, gender expression, have been a topic of fierce debate, and as a consequence an agenda of some pols to affect how schools handle these issues. Those have gotten a fair amount of media attention. There is also differences of opinion on the age at which there should be tracking or if it should exist at all.
So are you suggesting that private schools can offer parents schools that shelter kids from learning about transgender people or our country’s sordid history of institutional racism?
No, they can shelter kids from men dressed in provocative women's clothing with a desire to be close to little children for story hour, and also being indoctrinated that this is a terrible country in which the color of your skin determines at birth if you are either an oppressor or oppressed and that black people are totally unable to succeed without being given advantages. That and many other things they can indeed be sheltered from.
Okay, Skeptic. I picked up on your coded anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, and now, with the contribution of David Leitschuh, I am sure I was right. First of all, Mr. Leitschuh, can you name one school in Illinois that has drag queen story hour? I’m not aware of any. But what is worse, Mr.Leitschuh, is your suggestion that drag queens are pedophiles. While I’m not a fan of drag myself (it reminds me of blackface in that it has members of a dominant cultural group acting as if they were members of the non-dominant cultural group and often in a way that depicts cultural stereotypes), your suggestion that drag queens are more likely to be pedophiles than cis-gender, heterosexual men is untrue, and is a trope being used by the Republican Party and MAGA folks to marginalize and demonize transgender people and to take away our rights. If you promote that trope at the Picayune Sentinel, you will be called on the carpet by me every time. Finally, I know of no school in Illinois, and I’m sure you are aware of none, which teaches that this is a terrible country in which the color of your skin determines at birth if you are either an oppressor or an oppressed and that black people are totally unable to succeed without being given advantages. The belief that that is being taught is a right wing fantasy. Public schools do teach that our country had enslaved people (or committed genocide against them) based on their race, that following slavery our country instituted both de jure and de facto racial discrimination, and that the institutional effects of that history are still part of our culture and society today. All of which is indisputably true. We don’t have a terrible country. We have a country that has done terrible things, the effects of which are still present in our society and culture today.
My concerns have been more with the equity, restorative justice, and self expression policy changes that have increased classroom disruption, reduced safety, reduced or eliminated grading, and eliminated honors and advanced placement classes.
And new concerns are likely to emerge. I am sure there are residents in FL who are not pleased some some state mandated restrictions in all public schools who would like an alternative without having to move out of the state. There is not just one side with concerns
As a resident of a wealthy suburb I think the “secret sauce” is this based on an observation from a good friend who had a kid in kindergarten with mine and had also been a teacher in a school with a very economically disadvantaged population in the city: On the first day of kindergarten here more than half of the kids in our kids’ class could read and many of them were reading several years above grade level. Almost all of the others knew their letters and had some pre-reading skills. In the school in which she taught First grade, none of her students came in reading and less than a quarter knew their alphabet. Wealthy school districts have such a leg up from the start that it’s not the money and the teachers so much as the resources that the students are lucky enough to be provided with at home, that makes a true difference.
The primary resource, which does not require wealth, is having two parents that are fully interested and engaged in the mental and educational development of their children. In addition to their direct activities (talking, singing, reading, etc) they also instill the importance of education, provide oversight and support to their children, know the material being covered in class, and communicate with teachers. They also have taught and encouraged proper social behavior, provide discipline at home, and support good order in the school. Wealth provides additional resources which interested and engaged parents will obviously deploy to help provide the best results for their children. But these additional resources, except for special needs children, are not required to achieve the purposes of primary education.
I have worked for 45 years in both public and private schools, dealing with kids from kindergarten to college in all socio-economic categories, as a classroom teacher and an administrator. The only special sauce that I have experienced is for students to have engaged parents who value education. In a nutshell, students with these "good parents" will do well wherever their school is located; students of "bad parents" will struggle. The problem with educating students is how to make all parents "good" parents. As parents are the students first and foremost educators, the other issues of teacher quality, school locations, funding, etc. are secondary in comparison. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions; but for me, I'll take that special sauce of engaged parents over anything else. Unfortunately, I don't know how to realistically do this.
This problem is further exacerbated by the large contingent of single parents. Single parents, that lack other family support, have less time and less energy to provide for the developmental needs of their children. Also, it seems that a large segment of parents thinks the school system has the primary responsibility for the education of their children, and abdicate their own responsibility.
I'll take a flyer and agree with Ken Bissett and predict that you will vote for (or have voted for) Vallas. Also, I'll agree with your "non-adjustment" that Vallas will win by 7-8% - which is based on nothing other than my gut feelings after withstanding the campaign ad bombardment of the last couple of weeks.
On the one hand I was sorry that the disqualified "winning" visual Tweet entry had been photoshopped, and thus DQ-ed. On the other hand, I had voted for the "Parents on their way to school" Tweet (and had loved it when it originally ran).
I also agree with Joan A and Edward Fee that children of wealthy parents, and children of motivated parents (together with the charter/private schools' ability to effectively "select" their student bodies) are the "secret sauce" which leads to successful student outcomes. Major city school districts MUST educate everyone who lives within their attendance districts - regardless of circumstances (socioeconomic or otherwise).
However, I must say that while I support teachers' unions, my spouse and I were treated to an ice-water bath of reality when we moved our then-parochial educated kids into a (very well-funded) public school district school. Most of our kids' public tenure-protected public school teachers were committed to their students and their profession. But, the attitude expressed by (admittedly, a few of ) our kids' teachers towards their charges (and their charges' parents) was night-and-day different from the attitude of their parochial school counterparts who are employed on annually-renewed teaching contracts. As it is does in the ivied halls of university academia, tenure can have a horrible effect on some teachers, (at least in my experience).
I probably should change that for the written ToW poll as well. The embedded poll on substack has a number of limitations -- five entries max, options have to be short and any effort to edit the poll (correct a typo, for instance) results in all the votes being reset. .
I think there are some further factors to discuss concerning public schools. Some parents want a Catholic viewpoint included in the school agenda - thus the large Catholic school system in Chicago.
Public schools cannot and should not take over this role. We can add in other schools where other religions are included.
I think a really important factor is safety - parents want their kids to be safe and teachers want to teach without being a policeman all the time. You cannot get a good education in a violent environment.
Next let’s talk about parents - private schools put skin in the game for parents. My personal experience with my son attending Catholic schools was that parents participated in the kids education, did service projects and helped build up the school. Kids and parents that did not work together within the school requirements got dropped. I found the parents to be varied in wealth and background but formed a cooperative force in helping the kids learn.
Right now many public schools struggle with violence, parents who could care less or are not around and a teacher’s union who represent the teachers but not the parents or students.
I do not know how you can easily remedy the violence, lack of parental concern and Union control of some of these public schools except by going elsewhere.
I do not think public schools will ever be the answer for all children in Chicago.
Brandon Johnson has, and needs, only one reason to remove Dr. Arwady. She failed to toe the CTU line on all things Covid related to the public schools. If she had only checked with the CTU before making any public policy recommendations she would have known what to say. That would have saved her from saying absurd things like 'children should be back in school'.
And, as I mentioned before, in one of Johnson's speeches to supporters he said that he would replace all city leadership positions with 'our people', which I took to mean CTU and Democratic Socialists. There is no doubt that the appointed members of the new CPS board will all be CTU members or approved people.
His failure to talk about these things like a traditional politician is not because he lacks skills or advice. It is because he is a far left ideologue, his advisors are the same, and they think the general public are fools that won't notice. His failure to pay his utility bills and his assumption that it wasn't important is again representative of how he views his personal responsibilities while professing that others are not doing their part.
Why are students from wealthy communities better prepared and more successful in school? To start with, their preschool vocabulary and language processing skills are more advanced than children living in lower economic and high poverty areas. They’re more likely to have college educated, professional parents, while young children from homes with working class parents lag behind children of the same age.
“The landmark Hart and Risley study in 1995 identified “remarkable differences” in the early vocabulary experiences of young children. Researcher and author Betty Hart described the results of their observations: “Simply in words heard, the average child on welfare was having half as much experience per hour (616 words per hour) as the average working-class child (1,251 words per hour) and less than one-third that of the average child in a professional family (2,153 words per hour)” (Hart & Risley 2003, 8). This is important because vocabulary development during the preschool years is related to later reading skills and school success in general.” The study also focused on the way children process new vocabulary Here, too, young children from homes with low incomes lag behind children of the same age who are growing up in more affluent circumstances.
These children begin their education far behind their more affluent peers and are more likely to find barriars to equitable education and private schools. It’s easy to blame the parents, who may not have the time or skills needed to help their children. The answer is universal preschool to start, and more services for students with language, behavior and special ed needs, which usually are not provided in charter or private schools.
As your statistics show, we do not need universal pre-K. We need affordable pre-k for lower income families. But studies have also shown that the benefits of pre-k are lost by 1st grade in homes where the education is not reenforced. Also, pre-k does not address the critical years from birth to 3yrs when there is substantial development of language and other skills. More access to parenting classes might be useful.
Part of the issue of school choice is a matter of perspective. As a parent, I want what is best for my child and I am willing to make sacrifices to get it. If I have a choice between a lower performing public school and a better performing public (traditional or charter) or private school, I will opt for the later. I don't care why the landscape is as it is, and I cannot change it a timeframe that meets my child's needs. I want a choice and I will do what I must to get it. If the public school system is low performing and does not offer better performing options then I will send my child to private school or I will move. I support vouchers because they provide the similar opportunity for choice to all. It also allows parents that believe their child, and society, benefits from attending a lower performing public school to do so.
It is a canard that providing choice will result in the inevitable collapse of public schools or their general impoverishment. Unless you also believe that public schools are incapable of providing a competitive educational experience.
Charter schools in CPS are public schools and are just another version of the selective enrollment schools. If the Charter schools are an expensive variation that does not provide educational advantages to the students that have chosen them, then they should be dropped. CPS is an overly complex, over-built, and over-staffed hodgepodge of educational strategies. Its primary mission is further hobbled by continuously layering on additional social services roles in an attempt to address other social needs. CPS probably should be more like suburban school districts - simple, monolithic, properly sized, area-based schools.
Yes - there is a gap/battle for resources but Johnson's rhetoric comes across as someone NOT wanting to come in and pull the city together. Do people want a high risk liberal or status quo "Daley-ian democrat?" I'm not concerned about school vouchers - that'll be a big push for any mayor.
3) Standardized testing that allows the schools and parents to assess their children's progress
4) Orderly classroom and school environments that put the needs of the academically oriented students first.
5) Tracked/honors curriculum that provides the superior students with enhanced learning opportunity, while providing for skill appropriate development of all students.
6) Vocational education for non-university track students in high school
All of this is provided in some public schools and could be provided in all public schools. But public schools are subject to political, legal and activist initiatives that undercut and distract from the primary goal.
As if public schools haven't tried or don't want to implement all these things! You seem to imagine that public schools don't want "orderly classrooms and school environments." What? No, they have a harder time maintaining that because they HAVE to deal with kids who come to them with a lot of problems including behavioral issues. Many public schools have honors and tracked and vocational curricula, and it costs money for ANY school to provide those. What I'm continuing to argue is that there is no magic ingredient to private schools other than their ability to select their student population and put resources toward enrichment rather than remediation.
I say if you take teachers at a school in an impoverished city neighborhood and swap them with teachers from a private suburban school, same classrooms of kids, you would not see any evidence of a secret sauce.
Spot-on. I’ve taught in a couple of the wealthiest public schools in the country and in one of the poorest in the area. I guarantee that your teacher-swap hypothetical is true.
First, as I said in a previous comment, parents are the magic sauce. And I agree that private schools benefit by being chosen by concerned parents. But part of the reason they are chosen is because they have the same educational standards.
Many public schools, CPS in particular, have opted for accommodation of the most difficult students at the expense of the others. They may want order and rigor but their policies do not promote them. You skipped right over grading, promotion, and testing which are the best examples. The schools now accept 'progress' as the criteria, which results in the average high school graduate reading at a fifth grade level. CPS no longer addresses truancy, and CPS chronic absentee rate is over 60%, double the horrible state average. Homework is not required.
Of course, they HAVE to deal with kids with disruptive and behavioral issues (a minority of students), but they have chosen policies that allow the problem kids to disrupt classrooms and hallways in a quest for equity and restorative justice. The current trend is the complete elimination of grading, testing, tracking (already mostly gone), and honors classes because they are not viewed as equitable. OPRFHS eliminated honors classes for freshman last year, claiming that they will provide the same level of class work to everyone.
CPS $4.4 billion budget is ample money. As I have said before CPS is over built, over staffed, and overly complex. Money might be well spent on pre-k, summer school, and tutors for underperforming kids.
" that there is no magic ingredient to private schools other than their ability to select their student population ..."
You are exactly right, Eric! It's why you sent your kids to an elite school in a district of sub-mediocre schools. You had a choice, AND the school had a choice. The secret sauce is not in the classroom. In two words: application and acceptance. Let families apply to ANY school, and let ANY school select their students. I realize you know this, having seen it working at the upper end, so why shouldn't it work for all types of students and families? Do you think that schools will only select the Walter Payton kids? Are there enough of those kids to keep every school operating? Is there no opportunity for a school to operate successfully by catering only to kids who continue to do all their assignments but can't get into Payton? That's the vast middle of families. They would love schools in which kids who don't participate and who behave poorly don't stay.
"What do private schools offer that public school can’t? And why do you think that is?"
Choice and accountability for each family's notion of "success".
There has been a high level of frustration with agendas in public education. With school choice a family can "vote with their feet" without having to actually relocate.
But what if those feet keep finding school doors that say, “Sorry, we’re full?”
Maybe that says we ought to have more of them.
It is also why people move to the suburbs and other cities. This is true for every income level and is certainly part of the reason for the declining population in many of Chicago's lower income neighborhoods.
https://greatcities.uic.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Black-Population-Loss-in-Chicago.pdf
Well that happens every year in Chicago Public Schools when kids apply to high school. They can always go to their attendance area school, but that may be much less preferable than the schools most desired or suitable for a student. So what happens is people take what they can get. That is the case for both public and private schools.
That's like asking, what if I want a restaurant that serves top notch vegan food, and every time I go to one, it's full. What do you think will happen?
That analogy makes sense if when you pick a restaurant, that is the only restaurant you will go to for at least a year.
No, it’s about the owner, not the eater. If owners are full, they’ll expand. And others will try to grab some of that 100% full market.
Right, so supply-side capitalism. Works pretty well for most goods and services with some regulating to avoid monopolies and danger to the community. Still, it’s a poor analogy unless you want to blow up the school model, both public and private, and create dozens of tiny boutique schools (let’s go vegan today) in every community that may be accessed or abandoned for another. Regardless, I just don’t think we should subscribe to the “if it’s profitable it works” philosophy when applied to the education of children, who would be at the mercy of those profit margins.
What are the “agendas” in public education with which there has been a “high level of frustration”? And who is it that is frustrated with these “agendas”?
Narratives associated with American history, topics related to race, gender, gender expression, have been a topic of fierce debate, and as a consequence an agenda of some pols to affect how schools handle these issues. Those have gotten a fair amount of media attention. There is also differences of opinion on the age at which there should be tracking or if it should exist at all.
So are you suggesting that private schools can offer parents schools that shelter kids from learning about transgender people or our country’s sordid history of institutional racism?
No, they can shelter kids from men dressed in provocative women's clothing with a desire to be close to little children for story hour, and also being indoctrinated that this is a terrible country in which the color of your skin determines at birth if you are either an oppressor or oppressed and that black people are totally unable to succeed without being given advantages. That and many other things they can indeed be sheltered from.
Okay, Skeptic. I picked up on your coded anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, and now, with the contribution of David Leitschuh, I am sure I was right. First of all, Mr. Leitschuh, can you name one school in Illinois that has drag queen story hour? I’m not aware of any. But what is worse, Mr.Leitschuh, is your suggestion that drag queens are pedophiles. While I’m not a fan of drag myself (it reminds me of blackface in that it has members of a dominant cultural group acting as if they were members of the non-dominant cultural group and often in a way that depicts cultural stereotypes), your suggestion that drag queens are more likely to be pedophiles than cis-gender, heterosexual men is untrue, and is a trope being used by the Republican Party and MAGA folks to marginalize and demonize transgender people and to take away our rights. If you promote that trope at the Picayune Sentinel, you will be called on the carpet by me every time. Finally, I know of no school in Illinois, and I’m sure you are aware of none, which teaches that this is a terrible country in which the color of your skin determines at birth if you are either an oppressor or an oppressed and that black people are totally unable to succeed without being given advantages. The belief that that is being taught is a right wing fantasy. Public schools do teach that our country had enslaved people (or committed genocide against them) based on their race, that following slavery our country instituted both de jure and de facto racial discrimination, and that the institutional effects of that history are still part of our culture and society today. All of which is indisputably true. We don’t have a terrible country. We have a country that has done terrible things, the effects of which are still present in our society and culture today.
Thank you Joanie for providing a wonderful example of what kids can be sheltered from at private schools.
My concerns have been more with the equity, restorative justice, and self expression policy changes that have increased classroom disruption, reduced safety, reduced or eliminated grading, and eliminated honors and advanced placement classes.
And new concerns are likely to emerge. I am sure there are residents in FL who are not pleased some some state mandated restrictions in all public schools who would like an alternative without having to move out of the state. There is not just one side with concerns
As a resident of a wealthy suburb I think the “secret sauce” is this based on an observation from a good friend who had a kid in kindergarten with mine and had also been a teacher in a school with a very economically disadvantaged population in the city: On the first day of kindergarten here more than half of the kids in our kids’ class could read and many of them were reading several years above grade level. Almost all of the others knew their letters and had some pre-reading skills. In the school in which she taught First grade, none of her students came in reading and less than a quarter knew their alphabet. Wealthy school districts have such a leg up from the start that it’s not the money and the teachers so much as the resources that the students are lucky enough to be provided with at home, that makes a true difference.
The primary resource, which does not require wealth, is having two parents that are fully interested and engaged in the mental and educational development of their children. In addition to their direct activities (talking, singing, reading, etc) they also instill the importance of education, provide oversight and support to their children, know the material being covered in class, and communicate with teachers. They also have taught and encouraged proper social behavior, provide discipline at home, and support good order in the school. Wealth provides additional resources which interested and engaged parents will obviously deploy to help provide the best results for their children. But these additional resources, except for special needs children, are not required to achieve the purposes of primary education.
I think you're quite right.
Marc Martinez is right...But Jo A's answer is also totally true and, in statistical terms, explains most of the variance.
I’m going to go out on a limb, and predict you will vote for Vallas.
Want to know how people really feel about “school choice”? Note any community’s response to adding subsidized, multi-family housing.
I have worked for 45 years in both public and private schools, dealing with kids from kindergarten to college in all socio-economic categories, as a classroom teacher and an administrator. The only special sauce that I have experienced is for students to have engaged parents who value education. In a nutshell, students with these "good parents" will do well wherever their school is located; students of "bad parents" will struggle. The problem with educating students is how to make all parents "good" parents. As parents are the students first and foremost educators, the other issues of teacher quality, school locations, funding, etc. are secondary in comparison. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions; but for me, I'll take that special sauce of engaged parents over anything else. Unfortunately, I don't know how to realistically do this.
This problem is further exacerbated by the large contingent of single parents. Single parents, that lack other family support, have less time and less energy to provide for the developmental needs of their children. Also, it seems that a large segment of parents thinks the school system has the primary responsibility for the education of their children, and abdicate their own responsibility.
I'll take a flyer and agree with Ken Bissett and predict that you will vote for (or have voted for) Vallas. Also, I'll agree with your "non-adjustment" that Vallas will win by 7-8% - which is based on nothing other than my gut feelings after withstanding the campaign ad bombardment of the last couple of weeks.
On the one hand I was sorry that the disqualified "winning" visual Tweet entry had been photoshopped, and thus DQ-ed. On the other hand, I had voted for the "Parents on their way to school" Tweet (and had loved it when it originally ran).
I also agree with Joan A and Edward Fee that children of wealthy parents, and children of motivated parents (together with the charter/private schools' ability to effectively "select" their student bodies) are the "secret sauce" which leads to successful student outcomes. Major city school districts MUST educate everyone who lives within their attendance districts - regardless of circumstances (socioeconomic or otherwise).
However, I must say that while I support teachers' unions, my spouse and I were treated to an ice-water bath of reality when we moved our then-parochial educated kids into a (very well-funded) public school district school. Most of our kids' public tenure-protected public school teachers were committed to their students and their profession. But, the attitude expressed by (admittedly, a few of ) our kids' teachers towards their charges (and their charges' parents) was night-and-day different from the attitude of their parochial school counterparts who are employed on annually-renewed teaching contracts. As it is does in the ivied halls of university academia, tenure can have a horrible effect on some teachers, (at least in my experience).
Boy was I wrong about the Chicago Mayoral election!
EZ - By the way, why do you allow daily voting for regular (Thur) ToTW, but only a single vote (over the span of the contest) for Visual (Tue) ToTW?
I probably should change that for the written ToW poll as well. The embedded poll on substack has a number of limitations -- five entries max, options have to be short and any effort to edit the poll (correct a typo, for instance) results in all the votes being reset. .
I think there are some further factors to discuss concerning public schools. Some parents want a Catholic viewpoint included in the school agenda - thus the large Catholic school system in Chicago.
Public schools cannot and should not take over this role. We can add in other schools where other religions are included.
I think a really important factor is safety - parents want their kids to be safe and teachers want to teach without being a policeman all the time. You cannot get a good education in a violent environment.
Next let’s talk about parents - private schools put skin in the game for parents. My personal experience with my son attending Catholic schools was that parents participated in the kids education, did service projects and helped build up the school. Kids and parents that did not work together within the school requirements got dropped. I found the parents to be varied in wealth and background but formed a cooperative force in helping the kids learn.
Right now many public schools struggle with violence, parents who could care less or are not around and a teacher’s union who represent the teachers but not the parents or students.
I do not know how you can easily remedy the violence, lack of parental concern and Union control of some of these public schools except by going elsewhere.
I do not think public schools will ever be the answer for all children in Chicago.
I was born and raised in Chicago and now live in Evanston. From my personal point of view the mayoral race is a race to the bottom.
Neither candidate is what I would look for in a mayor.
Its a campaign of extremes with most Chicagoans stuck in the middle.
Bleh!
Brandon Johnson has, and needs, only one reason to remove Dr. Arwady. She failed to toe the CTU line on all things Covid related to the public schools. If she had only checked with the CTU before making any public policy recommendations she would have known what to say. That would have saved her from saying absurd things like 'children should be back in school'.
And, as I mentioned before, in one of Johnson's speeches to supporters he said that he would replace all city leadership positions with 'our people', which I took to mean CTU and Democratic Socialists. There is no doubt that the appointed members of the new CPS board will all be CTU members or approved people.
His failure to talk about these things like a traditional politician is not because he lacks skills or advice. It is because he is a far left ideologue, his advisors are the same, and they think the general public are fools that won't notice. His failure to pay his utility bills and his assumption that it wasn't important is again representative of how he views his personal responsibilities while professing that others are not doing their part.
Why are students from wealthy communities better prepared and more successful in school? To start with, their preschool vocabulary and language processing skills are more advanced than children living in lower economic and high poverty areas. They’re more likely to have college educated, professional parents, while young children from homes with working class parents lag behind children of the same age.
“The landmark Hart and Risley study in 1995 identified “remarkable differences” in the early vocabulary experiences of young children. Researcher and author Betty Hart described the results of their observations: “Simply in words heard, the average child on welfare was having half as much experience per hour (616 words per hour) as the average working-class child (1,251 words per hour) and less than one-third that of the average child in a professional family (2,153 words per hour)” (Hart & Risley 2003, 8). This is important because vocabulary development during the preschool years is related to later reading skills and school success in general.” The study also focused on the way children process new vocabulary Here, too, young children from homes with low incomes lag behind children of the same age who are growing up in more affluent circumstances.
These children begin their education far behind their more affluent peers and are more likely to find barriars to equitable education and private schools. It’s easy to blame the parents, who may not have the time or skills needed to help their children. The answer is universal preschool to start, and more services for students with language, behavior and special ed needs, which usually are not provided in charter or private schools.
As your statistics show, we do not need universal pre-K. We need affordable pre-k for lower income families. But studies have also shown that the benefits of pre-k are lost by 1st grade in homes where the education is not reenforced. Also, pre-k does not address the critical years from birth to 3yrs when there is substantial development of language and other skills. More access to parenting classes might be useful.
Agreed, Marc. In fact, there are good reasons for parents not prioritizing education, such as basic survival.
Part of the issue of school choice is a matter of perspective. As a parent, I want what is best for my child and I am willing to make sacrifices to get it. If I have a choice between a lower performing public school and a better performing public (traditional or charter) or private school, I will opt for the later. I don't care why the landscape is as it is, and I cannot change it a timeframe that meets my child's needs. I want a choice and I will do what I must to get it. If the public school system is low performing and does not offer better performing options then I will send my child to private school or I will move. I support vouchers because they provide the similar opportunity for choice to all. It also allows parents that believe their child, and society, benefits from attending a lower performing public school to do so.
It is a canard that providing choice will result in the inevitable collapse of public schools or their general impoverishment. Unless you also believe that public schools are incapable of providing a competitive educational experience.
You have totally begged the question here, Marc.
Charter schools in CPS are public schools and are just another version of the selective enrollment schools. If the Charter schools are an expensive variation that does not provide educational advantages to the students that have chosen them, then they should be dropped. CPS is an overly complex, over-built, and over-staffed hodgepodge of educational strategies. Its primary mission is further hobbled by continuously layering on additional social services roles in an attempt to address other social needs. CPS probably should be more like suburban school districts - simple, monolithic, properly sized, area-based schools.
Yes - there is a gap/battle for resources but Johnson's rhetoric comes across as someone NOT wanting to come in and pull the city together. Do people want a high risk liberal or status quo "Daley-ian democrat?" I'm not concerned about school vouchers - that'll be a big push for any mayor.
Secret Sauce:
1) Grades based on grade level skills achievement
2) No social promotion or graduation
3) Standardized testing that allows the schools and parents to assess their children's progress
4) Orderly classroom and school environments that put the needs of the academically oriented students first.
5) Tracked/honors curriculum that provides the superior students with enhanced learning opportunity, while providing for skill appropriate development of all students.
6) Vocational education for non-university track students in high school
All of this is provided in some public schools and could be provided in all public schools. But public schools are subject to political, legal and activist initiatives that undercut and distract from the primary goal.
As if public schools haven't tried or don't want to implement all these things! You seem to imagine that public schools don't want "orderly classrooms and school environments." What? No, they have a harder time maintaining that because they HAVE to deal with kids who come to them with a lot of problems including behavioral issues. Many public schools have honors and tracked and vocational curricula, and it costs money for ANY school to provide those. What I'm continuing to argue is that there is no magic ingredient to private schools other than their ability to select their student population and put resources toward enrichment rather than remediation.
I say if you take teachers at a school in an impoverished city neighborhood and swap them with teachers from a private suburban school, same classrooms of kids, you would not see any evidence of a secret sauce.
Spot-on. I’ve taught in a couple of the wealthiest public schools in the country and in one of the poorest in the area. I guarantee that your teacher-swap hypothetical is true.
First, as I said in a previous comment, parents are the magic sauce. And I agree that private schools benefit by being chosen by concerned parents. But part of the reason they are chosen is because they have the same educational standards.
Many public schools, CPS in particular, have opted for accommodation of the most difficult students at the expense of the others. They may want order and rigor but their policies do not promote them. You skipped right over grading, promotion, and testing which are the best examples. The schools now accept 'progress' as the criteria, which results in the average high school graduate reading at a fifth grade level. CPS no longer addresses truancy, and CPS chronic absentee rate is over 60%, double the horrible state average. Homework is not required.
Of course, they HAVE to deal with kids with disruptive and behavioral issues (a minority of students), but they have chosen policies that allow the problem kids to disrupt classrooms and hallways in a quest for equity and restorative justice. The current trend is the complete elimination of grading, testing, tracking (already mostly gone), and honors classes because they are not viewed as equitable. OPRFHS eliminated honors classes for freshman last year, claiming that they will provide the same level of class work to everyone.
CPS $4.4 billion budget is ample money. As I have said before CPS is over built, over staffed, and overly complex. Money might be well spent on pre-k, summer school, and tutors for underperforming kids.
" that there is no magic ingredient to private schools other than their ability to select their student population ..."
You are exactly right, Eric! It's why you sent your kids to an elite school in a district of sub-mediocre schools. You had a choice, AND the school had a choice. The secret sauce is not in the classroom. In two words: application and acceptance. Let families apply to ANY school, and let ANY school select their students. I realize you know this, having seen it working at the upper end, so why shouldn't it work for all types of students and families? Do you think that schools will only select the Walter Payton kids? Are there enough of those kids to keep every school operating? Is there no opportunity for a school to operate successfully by catering only to kids who continue to do all their assignments but can't get into Payton? That's the vast middle of families. They would love schools in which kids who don't participate and who behave poorly don't stay.