Daddy, can you work for Chrysler so I can go to Yale?
❝The cat's out of the bag, folks. Poor kids have the life and coast right into selective schools, according to a new book [...] Is she for real?❞
Eduwonkette, being Eduwonkette, provides great figures and studies to back up her indignation. I'll go a different route.
❝Best case: Neither of your parents attended college at all, your father is a factory worker, and your mom is on disability. . . . Worst case: Your father went to Yale as an undergraduate and then Harvard Business School and is now an investment banker and your mom went to Brown, holds a Ph.D. in chemistry and works as a research chemist.❞
Locally, if "best case" parents are factory workers that student might attend Fox, Hazelwood or a similar district. The district isn't losing accreditation but is isn't an Ivy League feeder either. Since those parents didn't attend college, they may support their child's schooling but have probably left the responsibility up to the school.
The "worst case" student probably attended Clayton or Ladue if public or MICDS or Burroughs if private. Those are all Ivy League feeders with the private schools being on WSJ's list of top 50 feeder schools. That student also probably had tutors or classes in the summer starting in elementary school, not so much to feed a resume but to enrich. Language immersion classes are popular as are courses at the Gifted Resource Council. If the parents thought math facts were not stressed enough, they probably enrolled the student in Kumon. Home libraries are large, and educational kits and projects abound. All this is just in elementary school.
Go back even further. Say the "best case" student is a transfer student and is able to go to the same public county school as the "worst case." Unfortunately, she'll come into K already at a disadvantage. The other kid has had a high quality preschool, has traveled abroad, been taken to lots of cultural events such as the symphony, participated in a children's opera and already knows how to read. The school will do everything it can, but it can't make up completely for the enriched home life.
Yes, obviously some kids overcome odds, but there is a reason for the statistics favoring the upper middle class and wealthy.
In the interest of full disclosure, I would probably buy Hernandez's book for my kids. (I would NOT, however, buy Elizabeth Wissner-Gross's What High Schools Don't Tell You, the other book reviewed by the WSJ. Recommending students only write positive puff pieces on school activities if they want to be a journalist? Blech.)
Lessons from med school
I've always been
impressed by the six-year pre med/med school
program my brother attended at UMKC. Students there are accepted
out of high school into an intensive program
that combines pre med with med school so that
they end up receiving both degrees at the same
time. Practically speaking this means that
students theory and practice are interwoven
through the six years.
Students of varying years are placed together in a
team with a docent. They make rounds with their
team and are given increasing responsibilities at
the hospital as they further their studies. They
start making rounds the first week of school. I
remember my brother needing to buy a lot of ties!
❝Docents are responsible for their own docent unit, comprised of 10 to 12 students. Year 3 students join a new docent unit and have individual offices at either the medical school or St. Luke’s Hospital. Docent units include Years 3-6 students, a clinical pharmacologist, an education team coordinator, a docent and other health care professionals.❞
We can implement quite a few of these into a strong teacher education program.
Get them into the classroom
Just like in my previous post, I believe students studying education need to be in the classroom right away. I love how the pre-med students were in the hospital making rounds their first week of college. What a great motivation! Integrating theory becomes so much easier when they see and experience teaching from the beginning.
Put them into teams
Teaching is no longer the isolated profession it used to be (or at least shouldn't be). Learning from each other and learning how to work with each other should be part of the culture.
Strengthen their academics
Truman University has experimented with requiring their education students to get their bachelor's in their content area or, for elementary ed students, in a related field like psychology and then get a master's in education. The students plan the program from the start as many of their undergraduate electives need to be education classes, especially elementary ed. I know that combining undergrad and grad isn't the answer for every program, but I do know that strengthening the academics overall is key.
Get them into the classroom
The boys at St. Louis
University High School do a three week-long
community service project their senior
year. One of the options is to work in various
local elementary schools. They are there all
day, in the same classroom, for three weeks, not
observing but helping. The boys are to keep a
daily journal, complete a written report and
follow-up with a discussion with their faculty
advisor. By the way, the kids love the them.
While few of these young men will probably go into
teaching, especially elementary, they probably will
have more classroom experience than most elementary
education majors before their student teaching
semester. I believe that education majors need to
get in the classroom much earlier in their degree
programs and not just to observe. An intensive
intersession during the first year of schooling
would help education students know if they really
want to teach before their final semester and
provide some context for their theoretical studies.
While the SLUH program is for community service, it
showed me a glimpse of what our teacher ed programs
should be doing.
Do we read or not?
Now we're ranked the sixth most literate city, especially because of our great library resources.
❝St. Louis measured high in library resources — second only to Columbus, Ohio — which remained "outstanding," McLaughlin said.❞
A few days ago I posted that St. Louis was ranked the 9th best place to educate our kids by Forbes. Ironically, our lowest score was for our library system. C+ Sigh, I think I have a headache.
One difference between the two is that the Central Connecticut State University library study just looked at St. Louis city; whereas, the Forbes report looked at the entire metropolitan area.
The CCSU study looked at:
1. Number of school media personnel per 1,000 public school student
2. Number of branch libraries per 10,000 library service population
3. Volumes held in the library per capita of library service population
4. Number of circulations per capita of library service population
5. Number of library professional staff per 10,000 library service population
I couldn't find the specific methodology for the places ranked (Forbes) study, but it discussed number of volumes and turnover. It looks like the CCSU study looks at a wider variety of factors by adding in accessibility and number of librarians. Whether it is the accessibility or narrowing the scope to the city that made the library system higher ranked would be interesting to know.
This is another example of seemingly conflicting assessments that could confuse the public. However, I guess most people who actually read the articles just remember the rankings and leave it at that. Maybe I'm the only one who gets confused.
But hey, we're No. 6!