Who Wants Public School Rankings
One of the most popular and controversial topics in education is the use of public school rankings. Generally speaking, parents love them and teachers hate them. Makes sense. Teachers are judged, criticized, and sometimes rewarded or punished on the basis of public school rankings. For those teachers already in challenging, inner-city environments, public schools rankings tend to offer little but added stress.
Parents, on the other hand, see public school rankings as a concrete way to judge and evaluate potential schools and current teachers. For parents moving to a new area, public school rankings are an anchor to reality; a way to make the difficult decision of where to live or not live. But the issue of public school rankings really goes deeper. I think it lies in the inherent mistrust between parents in low income areas and school systems in general.
Tags: added stress, affluent families, city environments, controversial topics, inner city residents, inner city schools, middle class families, public school rankings, schools struggle, upper middle classRelated posts
What Has Happened to Public Schools
Why do we face such a sad situation in our public schools Children are performing below accepted standards, SAT scores are declining, moral values are all but non-existent, and the optimism that once ruled America is being replaced with a deep pessimism and worry about the future. What is the cause of the problems in our schools today
The most often thought of problem is money. The notion being that schools performance is directly related to the money spent per child. If this was true, then how does that correlate with the national average of over $17,000 per child, K-12 for public schools versus around $9,000 per child, K-12, for private schools. Now, I’m sure this number varies as I got this data from a study done by The Cato Institute, but regardless of whose numbers you use the relative nature of expenditures remains about the same.
Tags: cato institute, demarcation point, private school teachers, public school teachers, public schools face, relative nature, special needs kids, supreme court decision, teen pregnancy, what happened in 1963