I’m guessing that like George Bailey, Vincent Sheheen expected a bigger reaction to the release he put out yesterday about his latest endorsement:
Today Vincent Sheheen, candidate for governor, will join the South Carolina Education Association for a press conference at 4:30 PM at the SCEA Headquarters, where they will be announcing their support of his campaign.
WHAT: SCEA Endorsement of Vincent Sheheen for Governor
WHEN: TODAY, TUESDAY, September 7, 2010 at 4:30 PM
WHERE: SCEA Headquarters, 421 Zimalcrest Drive, Columbia, SC
####
But like Mr. Carter, I’m underwhelmed. I didn’t even bother to show up. I suppose Sheheen did, but I haven’t checked.
The SCEA endorsed the Democrat for governor? Well, I guess they do those things… now let’s look at your books, so I can get back to my family in Elmira… (And if you know me, you know I’d just as soon drill a new hole in my head as look at anybody’s books.)
And I say this as a guy who really, really wants to see Vincent Sheheen elected governor.
For that reason, and knowing what it takes to win, I want to hear about more endorsements like the one from the S.C. Chamber of Commerce.
And I’m not just putting this on the Sheheen campaign. I’m saying that some of you business leaders and independents and community leaders who could actually exert influence in Republican and swing voter circles — including some who have shared with me off the record their fervent hopes that Vincent (and NOT Nikki) get elected — need to get out of your comfort zones, and stand up and be counted.
Yeah, standing up for something might cost you something. But not as much as it will cost South Carolina to waste another four years the way we have the past eight.
There are a lot of good, smart people in South Carolina who want the best for our state. But you know what I’ve noticed over the last couple of decades about good, smart people who want the best for South Carolina? They tend to be spineless. Whereas the demagogues and peddlers of negativity never rest, and aren’t a bit shy. (I’m not saying the SCEA aren’t good people. I’m just saying that they’re the usual suspects. Statewide elections in SC can be won by Democrats only when they can demonstrate support far beyond the usuals suspects.)
Vincent Sheheen is a good guy who’s standing up. So should you. And you know who you are.
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Here’s a follow-up release from Sheheen from a few minutes ago:
He wants to increase teacher pay but won’t answer the simple question of how he would do that. Because it would mean either raising taxes or cutting something else. Sounds pretty spineless to me.
Whoever gets elected, I hope he/she has better luck at doing anything to fix the dismal situation that our Democrat Superintendents of Education have left us with over the past twelve years. A bunch of tests, billions of dollars spent of brick-and-mortar and consultants, and the result: nothing of substance. The dropout rate in high school remains abysmal. The gap between blacks and whites remains wide.
Unless someone is serious about changing the entire system from top to bottom, it will be more of the same.
Since you have the hotline to the Sheheen campaign, why don’t you get him to go on the record on specific education issues instead of the mindless pap of “raise teacher pay and cut class size (which has never been proven to have any real effect)”.
1) Does he think PASS testing is adding value? If so, how?
2) Does he think we should consolidate school districts? How many?
3) Should teacher’s be paid for performance or paid based on years of service and degrees held?
4) Has the dropout rate been acceptable during the Rex administration?
Answering those kind of questions would show some spine…
Seriously, Brad? Those tabs have been there for months. I don’t see anything new.
I even quoted his comments about the Commerce Department on your blog two months ago asking why he didn’t identify what he calls ” political cronyism that has made our Commerce Department ineffective and unaccountable.”
Someone with guts/spine/testicles would be specific about who the cronies are.
His campaign has been so underwhelming I’m really starting to think he doesn’t want to win so that he’d have to give up his day job.
Try again.
Here’s the entire Sheheen platform for improving the education system in this state:
“Increase Teacher Pay; Decrease Class Sizes
Common sense tells us that good pay helps to retain good teachers. Neighboring states like Georgia pay their teachers an average of $10,000 more per year than South Carolina. To attract and retain the best and brightest in our classrooms, Vincent has worked to raise teacher salaries.
As the parents of three elementary school children, Vincent and his wife Amy know firsthand that our kids learn better in smaller classes. Vincent is committed to lowering class sizes so that all South Carolina children can receive the attention they need.”
I wonder if he’s committed to providing rainbows and lollipops every day too?
You’ve told us he’s a policy wonk. Let’s see it.
Oh, Doug — you’re always looking for more info from Sheheen. Check out his new website, unveiled this week. The parts that would probably interest you would be the links to policy statements on the “issues” tab, such as “Jobs and the Economy,” “Government Reform,” “Education,” “Environment,” “Health Care.”
Aside from the “Jobs and the Economy” one, they all could stand fleshing out, I’m guessing you’d say. I know more off the top of my head about what Vincent wants to do on government reform, for instance, than is included on that page.
The site’s new. Hopefully those sections will be fleshed out soon.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m speaking as a middle school teacher with 21 years experience. I am content with my pay. I would like smaller class sizes.
There have been thousands of studies that have examined the impact of class size on performance. Some have shown that size does matter; others have shown that it does not. There are other factors that impact performance, and it is nearly impossible to account for all of the factors impacting a learner’s performance. Generally speaking, small class size (18 or less) is more important academically in the lower grades (K-3). In the upper grades there are other types of benefits (social, emotional) that impact achievement.
Here’s how class size impacts me as a teacher: In a smaller class I am able to develop closer relationships with my students–a key component of getting someone to do something they may not choose to do on their own (like inferring what the results of a lab investigation mean or to consider why the wind blows). In a larger class, I am more limited in the types of learning activities that I am able to set up for my students. A class of 22 students can be more easily monitored during a lab activity than a class of 29; I am able to spend more time with those who need more help. As class size increases, there are more students who need more help.
Merit pay for teachers has been shown to have little impact on improving performance. Most teachers I know are opposed to merit pay (and there is no teachers’ union in SC).
Our dropout rate is abysmal–in the neighborhood of 35% or more. That doesn’t include those who take longer than 4 years to graduate or who eventually return to school for a GED, which would reduce the rate slightly. Nationally, there are a number of programs that have been successful at reducing the dropout rate. Most offer some sort of alternative program to their students other than college prep or here’s-a-diploma. In other words, they offer an education meaningful for the student.
The states with the highest dropout rates are mostly southern states. The states with the lowest dropout rates are mostly in the northeast. The states with the lowest per-pupil spending are in the south. The states with the highest per-pupil spending are in the northeast. There may not be a causal relationship, but there is certainly a correlation.
Public education in South Carolina will continue to lag behind the rest of the nation until we get serious about funding public education. I don’t anticipate it happening during my career.
Doug,
You talk like our state test is the sole invention of democratic state superintendents. Surely you are aware our state test is a result of the federal requirement for states to have a test to measure their curriculum standards.
So what power do states have? – to set appropriate standards, and to make the test as useful as possible under the circumstances. I believe the democratic superintendents have done both those things over the past decade.
Our standards have consistently been ranked as some of the more rigorous and been shown to be more in alignment with the national NAEP test than many other states. Jim Rex revised PACT to PASS so that more detailed results could be returned to teachers in a more timely manner to inform their teaching.
So I’m not exactly sure what you are getting at by attacking state officials over the PASS test. To not have a test would be to give up federal education funding, which in this state is just so not an option.
I’m not sure how I feel about merit pay. I’m not necessarily against it, but I’d have to know more about how they’d measure teacher merits. To get an accurate measure could be complicated since there are many factors that go into student achievement, only one of which is the teaching. If it was done well, it could potentially be powerful. If not done well, it could further depress an already sad level of teacher morale.
@norm
I’m all for spending more on paying good teachers more money. But only if we spend less on other things – like $30 million dollar football stadiums for high schools. Until the school systems are willing to make education a priority, why should we spend more?
Here’s a real world example of how messed up the priorities are: my son’s senior year American government class doesn’t have a textbook this semester. Why? Because someone got a grant that allowed the school to purchase iPads to use instead. Really? Is that necessary? There’s nothing that can be done on an iPad that couldn’t be done on a regular PC (which they already have hundreds of). I’d be perfectly fine with them READING from a BOOK and WRITING on PAPER. It’s a proven method of education.
Also, in South Carolina we have seen what happens when you spend more money on education in places like Allendale – no meaningful improvement in a decade. I would suggest that it is not a matter of spending on education but instead a function of the culture/social structure of those areas. No amount of education spending will create the home environment that leads to a productive learners.
Doug, “the culture/social structure of those areas” that you mention extend far beyond the “Corridor of Shame”.
In fact, I would say that your comment is perfectly illustrative of the larger problem facing South Carolina, if not the entire South. We ALL fail our children and our neighbors’ children; our parent’s failed us in the same way. That’s what happens when the structure and mindset is centered on us vs. them. Education is an issue much bigger than just the students or educators. Education is a cornerstone of society – and of our economy.
I do agree that the gilded stadiums are an obscene symbol of misplaced spending. However, I would suggest that these are not spending priorities for any district Superintendent, but instead of the local community. Another good example of us vs. them decision-making.
@mark
I disagree on the football stadium funding being a community decision. We weren’t given the choice in Richland 2. It was all packaged in one bond referendum. I believe there was $18 million in there for a new administration building as well. I’d LOVE to have the opportunity to vote on individual projects.
And, sorry, but it is NOT my responsibility to make sure my neighbor’s kid does his homework. I didn’t fail one bit if that kid fails. I paid my taxes to provide an educational opportunity for all kids and they chose not to take advantage of it. My taxes pay for the free lunches, the Pre-K headstart, the football stadium, the iPads… they have the gift of education handed to them on a silver platter and choose to toss it aside. Tough luck. That’s the way the world works – those who work hard typically are rewarded.
It’s a government system that props up those people who aren’t willing to be responsible that makes the failure generational.
Didn’t the Republican administration of David Beasley implement an entire spectrum of state education testing requirements?
Sheheen would be foolish to say he’d raise taxes to decrease class sizes. I wish he would say that. I think it’s the right thing to be willing to do. I’d support him even more for it.
But he knows that my fellow Republicans (who are really Libertatians that have screwed up the Republican party) will brand him a Washington liberal and nonthinking SC citizens will buy that hook, line, and sinker.
How many districts did Mark Sanford consolidate in his 8 years as governor? Since this is such a great idea (and it may be). How many did Beasley consolidate?
How many has Nikki Haley mentioned she’d consolidate? Which ones? Where is the list?
waiting…
@barry
The governor has no power to do anything in this state.
Yes, Barry, Scout had it wrong. The PACT, and then PASS, test did NOT result from “the federal requirement for states to have a test to measure their curriculum standards.”
The Education Accountability Act, which created our testing regimen, predates the federal requirement. It was passed in 1998 at the behest of Beasley’s PASS commission, which reflected a consensus among business leaders and Republicans that we should set stringent standards and test to see whether they were being met, in the interest of holding schools “accountable.”
Inez Tenenbaum, elected that year, had nothing to do with shaping that legislation. But she had to implement it, over the resistance of much of the education establishment.
Over the years, there was a lot of complaining about the PACT test from two quarters. First, teachers and their advocates complained that the test did nothing to help them help individual students. Which was an odd complaint, since it was never intended for that. The point was to measure the effectiveness of schools, which is why schools, and not students, got report cards based on the scores.
The second sort of complaint came from a new kind of “conservative” that basically despised public schools and raised the PACT as some sort of obsession of the “educrats” that was a huge waste of time and money, utterly ignoring the fact that it was a conservative scheme meant to hold the “educrats” accountable.
Anyway, all of the complaints coalesced in a general movement to replace PACT with something else, and the PASS became its successor.
As for the federal legislation — about all it has done is penalize South Carolina for having high standards. Basically, all of the states are allowed to have whatever standards they choose, and judged (and rewarded or punished) on the basis of whether they meet those standards. So South Carolina, which had set some of the highest standards in the nation in connection with the EAA, would be penalized because it didn’t meet those standards as well as states with lower standards met theirs.
Sorry to point out you got that wrong, Scout. You usually get things right…
@brad
PACT was a bad idea that was implemented poorly. It served no purpose and presented unnecessary restraints on education. It’s also a fallacy to think it did anything in terms of accountability.
Accountability would mean firing bad teachers, principals, and administrators based on the results of PACT. How much of that occurred in the past decade?
All PACT told us was what we already knew – poor kids perform worse in school. What a revelation!
Also, here’s the link to Nikki Haley’s Issues page on Education. At least she goes further than Sheheen’s two feel-good paragraphs.
http://www.nikkihaley.com/education
Here are the top 5 bullet points:
* Reforming the funding formula to get more dollars to schools in poor areas
* Rewarding great teachers for taking on difficult teaching assignments
* Re-orienting resources away from unneeded bureaucracies and into the classrooms
* Focusing on improving vocational alternatives for at-risk children
* Strengthening and expand public charter schools
As a vocational high school graduate, I agree with point 4 wholeheartedly – in fact, vocational education at the high school level would do more to cut the dropout rate than any other program. The state needs plumbers, electricians, auto repair techs, chefs, etc. They don’t need students sitting in a classroom wondering why they need to take exams on Shakespeare and Quadratic Equations. Some do, most don’t.
And think of this – if you presented the Sheheen platform (increase teacher pay, cut classes) and the Haley platform (shift dollars to poor areas, reward great teachers, cut bureacracy, voke ed, charter schools) to the black community, which platform is going to get a better response?
Actually, Doug, what I was just reading — and was about to post, but got distracted — was that Sheheen wants to send more to the poor districts. Nikki wants to further slash the Dept. of Ed., in keeping with the right-wing fantasy that THAT’S where all the money’s going, and send it to all districts.
Both points of view have their strong points, of course, but Sheheen’s addresses the real education problem in SC. As you alluded to above, it’s a poverty issue.
Oops. Here’s the link to what I was referring to…
I don’t know, Brad. The way I read Haley’s proposal on funding, she wants the money to follow the student and flow up from the school districts to the Dept. of Ed. instead of flowing downward after they have taken their cut.
How is that idea a right-wing fantasy if the same formula applies to every student? Imagine if local school boards had the authority to tell the Dept. of Ed., “No thanks, we’ll try to manage these issues ourselves and hold onto all the dollars.” That would certainly be better for the poorer districts.
Actually, I’m not at all sure that it would. I this is something I’ve sort of been changing my mind about over the years.
I used to think of public education as primarily a LOCAL function, and wanted state and federal gummints to stay out of their hair. Up the local school board!
But the principle of subsidiarity to which I subscribe holds that governmental functions should be handled by the smallest, most local level of government that can handle them competently — and that the function of the higher, larger levels is to take over where they can’t.
And increasingly, it became clear that one problem hurting schoolkids in South Carolina is that — especially in some of these poor, rural districts — the local boards and administration are simply incompetent to tackle the challenges that they face. That suggests that the state as a whole needs to make a special effort to intervene and help out. Consolidate districts, to be sure. But even if you get down to one per county (which seems about right to me), there are going to be counties that are too poor, and too thinly populated, to have all the resources they need to overcome the huge challenges involved in teaching poor kids from families that have never known academic achievement.
A lot of this is a failure of communities. One of the effects of white flight in SC’s small towns, post-1970, was that the better-educated people who had their hands on the local pursestrings simply turned away from public schools. Lose the middle class, and public education tends to fall apart, and I think we’ve seen that in a lot of parts of South Carolina. This is one of the things that makes it particularly ridiculous to suggest vouchers or tax credits as a “solution” for these districts. Encouraging MORE flight by the most motivated parents (which is whom you’d get) is a sure formula for making matters worse for those who remain.
But I digress. Bottom line, I’ve come over time to think of education as a state, not local, responsibility. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes something much larger to have the resources to help the villages that lack the resources. I still think we can do without the federal Dept. of Ed.
Speaking of which — it always gripes me to hear alleged “conservatives” gripe about the “educrats” at the Dept. of Ed. If these “conservatives” truly believed in setting the schools free, they wouldn’t have demanded “accountability” on the state and national levels. There’s only one way to get more “accountability” from government — you hire bureaucrats to provide oversight.
When the EFA and EIA were passed, and even more the EAA, the assumption was that school would NOT be trusted, but would have to spend each penny they got on THIS and THIS, and that mechanisms would be set up to make sure they did. Why? Because conservatives didn’t trust “educrats” with the money. It’s a vicious cycle.
I don’t think there are many conservatives who would continue to support PACT/PASS considering how it turned it. It was sold as accountability and turned into a waste of tax dollars with no accountability. Teachers hated it, parents hated it, students hated it. The only people who liked it were the people getting paid to come up with the tests and collect the data… well, the school boards liked it when the results made it look like their school was doing well. As soon as the results turned, they started coming up with all the reasons why the test wasn’t a real indicator of the school’s performance. Then it fell back to “well, look how many free-and-reduced lunch kids we have”. Yeah, we knew that a decade ago.
Oops. Sorry, I did get the timing wrong. The world of school has become so inundated with NCLB pressures that the days of EAA seem but a faint shadow. But I still think my basic point stands because, unless I’m mistaken, when the federal requirements came a few years later, SC used the (yes, already created) PACT and now the PASS to address the federal requirements, as well. So at this point, it is a situation where, the federal requirements supersede much at the state level, unless we want to give up the federal money, which I really don’t think we can afford to do. I think that was all leading to the point that… I’m not sure that Sheheen’s or Haley’s opinion of PASS is really that relevant (though Doug seems to think they should have a militant stance on the subject.)
We may well be able to do without a federal department of education, but I do honestly believe that were it not for IDEA (the federal special ed law) many children with disabilities in rural South Carolina would be stuck in a room and given coloring sheets all day for their entire K-12 life by well meaning but ignorant people who would say “bless their hearts, they can’t do any more than that.” But they can. And I’m glad I get the opportunity to help them, even in spite of the insane amount of paperwork IDEA requires.
PACT gave teachers absolutely no feedback. Some districts invested in another test to get the feedback they needed.
PASS, a new and different test altogether, is supposed to provide the feedback in time to help the students their weak areas.
If we really want to see how we measure up to the rest of the country, I don’t know why every public school across the country doesn’t take exactly the same test. SAT/ACT tests certainly are the wrong way to measure; the highest scoring states on these tests have only a select few who take them.
Doug,
Again, in the interest of full disclosure: I am working on my M.Ed. in Educational Technology at USC-Aiken. I also just received a classroom set of netbooks to use in my science classroom. I am bullish on classroom technology.
I cannot speak to whether your son’s class needed iPads. I am convinced that every classroom would benefit from one-to-one computing. My classroom did not have computers available for daily use for every student until last fall. There are still many classes that do not, and I am in a very progressive district when it comes to technology (RSD2). I’ll take a computer with an internet connection over any textbook out there. Information changes and increases so rapidly that a traditional textbook is outdated by the time it arrives at the school. A traditional textbook cannot contain a fraction of the information available online. And most textbook companies have online textbooks anyway. I can’t think of a single advantage that traditional books and paper have over digital technologies.
The trend in education at the post-secondary and lower levels is toward distance learning and self-directed learning. My M.Ed. program is entirely online–my current course uses the Second Life virtual world as a meeting place for class. Technology is allowing educators and institutions to customize learning activities to the needs of the individual student. New York City’s School of One is one program that is really pushing it as far as they can. A good book about the possibilities of educational technology is Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen, et al.
@Doug Ross
“The governor has no power to do anything in this state.”
Sure they do. But they have to make a good faith effort to work with both sides of whatever issue is at stake.
They can’t run against ” the government in Columbia” and then expect to work with it to get anything done anymore than a college football coach can talk about how crappy high school coaches are and expect to recruit their football players.
and I’ll admit to you or anyone else- I don’t listen to folks that complain about public schools in a constant negative tone unless they volunteer in their local elementary, middle or high school on a regular basis (and regular I mean weekly or 4-5 times a month at a minimum) like I do. If you do volunteer that much, then I’ll listen respectfully.
I find it worthless to listen to someone that doesn’t know what the real world is like.
@barry
Two years PTO President at Nelson Elementary, volunteered many times and many ways while my kids were in elementary and middle school, less frequently since they got to high school and my job has me out of state most of the year. I went in weekly two read to two third graders (one fetal alchohol syndrome, one kid from broken home). Ran fundraisers for elementary school, chaperoned out of state field trips, taught a summer class on computer programming for free to fifth graders, participated in job fairs… also have been a Sunday School teacher for multiple years, a high school basketball coach…
and my spouse has worked in the school system for the past ten years.
Hopefully that puts me above the “worthless” level. Not that I care what you think…
@Norm
I’ve been in the IT industry for 30 years. I’ve taught hundreds of classes in person and dozens remotely. I understand the power of technology in education. I also can see when it is just a gimmick (and an expensive one). iPads are a gimmick. My point was that there is nothing an iPad is going to add to the educational process that a PC cannot.
It still comes down to content + an engaged student + an experienced teacher.
The worst technology ever introduced at the grade 1-12 level was Powerpoint and Word.
Doug,
If you, or anyone else for that matter, do not feel responsible for their neighbor’s children’s educational opportunities, then you are simply a supporter of the ongoing Culture of Poverty that holds down our state. Only by making decisions – that means taking an active role – that will be of benefit to the next generations will we pull ourselves out of our dismal rakings. And yes, it will take time and commitment to things from which we will not directly benefit. This is as much an economic as it is a social issue. Government – or school boards – cannot, as you point out, lead on this issue. It depends entirely on the collective will of the citizenry to be engaged, to make sacrifices and to look to the future.
This is why other social groups succeed where the South most often does not; “us vs. them” is not the way forward. We hold ourselves back and instead congratulate ourselves for our resistance to, well, whatever.
Humans succeed through collaboration; it’s why capitalism is such a powerful force. Isolationism – individualism – is not. If everyone simply wants to be left alone to do their own thing, then we have given up on the very thing that collectively benefits us all.
The Welfare State that people keep complaining about exists because we individually fail to add up to a collective societal force focused on improving the world for our children and grandchildren, etc.
We must be an example, be a role model, be a mentor, be a leader, be a teacher, be a believer in the power of human potential. We must value the opportunities available to our neighbor’s children as much as we value those available to our own. That’s the way forward.
@mark
Sorry, but I disagree. Success in capitalism comes from the collective efforts of smart, hard working people. It doesn’t come from the collective efforts of average or below average people.
The upper 10% of the bell curve has done more to advance society than the rest of the 90% combined.
My experience in the working world has been that a) I am a product of my own efforts and skills and b) a small group of smart people can outperform a larger group every time.
You set up a false premise of “us vs. them”. There is no us or them. It’s all “us”. My neighbor’s kids have the same opportunities as mine do. Should I sacrifice my children’s opportunities for them if their parents aren’t pulling their own weight? I’ll gladly help someone who asks for help and makes an effort. That’s different from taking my tax dollars, funneling them thru the government, and giving them to someone without any expectation of performance.
@ Doug– I am fairly frugal, personally, and I get your point about PCs vs. iPads–except that iPads are actually not very expensive –we aren’t talking iMacs or MacBook Pros here, they require far less IT support, and in fact, many consumer experts think Apple computers may be more expensive to purchase, but since they have so much more included and since they are more reliable to operate, end up costing an average home user less. In addition, Apple has in the past, and may continue to, heavily discounted its products to schools (get ’em when they’re young).
We have Macs.
@ Doug–re: success and your personal experience
here’s a very well reasoned counter-argument to applying your method of being successful to everyone else:
http://lifehacker.com/5634357/dangerous-ideas-getting-started-is-overrated?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lifehacker%2Ffull+%28Lifehacker%29
My husband is a huge fan of Fooled by Randomness.
I agree that a select few do make a difference and lead the majority through innovation. Beyond that, how does one pick the “10%” of high-performing children? Based upon their parents’ success? On achievement?
What of the others? Seems as though you would rather see them as an anchor then as an oar.
@kathryn
They already have PC’s. The iPads are a) an incremental cost and b) another platform to support.
Instead of iPads, they should have access to a website with all the same information.
@kathryn
I’m not sure I get the connection. I’ve read The Black Swan and Outliers. Sure, there is randomness in the success/failure of people. But are you suggesting that effort combined with skill will produce results no different than no effort and no skill? If so, then I should expect to be called to perform in the lead in Swan Lake any day now when my random chance occurs.
My point was (and remains) many people have the same opportunities (public education, libraries, school loans) available to them and choose not to take advantage of them. That’s not my problem or my concern. I’d rather see resources allocated to people who demonstrate the desire to use them. That’s it.
Does paying welfare and supplying Medicaid to people lift them up or just keep them tethered to the ground?
The article fairly succinctly makes the point about survivor bias that we assume that since people who are successful work hard yadda yadda, that wokring hard makes one successful, when in fact there are many intervening opportunities to fail, despite hard work etc. etc.
Effort, skill, talent, timing,but also the economy, the “breaks” –there are plenty of external factors that can derail success, and judging from the folks who populate the TV reality airwaves these days, effort and skill are not necessarily prerequisites to wealth.
I believe that Medicaid, for one, provides medical care to the extremely poor. While that is not necessarily sufficient to lift them up, it is certainly necessary. Food aid to hungry poor kids–necessary, if not sufficient to raise them up.
If you are sick, hungry and, possibly homeless, you are unlikely to rise up from the ground.
Doug,
Thought you might find this article on how some groups have overcome India’s caste system to be interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/world/asia/11caste.html
Doug says…”My point was (and remains) many people have the same opportunities (public education, libraries, school loans) available to them and choose not to take advantage of them. That’s not my problem or my concern. I’d rather see resources allocated to people who demonstrate the desire to use them. That’s it. ”
I respect this point of view, but I also wonder if “choose” is really the most fair word for this situation in some cases. We’ve discussed the way poverty and culture affect the prospects of people in places like Allendale. I think the same kind of thing is in effect here. I think poverty and culture affect the way people are able to perceive and realize the possibilities offered by the opportunities you name in the same way middle class people are primed to perceive them by the culture they are raised in.
It doesn’t change your point, Doug, and I know your mind will not change.
I just personally have trouble with the “that’s not my problem or concern” attitude (I mean for me to have – not you). I don’t know what the answer is though. I really would like people in need to avail themselves of the opportunities, but there is some kind of barrier we haven’t cracked.
My words are flowing awkwardly tonight. I hope this makes some sense.
@scout–nicely said. I think some of it is what psychologists call “learned helplessness.” Basically, if a subject gets slapped down enough times, he/she/it will give up. The amount of time it takes to learn this response varies, of course.
@scout
Today’s State newspaper has a story that shows just what’s wrong with the current educational system.
http://www.thestate.com/2010/09/12/1460772/schools-cut-failing-pupils-some.html
Some school districts are now setting the lowest grade a student can get on a test at 60. Just so the students won’t get discouraged by a bad grade. So a kid can do no work, get nothing right on a test, and still get a 60.
How in the world does this make sense? All it does is reward laziness.
@Doug–
Did you miss the part about how grading too low just makes one failing grade a recipe for permanent failure? And about how the margins between the other grades are fairly small, while F is huge?
A kid blows a test. Now what do we do? Teach him a lesson, by gum, so he’ll learn he’s a failure and that’s that? Or figure out how to fix the situation if the kid gets fired up or even gets some assistance? Too many kids age out of school–they flunk one test–maybe because Mom/Dad/whoever was drunk and violent the night before, maybe because they were sick but sent to school anyway–and maybe because they have learning issues–or are lazy–and cannot be advanced a grade, and eventually are stuck in the 8th grade (if that) at 17—a recipe for a drop out.
These are kids whose brains aren’t fully matured into the notion of consequences–that doesn’t happen until about 25. Why be a hard-a&& about it?
That’s how in the world it makes sense.
Actually the main thing Doug misses, as usual, is the nature of news. He misunderstands why he is reading this.
This item is NEWS because it is new and different, an aberration from expectations. And now that it has been reported, expect the policy to be “walked back.” Maybe not immediately, but over time, as more people hear about it and react to it.
We news people have done a terrible thing to this country, especially we post-Watergate newsies. We’ve hammered so much on the awful things that happen in government that we’ve trained a generation (or two) to believe the things we’re reporting are the NORM. Meanwhile, we supposedly hard-bitten news types are actually LESS cynical than our readers, because we see the whole picture, and know that the bad things we write about are by definition the exceptions, not the rule…
Of course, we don’t write nearly as much — not even a tiny fraction as much — about all the waste and corruption and foolishness in the private sector, for two reasons: We don’t see it as our main mission, and it’s a LOT harder to report on, because it’s far less transparent.
And the result is, we have all these folks who think the private sector is inherently better, smarter, more efficient, more honest, etc., than the public.
When in truth, people are people, whether in the public or private sector…
Of course, there’s always the possibility that Kathryn’s view will hold sway, and we’ll see more of this sort of thing.
Since I’m a hardass, I hope not. But if I lose the argument, that’s the way things should work in a Republic. I don’t have to like it.
The point of reporting on it, ultimately, is so that, in the multilateral, multilevel conversations that produce public policy (of which stories such as this are a tiny part, and blogs like mine and even tinier one) we can decide which way we want to go.
One more thought:
Doug may also want to read, in the WSJ today, about how businesses prefer graduates from public colleges to those from private.
And no, neither USC nor Clemson made the Top 25. But that just underlines how appropriate it is for them to pursue such excellence, and how wrong it is for the public-higher-ed opponents such as our governor to try to hold them back.
@kathryn
I didn’t miss the points you mentioned. First, one test does not typically make or break a final grade – they are averaged out for a reason. There are typically multiple tests, quizzes, homework grades, etc. that make up the final grade. One bad day shouldn’t have a serious impact. Many teachers also throw out the lowest grade already.
Second, the reason there is a wide gap in the F range is because knowing only 10% of the material IS a big difference from knowing 60%. To show up for a test and get a 10% means you probably didn’t pay attention in class, didn’t ask questions, didn’t study, or all three. You get the score you earned.
It all comes down to lowering the standards that we all somehow were able to meet growing up. We need to set the bar at a reasonable level and expect students to make the effort to reach the bar. Lowering the bar doesn’t help anybody in the long run.
@brad
Naturally, I think the private sector is generally better than the public sector. But then, I look at the world as it appears in front of me and not the theoretical version I envision in my head.
Which public entities would you invest in if you could buy shares in them? What are the public sector equivalent of Google, Apple, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Walmart, L.L. Bean, Nordstrom, Lexus, Levi Strauss, McDonalds, and on and on… in terms of efficiency and innovation? An even simpler question – which state government communications office does better work than ADCO? Which state employees would ADCO hire in a second to manage a new ad campaign?
@Brad– It’s not *me* you are believing or disbelieving–it’s the article’s writers and people quoted in it….and mathematics.
@Doug–how many quizzes and tests do you think are being given, and what is the chance that someone who scores in the teens can pull an Ace out of the hat.
Guys, we aren’t talking college students here. We’re talking school kids–many of whom aren’t even teenagers, and many of whom come from dodgy backgrounds — the ones with helicopter parents don’t usually flunk, much less flunk in a big way.
And let’s not forget some other “strategies” used to help kids do less work:
1) Points are given in some high school classes for bringing in cans of food to the Christmas food drive.
2) There are also policies in effect at the local high schools where if you fail a test (you know get a REAL grade of 60 or less), you can attend two help sessions and then retake the test on a Friday after school and then get the average of the two tests. That’s a far more acceptable policy than just giving a kid a 60 for making no effort.
And today’s news tells us that despite everything that has been done in public education over the past decades, SAT scores dropped by two points in SC last year. These are kids who grew up on PACT.
We need to change the entire system if we want to see change beyond the 2 points up, 2 points down we’ve seen for years.
We’ve spent more, created more specialized programs, lowered the bar, tested more… it has no real effect.
I’m feeling some “learned helplessness” right about now.
It really doesn’t much matter why or how; but this state has a seriously under-educated population. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to provide a better formula.
Underinvesting in our future human capital will never get us going in the right direction.
Kathryn sez: “what is the chance that someone who scores in the teens can pull an Ace out of the hat”
I don’t know what the chances are (and I distrust numerical calculations of probability), but I did it all the time. Zeros on quizzes, followed by a 98 on the six-weeks test. The zeros were merely a measurement of my complete disengagement from assigned reading. The final test was the result of the teacher having gone over it and over it (and OVER it and OVER it and OVER it…) until even someone as distracted as I was couldn’t help but take it in…
It is to that tendency that I owe my solid C record through most of my school years…
They just don’t give that many tests any more–too many students, not enough time.
I can get behind the retaking option….
@Doug,
You also seem to have missed that 60 is still an F. A 60 is not a reward; it is still failing. If a kid continually makes no effort and gets all 60’s with this new policy – he has still failed. But, on the other hand, a kid that is making an effort but just had an off day for who knows what reason (and Kathryn gave some good ones) is able to still be in the game – is able to be kept engaged by their teacher because there is a chance to pull up a 60. This policy could be the difference between a kid completely giving up on school out of a sense of futility vs. continuing to try.
“It all comes down to lowering the standards that we all somehow were able to meet growing up. ”
Newsflash for Doug – the standards in place in schools now are not the ones that we had growing up. The irony here may be that teachers of past times had much more leeway to pass people along in exactly the manner you seem to be despising, and it probably happened more often than people knew. What did a diploma mean before we had an exit exam or MAP/PASS testing to make sure that grade level work was actually grade level work – was actually aligned with appropriate standards. With powerschool now in many districts, there is no way to not grade exactly by the numbers – there is no way for a teacher to, say, bump up a grade by a + for extra effort or the like, and you are fooling yourself if you think that sort of thing didn’t happen.
We have raised our standards and we are nakedly bound to them with the current system. We’ll never know how the schools of your/my day would have stacked up against the standards and measurement practices of today.
2 points of a 2400 point scale is less than .08%. We need to improve – no argument, and an increase would have been better – no argument. But a less than .08% drop is not exactly precipitous.
“We’ve spent more, created more specialized programs, lowered the bar, tested more… it has no real effect.”
Wrong – we’ve raised the bar on standards and poverty levels have increased steadily, which you forgot to mention. Holding essentially steady on SAT scores in the face of rising poverty levels is not “no real effect.”
You actually learn from repeated testing. Especially from “pop quizzes.”
@scout
I’ll go back to something I said before – all the testing and standards have shown is that poor kids don’t do as well. No amount of money spent on education will remedy that situation. The evidence is overwhelming. Allendale is the perfect example. No matter what has been done, no matter that we spend more money there than anywhere in the state, the results are the same.
That’s why I support vouchers. Better to save a few students who have parents willing to make the effort to save their kids than to keep throwing money down the drain.
Also, the 2 points is on a 1600 scale. They only count the Math and Critical Reading. And it’s not 1600 points. There is no zero score on the SAT – you get 200 points for signing your name. So it’s 2 points on 1200 (800-200)*2. And I believe this is the third year in a row that the results have dropped.
In order to do better we must do something radically different.
@ Doug–
“Better to save a few students who have parents willing to make the effort to save their kids than to keep throwing money down the drain.”
So we give up on the other poor kids, who didn’t win the parent sweepstakes?
oh– and the SATs–you don’t get 200 points for signing your name. It’s more like 400 points, and that’s because they deduct 1/4 points for wrong answers, more or less–if you got every answer wrong, you could get a zero. It also is scaled–they fiddle with the raw data, so you can’t just do the arithmetic on the scores and get a perfect picture.
@kathryn
You get 200 points for each test. I showed my work.
As for the kids who didn’t win the parent sweepstakes, they get to stay in the same schools that have failed them (and their parents). That’s what they currently have. No worse off.
@kathryn
Just address the basic question: considering that SAT scores in the state have dropped for the past three years, what evidence is there to show that any of the efforts made in public education over the past decade have worked?
Let’s look at it this way; maybe only smart kids should be eligible to take the SAT. Then the schools should cull out those from previously low performing school districts and those with sub-optimal (or missing) parents. After those, further cuts could be made for perceived socio-economic disadvantages.
The students passing these screens could then take the SAT. Then, in each successive year the test-taking entry standards could be tightened incrementally; ensuring steadily rising scores for years to come and at the same time making sure that those who deserve to be rewarded with a solid education do receive one in this state.
South Carolina’s educational reputation would be restored, the good students from advantaged backgrounds would continue to benefit, and the rest of the kids could be left behind to fend for themselves in the school environments in which they presently find themselves – since they’d be “no worse off”.
Doug, seriously?
I’m not sure that there is a real, knowable answer to your question. However, I do know that effectively abandoning public education isn’t the answer. You are right on this; the bright, talented, advantaged and connected children will always get ahead (until they find a way to potentially fail on their own somewhere in life). But that’s not the point of public education – that goal is to ensure opportunity for all children. Many children need a path to escape from the lives they were born into.
A strong educational system and opportunities for socio-economic advancement are bedrocks of the meritocracy that you espouse. How does one have that without the underlying, enabling structure?
There’s plenty of evidence besides SAT scores–the SAT is a reasonable predictor of college readiness–our worst problems are not even close to college-bound. There has been plenty of good news on other measures. I just don’t want to dig around to find it—but there have been plenty of pressers by Rex and Tenenbaum for you to Google up.
I don’t think SAT tests are meant to be measures of school achievement per se. They are meant to be used as tests for admission to college. Thus, I would expect that if a group starts out well below college admission standards, they could make significant gains and still not significantly change their scores on a college board test.
I’m not arguing one way or the other on whether gains have been made. Just that I’m not sure SATs are a good measure in this case.
SAT tests are not the way to judge the education system. Some states are very selective on who they allow to take those tests; in some states, the ACT is the preferred test. For some reason, a lot of students in southern states take the SAT whether they plan to go to college or not. In no state does every high school senior take the SAT so this is an impossible comparison.
@Kathryn
You want me to look at pressers from Jim Rex and Inez to get a clear picture of how the education system is doing in this state?
Has there ever been a single case where either of them has identified an area where the system has failed? or where they didn’t blame someone else when the statistics showed a decrease?
SAT scores and high school graduation rates are the only true tests of a public education system. South Carolina is near the bottom in both and hasn’t done anything to change that situation in the tenures of Inez and Rex. They’ve spent more in general, spent more on consultants, spent more on overhead, spent more on junkets to the beach, spent more on unproven technology. What they haven’t done is been honest about the fact that nothing will improve the education of the students in this state until parents step up and take responsibility for their kids. The government can’t do it for them no matter how much blood pours from the bleeding hearts.
Here’s some facts to ponder (from ed.sc.gov).
Allendale School District (2008-2009):
Dollars spent per pupil: $12,611
Up 2.7% from 2008
Dollars spent per pupil in similar districts: $11,242
Median dollars spent per pupil in SC school districts: $9,279
30% more spent per student than a typical school district. The results?
58% do not meet PASS English standards compared to 45% for 3 similar districts. 67% do not meet PASS Math standards compared to 51% for similar districts.
But guess what? They only spend 51.9% of the dollars for instruction versus the 56.5% average across the state. Where’s the money going?
How about this? You tell me how much more (above the current 30% per student) you think it will require to get Allendale students to match the three other districts like theirs? And how long will it take?
And all of you who say “Oh, but they’re cutting education funding and it’s bad old Mark Sanford’s fault”… here’s the numbers from 2001-2002 (again, these are Dept of Ed numbers):
2001-2002 Allendale DISTRICT
• Dollars per student $10,536
Up 19.0%
Similar district. $8,031
Median district: $7,072
20+% growth in spending per student in eight years both in Allendale and across the state. And that doesn’t include all the billions spent on brick and mortar.
Sometimes the facts don’t lie. Spending up, results the same.
On the grading policy:
I don’t believe the minimum grade is new. Teachers have always found ways to mitigate the impact a low grade, whether it’s using a minimum score, dropping a score or curving the results.
By the end of this marking period, my students will have about 20 grades, of which 5 may be tests. We use weighted assignments (tests, labs, classwork, homework all have different values).
Suppose a student (my student–he’s not just a number or a statistic) whiffs on his first test. He gets a zero. On his next four tests he averages 80(C). When I average these scores together my student, who may very well be doing the best he can, has an average of 64(F) when he is very clearly now doing C work on his tests. If I change the zero to a 60, his test average is 76 (D). Which grade best reflects his true performance?
Of course, that’s just part of his grade. In reality, by the time you factor in all the other weighted assignments, the difference between a zero and a 60 amounts to about 4 points on the final grade. That’s enough to move our young man from an F to a D, or a D to a C maybe. It may just move him from a low D to a higher D. Even if he completes all his remaining assignments with a C average, his final grade is likely to be a D all because of one poor performance.
On the other hand, if he is a real slacker and all of his test grades are 60s, and he completes only half of his other assignments, he still ends up with an F for the marking period.
Looking beyond the marking period to the yearly grade–suppose I choose to be a butt about his grade and I give the slacker the grades he earned—30s and 40s and 50s. He ends the marking period with a 40. His parents get on him, and he gets busy doing his C work. He averages 80s for the remaining marking periods. His final grade, based on the average of the four marking periods is a 70. My student who has been doing C work for three-fourths of the year passes my class with barely a D. If his average for the 1st marking period was a 35 instead of a 40, he fails the entire 6th grade, not just my class. The best indicator of dropping out of high school is being held back a year in middle school. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.
My students are people—young people. They don’t always make the best decisions. My job as a teacher is not to assign a number to a person’s worthiness, but to help them grow from who they are to who they want to be.
About the SAT…
It’s been many, many years since I did the research for a favorite piece of writing I did while at Carolina, and I hope things have changed. I doubt they have.
What I found while looking for information on how standardized test were constructed was this:
Some of the questions on every standardized test are field test items–trial items (which do not count in the final score) for future versions of the test. The items were deemed acceptable if they followed an expected pattern.
If those who normally perform well on the test got the trial items right, and those who normally perform poorly on the test got the trial items wrong, they were acceptable. If everyone got the trail item right or if everyone got it wrong, the trial item was unacceptable.
Here’s the kicker–if the low-performing students got the trial items right, and the high-performing students got the trial items wrong, the trial items were deemed unacceptable. An item that raise a low score and lower a high score must be faulty.
There may be some psychometric reasoning or logic behind that kind of thinking, but it escapes me.
I mean…
An item that would raise a low score and lower a high score must be faulty.
@norm
I couldn’t agree more. Let the trained professional teacher make the call on the student’s performance. I don’t care what grade YOU give him based on your assessment of his understanding of the work. That’s your job.
The issue is whether giving a mandatory grade of 60 regardless of effort is helping to make students do better in class.
From the College Board’s website http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/pdf/RK_AERA09_SAT_MixModel.pdf
• Difficulty exists in comparing state-by-state SAT scores because of the problem of “self-selection”
• Group heterogeneity of the SAT population exists in terms of SAT participation and performance
• If subpopulations are identified, a state-by-state comparison of SAT scores within such populations can be appropriate
——-
Studies have shown the more diverse the population, the lower the averages. Self-selection is huge. Some public high schools sponsor the tests to college bound students only or to a top percentage. Some schools push taking the tests multiple times and offer test taking courses. One of the charts on the website showed a direct correlation of SAT scores to the pupil:teacher ratio per classroom.
There are too many variables in the administration of the SAT. It is impossible for this test to measure the success of an education system. Indeed, in the very first bullet, the College Board itself says the state to state comparison is difficult, if for no other reason, that it is not a mandatory test.
@pat
I’m fine with no states reporting their overall scores. I’m not fine with the Dept. of Ed taking credit when the scores go up by a couple points but not accepting responsibility when they go down.
Either accept the SAT scores as one measure of performance or ignore them. Don’t just use them for P.R. fodder.
Doug, what I’ve heard from the Dept. of Ed. over the years, pretty consistently, is this: SAT scores are a lousy way to measure how well the schools are doing. It’s not really a good idea to go by any one test, but if you insist on doing so, the best would be the NAEP, a.k.a. “the nation’s report card.” But the SAT is one of the last ones you should go by.
That said, the Dept. would then say that if you insist on looking at the SAT, look at the trend over time, which at least for a time was ever upward. During the Tenenbaum years, the rate of increase was the highest in the nation, if I remember correctly. I sense that that has slipped since then, but I don’t know what the trend is. (The years since Inez was in office are a bit of a blur to me, probably because I lost the position — once filled by Nina Brook — that we had in editorial dedicated almost entirely to writing about education. I just don’t feel as up on the subject since then.)
Bottom line, I do not remember ANY time in which education leaders have ballyhooed an increase. You may have gotten the impression that they did because you saw it in headlines — the media has always made an excessively big deal of the SAT scores, whether they go up or down. But I tend to see the raw statements from the ed establishment before the headlines are written, and in my memory they have always downplayed the importance of the scores.
KP, if you’re out there — Am I right on that?
How about going to the ed.sc.gov page and clicking on the press releases. Then go through the years and watch the tone change on SAT scores.
Here’s one from 2005. http://ed.sc.gov/news/more.cfm?articleID=571
“”I’m pleased to see this latest increase, and especially pleased that we’re still improving at such a fast pace,” said State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum. “Just six years ago the gap between South Carolina and the national average was 62 points. Today, we’ve narrowed that margin to only 35 points. That is solid, steady progress.”
““A series of focus groups have met to make recommendations for improving college entrance exam scores,” Tenenbaum said. “These groups will be refining initiatives that have been successful in recent years and incorporating ‘best practices’ from our state and across the nation to strengthen our efforts.”
Okay, so there you go. She is directly attributing the rise in scores to all the “best practices” that were implemented.
So — what happened? And where is the Jim Rex press release saying “you remember those recommendations from the focus groups back in 2005? Well, they screwed up and now we’re heading in the opposite direction for the past three years. My bad.”
If you can find me one press release from the ten year archive on ed.sc.gov where the Department of Education accepts direct responsibility for decreasing scores in any area, I’ll make a donation to your Walk For Life campaign.
They changed the SAT test in 2006 so that gave them an excuse for that year. Then 2007 rolls around and here’s the headline:
“Tuesday, August 28, 2007
South Carolina slight SAT downturn mirrors nation’s, but Advanced Placement scores see big jump”
So the drop is not OUR fault, it’s a national issue.
Reading through the SAT press releases is a real exercise in seeing how a public relations group spins data.
The 2009 release notes a six point drop. And here’s Jim Rex explaining the reason:
““It’s unclear why SAT scores declined and AP scores went up,” said State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex. “And it’s unclear why African-American students’ scores declined on the SAT but improved on AP.
Funny how they point to their own initiatives and focus groups when the scores go up.
Doug, that’s exactly what I remember, and what I was describing from memory.
That “slow, steady progress” was typical of the tone of DOE press releases in the years when there was a gain. No sensationalism or shouting from the rooftops. Just “slow, steady progress.”
And I’m not sure what you’re looking for in the years that the news wasn’t good. You say, “Funny how they point to their own initiatives and focus groups when the scores go up.”
So… what is it you’re looking for? Something like, “We initiated this initiative and that focus groups, and they had the desired effect: Scores went down.”
I seem to remember — and if you have time to peruse old press releases (I don’t today; you may notice that I’m not exactly posting much, because I’m swamped), maybe you’ll find one or two in which Rex expresses his disappointment. I can remember him doing that more than once, but can’t give you a date or anything.
Back to work…