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Turning Around a School District By Fighting Poverty (npr.org)
New submitter gomezedward40 writes: Through her unconventional focus on addressing poverty, Superintendent Tiffany Anderson has been credited with rapidly improving the school district of Jennings, Mo. NPR reports: "The school district of 3,000 students has taken unprecedented steps, like opening a food pantry to give away food, a shelter for homeless students and a health clinic, among other efforts. 'My purpose is to remove the challenges that poverty creates,' she says. 'You can not expect children to learn at a high level if they come in hungry and tired.' That unconventional approach has had big results. When Anderson took over in 2012, the school district was close to losing accreditation. Jennings had a score of 57 percent on state educational standards. A district loses accreditation if that score goes below 50 percent. Two years later, that score was up to 78 percent, and in the past year rose again to 81 percent, Anderson says. She points to a 92 percent 4-year graduation rate, and a 100 percent college and career placement rate."
Well if they refused to work your definition might be valid. Sadly these parents ALREADY HAVE JOBS DIPSTICK! In some cases multiple jobs. Your libertarian right-wing "I hate handouts" bit doesn't actually work in this case because it doesn't apply. It's not welfare, either, it's child welfare - it's helping the CHILDREN of those parents. Because those children will be cooking your next meal, stopping you at your next traffic stop, and saving you from your house fire next time you leave the stove on. Some of those children will even go to college, and could become politicians, making decisions affecting you.
I grew up in poverty, but I did what I could, and with some natural ability and some luck I've done pretty well for myself. Imagine how much more I could have done if I'd not had to worry about food, or heat growing up. Clothes. All of these things would have really helped my attention to school and not starving or freezing. These kids will have those opportunities, and SOCIETY AT LARGE will benefit from them. That's why we have public roads, public schooling, public funding for all sorts of things - it benefits EVERYONE.
So get off your libertarian "I hate poor people" stand. You're not held at gunpoint - none of YOUR money went into the CLEARLY LOCALLY FUNDED district. If you want to complain about someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to fund something, complain about the military that we have to fund 857 MILLION in "defense spending" when we are at peace with our only two neighbors - Canada and Mexico. But we only spend 393 million on welfare. Source: http://www.usgovernmentspendin...
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
It may surprise you but (a) poverty correlates with poor academic in the US (not so much in other first world countries, why is that?) (b) the effects of poor nutrition and poor parenting in the first 5 years of life are persistent. (c) universal free public education is a cornerstone of democracy
Working in UK schools, I think I'm safe in saying that a homeless child coming to school would be a priority one issue and get solved pretty damn quickly.
Children coming without proper breakfast - yes, we have breakfast clubs for those parents who can't get up and spend ten minutes making cereal (not an insult to them all, some of them just literally do not have the time and must go to work).
But a child (anyone under 18 now) coming in with even unwashed clothes, or hunger? That's an issue that gets referred to social services pretty damn quick. I'm not saying they can act immediately, but we have a range of neglect laws and getting taken into care can happen pretty damn quick if the parents obviously aren't around, can't cope or don't give a shit.
It's not the school's job to be doing this. And it's quite telling of a complete failure of social care, rather than a success story for a school. "We finally fed the kids, now they are doing better"? Well, fucking yes!
Something like 40-50% of kids in the UK are eligible for free school meals, you have to declare the figure as part of being a school and I've been involved in that many times. But even in schools where that's been near 100%, I've yet to see kids suffering complete neglect or lack of suitable social care to this extent.
You don't have that quite right, and there seem to be some things that you don't realize.
It’s Not ‘Unfair’ for Charter Schools to Expel Disruptive Students
After Katrina, Fundamental School Reform in New Orleans
Today, about 91 percent of New Orleans students attend charter schools.
These reforms altered public education in New Orleans, but they did not eliminate it: Charter schools are public schools, although they do not answer to school-district administrators. They are still paid for by the taxpayers, but the government’s principal role, apart from channeling the funding to the various schools, is oversight — that is, holding schools accountable and, if a school is found to be ineffective, closing it.
A team of academic researchers, led by Tulane University’s Douglas Harris, has been studying the impact of New Orleans’s education revolution. In a recent report, Harris and his colleagues found that the reforms have produced enormous gains. Test-score improvements for New Orleans students are of a life-changing size — on average, the students’ percentile rankings on standardized exams are up by about 15 points. New Orleans students are now more likely to graduate from high school and attend college.
The Big Easy’s experience demonstrates that radical education reform can fundamentally improve the lives of poor urban kids. ... Previous research had suggested that incremental education reform can be positive. New Orleans demonstrates that comprehensive reform can be a stunning success.
If 91% of the students are in charter schools it is hard to claim that they are only taking the cream of the crop, isn't it? And yet they are still making large gains in performance.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
And how useful is private education?
Here's a government report on the topic:
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsrep...
TL;DR: In some subjects, the private schools "significantly" outperformed public schools, but overall they're only slightly better.