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India's Schooling Experiment Tests Rich and Poor
theodp writes "Passed in 2009, India's Right to Education Act mandates that private schools set aside 25% of admissions for low-income, underprivileged and disabled students. Many of the world's top private schools offer scholarships to smart poor kids, but India's plan is more sweeping in that the rules prohibit admission-testing of students. 'Over the years schooling offered by these two systems [public and private] has become increasingly disparate and unequal,' explained Anshu Vaish of the Dept. of Human Resource Development. But the most notable results of the experiment thus far, reports the WSJ, are frustration and disappointment as separations that define Indian society are upended, leading even some supporters to conclude that the chasm between the top and bottom of Indian society is too great to overcome. Hey, at least we don't have these kinds of problems in the US, right? BTW, about 30% of this year's Intel Science Talent Search 2011 Finalists hailed from private schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,750 at Ursuline Academy (the alma mater of Melinda Gates) to $37,020 at Groton School (the alma mater of FDR). Some 10% of all elementary and secondary school students were in private schools in 2009-2010, according to the US Dept. of Education."
This is an excellent illustration at a much larger scale of exactly the education problems we face in the U.S., where we spend more on prisoners than students.
Speaking for myself, I have... let's call it an "above average" character in terms of education and intellect, and yet public schools couldn't be bothered with me. Had it not been for the fact that my parents had worked hard enough to be able to afford very expensive private schooling, I would never have graduated from High School.
The answer is NOT for those who can afford such things to be taxed into giving up those funds to educate everyone else's children. The "answer" is not even something I can feasibly address with any sanity or brevity in a forum like this one (ok, I can in three words: "One room schoolhouse"), but it should be rather clearer now what a failure our current model is, where students are graduating from High School less educated than their parents - on average - for the first time in our nations history over the last several years, and that we need to completely re-address our schools, teaching methods, and sociocultural emphasis (or lack thereof) on education.
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
This is an excellent illustration at a much larger scale of exactly the education problems we face in the U.S., where we spend more on prisoners than students.
Of course we spend more on prisoners than students. Prisoners live in prisons 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Students are in school for 7 hours a day, for only 8 months out of the year.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
By the time I was finishing high school the situation was so bad that in my State 70% of the seats were reserved for these castes. The remaining 30% was considered to be "open competition", which means any disadvantaged student who scores high will not be counted towards the quota. The closing score for engineering/medical admission for my caste was some 98.5%, that is anyone scoring less would not get admission. The closing score for the ST category was some 45% and SC was 55% and BC was around 75%. The central government did not have the BC category so for IITs 80% of the seats were in play. Some 1350 seats for the entire population of India. If you have been wondering why the IIT alumni of that age (45 to 55 presently) are so strong in academics and engineering, it is because they were the students score above mean+3 sigma.
Over the years a creamy layer has developed and the people who benefited by the reservation policy in 1950s, their children and their great grand children enjoy all the benefits. The benefits do not reach the really stuggling, poor deserving people of these castes. Among the so-called forward castes so many poor rural people have much higher disadvantages. The situation is so bad there, even the corrupt Indian politicians and the corrupt journalists pandering to the semi-literate allegedly suppressed communities are coming out periodically with such band aids to sooth the raging public anger. The really poor disadvantaged people of all castes are pissed off. Only the creamy layer of people belonging to the SC/ST/BC castes likes the present situation.
One good that has happened over the last two decades is the mushrooming growth of private colleges that finally gave all people to get an engineering degree if they wanted it. Now the private colleges are outshining State funded colleges. Now the creamy layer has its eyes on the private colleges. They want in, into that sector too. So this is their way of forcing the private colleges also to impose a reservation system.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
in Asia it's all about the test and mass cheating goes on there. The us needs to drop the teach the test idea and go back to the old days. College is odd that some of the high cost schools are carp and all about makeing money and other are better price wise but range from poor to good.
Problem is far more complex then your gross oversimplification. A good example is that one of the main requirements of getting proper schooling is environment. As public schools lose more and more of good, calm, studious students to private schools, the problem of concentration of lack of talent intensifies. This in turn feeds the "white flight" element even further by pressing more good students out.
End result is bad for both - on one hand poor get worse schooling. On the other hand, rich become so disconnected from reality, you end up with tiered society and all its problems.
If you want to see the most historically infamous case on where tiered society leads, look up French Revolution. That said, historic examples of this stretch from India mentioned here, to more modern examples such as Arab Spring phenomenon. And to get there, you usually have a gross collapse of socioeconomic environment, including but not limited to massively raised crime rates, gradual economic decline, social and political instability, and shrinking middle class, majority of which drop down to the poor tier of society with small minority joining the rich.
Rich win in short term, which is why it appears to be a natural state of human society to slowly edge towards tiered society in known history, which ends reset when it's not longer supportable and social imbalance causes a revolution and re-distribution of wealth.
Bumping them up a grade is a silly solution, because they're then taught more advanced material (that they may not have the relevant prerequisites for) at the same speed, rather than being taught the material for their level at a faster speed.
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The best part, I might add, is that there is nothing "better" about private schools except the mental image society collectively has. The only reason private school students do better is because they are selected for nice things more frequently because of their prestigious background. In fact, I would argue that private school teaching is probably inferior to public schools (at least in Canada); private school teachers are paid significantly less than public schools, and so public schools get their pick first.
The only reason private school students do better on standardized tests is because private schools pick all of the best students with supportive parents. If you have a class who can practically teach themselves, it doesn't matter if a monkey is teaching them, they're going to do better than the class of low income and disenfranchised students.
The private school teachers (partially as a result of the lower pay) are also the ones who want to teach -- not the ones who got an English degree and then realized that they couldn't get any other job. Private schools also aren't run by the teachers' unions, so they have far more flexibility in firing inferior teachers, etc. Lastly (and possibly most importantly), they're held directly responsible by the parents. A private school loses customers and funds when parents get disgruntled; public schools can change nothing and have no negative consequences. Of course, schooling in this antiquated model is soon going to be defunct once internet/distance learning gains acceptance as parents will be able to choose from a plethora of options, which aren't based on geography, for almost zero cost compared to a brick and mortar school since lectures, materials, etc. can be replicated at no additional cost. When you can send your kid to online school for $300 a year versus sending them to the free, government prison-schools we have now who wouldn't? Eventually, quality online schools may even be completely free to all and run on a charity basis, so even poor kids without computers can access them from their local public libraries.
The best part, I might add, is that there is nothing "better" about private schools except the mental image society collectively has. The only reason private school students do better is because they are selected for nice things more frequently because of their prestigious background. In fact, I would argue that private school teaching is probably inferior to public schools (at least in Canada); private school teachers are paid significantly less than public schools, and so public schools get their pick first.
The only reason private school students do better on standardized tests is because private schools pick all of the best students with supportive parents. If you have a class who can practically teach themselves, it doesn't matter if a monkey is teaching them, they're going to do better than the class of low income and disenfranchised students.
Can you cite any studies or well known facts to support these statements? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd just like to see something other than some anonymous person's assertions on a tech chatboard.
Private schools can and do kick out trouble-causing students, and there is a direct correlation between the presence of such children and the overall performance of a class. This is probably a larger factor than merely selecting the academic elite, who themselves may come from abusive or otherwise troubled homes and who may bring such problems into the classroom.
However, the academic elite by and large tend to follow their economic class's trends. In other words, affluent parents spend more on their children's education, give them better tools and more opportunities to do well, and effectively can buy a smoother pathway to the top with fewer obstacles. SAT scores are correlated with wealth.
To argue that private school teaching "is probably inferior to public schools" is a broad and unsubstantiated claim. Leaving aside the fact that some kids attend private school for non-academic reasons (their parent went there, it's smaller, it's more prestigious), we can ask--do private schools really help kids perform better? It's controversial, according to this Time blog, but a separate study shows that Catholic schools do a better job overall.
There are many excellent public schools in the U.S. and Canada; Montgomery County in MD for example, and Middlesex County in Massachusetts are superb--well funded, high academic standards, good support for the arts, and involved parents. The high performing schools in these districts, though, are in the affluent areas like Belmont and Newton and Lexington in Massachusetts. The lower income Middlesex schools in Waltham and Watertown are down a rung or two.
As for the quality of teachers, it's disputable that private schools hire inferior teachers at lower pay, at least in the U.S. This was more true decades ago, but in recent years private schools have had to compete for a shrinking pool of good teachers and they have raised salaries and benefits nearly to union scale. Nonetheless, private schools have remained a desirable destination because the students tend to be better behaved, the troublemakers are removed, and there tends to be more parental buy-in. This only makes sense; when you're paying $16,000 a year for your child, you tend to have more and stronger opinions about how the school is run.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out. This may seem like an unlikely idea to be adopted at first, but at least it is a starting point for building a positive vision of the future for all children in all our communities. Like straightforward ideas such as Medicare-for-all, this is an easy solution to state, likely with broad popular support, but it may be a hard thing to get done politically for all sorts of reasons. It might take an enormous struggle to make such a change, and most homeschoolers rightfully may say they are better off focusing on teaching their own and ignoring the school system as much as possible, and letting schooled families make their own choices. Still,homeschoolers might find it interesting to think about this idea and how the straightforward nature of it calls into question many assumptions related to how compulsory public schooling is justified. Also, ultimately, the more people who homeschool, the easier it becomes, because there are more families close by with which to meet during the daytime (especially in rural areas). And sometime just knowing an alternative is possible can give one extra hope. Who would have predicted ten years back that NYS would have a governor who was legally blind and whose parents had been forced to change school districts just to get him the education he needed? So, there is always "the optimism of uncertainty", as historian Howard Zinn says. We don't know for sure what is possible and what is not. "
"New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators
See also:
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
http://basicincome.iovialis.org/e00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Income_Guarantee
"A basic income guarantee (or basic income) is a proposed system[1] of social security, that regularly provides each citizen with a sum of money. In contrast to income redistribution between nations themselves, the phrase basic income defines payments to individuals rather than households[2], groups, or nations, in order to provide for individual basic human needs. Except for citizenship, a basic income is entirely unconditional. Furthermore, there is no means test; the richest as well as the poorest citizens would receive it. The U.S. Basic Income Network[3] emphasizes this absence of means testing in its precise definition, "The Basic Income Guarantee is an unconditional, government-insured guarantee that all citizens will have enough income to meet their basic needs.""
What good is education as far as economic advancement when the robots and AIs and voluntary social networks are going to do most of the jobs inthe future?
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
That's not quite true. The vast majority of private schools are charities. It would be very difficult for a non-charitable private school to compete with the tax breaks that charities get. "Public schools" originally referred to those schools regulated under the Public Schools Acts of 1868 and 1873. They were "public" in the sense that anyone who could afford the fees and pass the entrance exam could get a place, and were not restricted to members of a particular religion or to royalty or members of the aristocracy.
The private school teachers (partially as a result of the lower pay) are also the ones who want to teach -- not the ones who got an English degree and then realized that they couldn't get any other job.
Huh? I see no evidence for that.
In general, I think most teachers go into teaching because they want to teach, public and private. Some of them just burn out faster.
The one advantage that private schools do have is that it's much easier for them to eject students out for being disruptive.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I went to a fairly prestigious high school in the bay area that was private. I can say based on anecdotal experience, shared by peers who were in public schools, that the teachers at my high school on the whole were "superior" to those at the public schools. If nothing else, the bar was set far higher for us than for those in the public school. A good friend of mine, who is extremely intelligent, shared with me his high school experience and essentially for merely showing up he was lauded for his brilliance. This caused to be somewhat problematic for him when entering a fairly good public university in the state of California. He no longer was lauded for being brilliant by merely showing up and caused him to have to reevaluate his entire approach to education and the amount of time he dedicated to his education.
The high school I went to required us to take no standardized tests, they did not participate in any state wide ranking and did not even publicly rate the graduating class (although, I have since found out, because my sister now teachers there that they do indeed rank the class by GPA but only disseminate the information to universities students apply to). Instead of standardized tests, a huge emphasis was placed on critical thinking skills. Skills that have immense market value and differentiate individuals significantly in any market place (be it in getting into a university for undergraduate or graduate studies or being more employable after education).
My graduating class was 80 students. Eight of my peers went on to attend universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. So nearly 10% of my class, despite the fact that our GPA's were hard capped at 4.0 (there were no honor classes at my high school) went on to attend some of the most prestigious universities in the country. Certainly there were socio-economic factors that have nothing to do with talent that were at play, but with that said can you show me a public school anywhere in Canada or the United States that produces those kinds of results?
And lastly because of the small size of the school, the teachers were able to spend an immense amount of time and energy working with individual students improving various aspects of their scholastic process. I remember long hours spent with my favorite English teacher, working one-on-one to improve my critical thinking and writing skills in an ungraded setting. This was done because the teachers cared about us as people and invested themselves in our futures. This trait is not readily apparent among teachers in the public school system, though I doubt it is the fault of the teachers themselves and more a product of the way that the public education is setup and the logistical difficulties of educating a very large number of people with very divergent skill sets.
The public school system in the western world has issues, and the public model cannot simply adopt the private model and expect success because of logistical reasons. With that said, based on my experience and the anecdotal information gleaned from peers who attended public schools, my current intention is not to have children until I am in a position to be able to afford to fund their entire education privately because that is what will give them the necessary advantage to succeed in the modern world.
The system is as it is, and will only change over a long period time with small incremental changes. It's fun to get on a soapbox and pontificate about the way the world should be, but at the end the day one must come down from the soapbox and deal with reality as it is else be lost in the riptide of change. (Also, let me state that the soapbox statement is not an attempt to troll or an attempt to insinuate that you were on a soapbox of any kind but merely placed to illustrate something that many individuals do while engaged in this sort of discussion, you are not doing this.)
That's a different world from India. According to the article, the posh private school is $1,500 per year, and the government only pays $300 for the 25% poor students it has forced the school to take. $1,500 per year is less than 1/10th what some US states pay per pupil.
Doing some poking around, it appears the average primary school teacher salary is about $3,000 per year in India, with a student:teacher ratio of 40:1, meaning the government expenditure on teaching is only $75/year per student. Even so, that is over 10% of the total government budget, and the expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP is about the same as South Korea. (4.1% vs. 4.2%) Other poor countries such as Yemen, Cuba and Morocco spend much more in GDP terms than India, though, and India could afford to reduce the student-teacher ratio to 30:1 while at the same time increasing the average teacher salary to $4,500. (Thus doubling teacher salary expenditures to $150 per student per year.) The effective cost per teacher hour would rise less than 20% if absenteeism were reduced from 25% to 5%. A less ridiculously low salary would attract more and better teachers and a smaller class size would reduce burnout and absenteeism.
In the US, on the other hand, most states are well into the region of diminishing returns from paying higher salaries, although reducing class size could still have benefits. The main opportunities in the US for improving education are in eliminating the expensive and counterproductive bureaucracy and the ridiculously over-specified curricula and methods that it mandates.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
its completely opposite here in india. public school teachers are paid significantly less than private school teachers. the infrastructure in govt run schools is pathetic, the teachers callous and undedicated.
also i don't think that a class consisting of smarter people does not need good teachers.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.