By the way, some good data for SLPS magnet schools..... while African-American students from the City who attended County schools participating in the voluntary de-seg program tested better than African-American students in SLPS, A-A students in the SLPS magnets did better than those as a whole in the de-seg program. (Although I think those lucky to be in Clayton and maybe one or two others still did better.) So certainly SLPS can produce decent, and in a few cases exceptional, schools, the question is how do you scale those results up?
Has anyone else read the government study that basically found no difference between elementary school students who participated in Headstart and those that did not? It's quite interesting and, to me, points out just how little the government can really do to create within individuals a desire to learn, responsibility to learn, and work ethic to learn. Not nothing, but very little IMO. And these values are foundational and necessary for success.
Read that too. Very interesting results. I don't think we'd be able reproduce magnet school results at traditional schools. But there has to be something for these kiddos to be excelling at schools within their own communities. Nothing would help the next generation of black St. Louisans more than learning that they don't have to go to "the other side of town" to get educated and ready for a their working life. Realizing they have this ability within themselves and within their family and neighborhood and community will do wonders for breaking the tragic cycles we have all witnessed in and around St. Louis.roger wyoming II wrote:By the way, some good data for SLPS magnet schools..... while African-American students from the City who attended County schools participating in the voluntary de-seg program tested better than African-American students in SLPS, A-A students in the SLPS magnets did better than those as a whole in the de-seg program. (Although I think those lucky to be in Clayton and maybe one or two others still did better.) So certainly SLPS can produce decent, and in a few cases exceptional, schools, the question is how do you scale those results up?
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Nope. Can you find it and post it here? I'd be interested in reading it.RobbyD wrote:Has anyone else read the government study that basically found no difference between elementary school students who participated in Headstart and those that did not? It's quite interesting and, to me, points out just how little the government can really do to create within individuals a desire to learn, responsibility to learn, and work ethic to learn. Not nothing, but very little IMO. And these values are foundational and necessary for success.
One of the biggest reasons I like vouchers is because it makes private schools a much more feasible option to many more people. I know a lot of people who want to send kids to private schools, but can't afford to. I also think this could be good for the charter schools, as it seems they are more dependent on money for their success, because of their business models. The same could probably be said for archdiocesan schools, which seem to be providing a high level of education, but don't have the money to stay open.RobbyD wrote:I think the short answer for me is that vouchers allow good students to bolt for better pastures, leaving the disinterested and laggards behind. If this results in the closing of bad schools, this would be a good thing. I wonder whether or not, though, the divide between the top and bottom would be ultimately exacerbated. IOW, how much does the entire herd need to stay with mooing range of itself and how much can the herd separate if it chooses to?
I personally am for vouchers. And I also believe the issue has far less to do with money and much more to do with values and attitudes. My sister has begun homeschooling her little ones for a year to see how it goes (Kindergarten and preK). She doesn't get paid a dime directly and those kids are amazingly intuitive, smart and well adjusted.
I also agree that vouchers have more to do with "attitudes and values" on a whole. While vouchers are about money, they will IMO help people who want to help themselves. Can you help those that don't want to be bothered?
Now, is that approach fair to those children that don't have parents that care about their education? Maybe, maybe not. It probably depends upon your perspective. Another question that I think needs to be asked: Is it fair to maintain the status quo for those families that are trying to do right?
As much as I want to help kids in bad situations with parents who don't care, I think the SLPS is bad enough that we have to try drastic changes, otherwise everyone suffers and we don't move forward with any haste.
P.S. when I say SLPS, I don't include the magnets.
The other change that I would like to discuss changing the SLPS to a tract program like German schools.
This site gives a pretty clear and concise description of the tracts. http://library.thinkquest.org/26576/schoolpage.htm
Basically the system has all children starting in the same schools then by the age of ten, they are divided up based on skills and abilities. Some children will not be trained to go to an university in this system and are destined to go to technical/trade school. That might be for the best in a school system like the SLPS. It definitely provides a more tailored system. I am not sure of the costs associated with this system.
This site gives a pretty clear and concise description of the tracts. http://library.thinkquest.org/26576/schoolpage.htm
Basically the system has all children starting in the same schools then by the age of ten, they are divided up based on skills and abilities. Some children will not be trained to go to an university in this system and are destined to go to technical/trade school. That might be for the best in a school system like the SLPS. It definitely provides a more tailored system. I am not sure of the costs associated with this system.
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/hs ... _final.pdf
"However, the advantages children gained during their Head Start and age 4 years yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade for the sample as a whole."
And one can only assume these advantages continued to diminsh as students moved through the system.
"However, the advantages children gained during their Head Start and age 4 years yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade for the sample as a whole."
And one can only assume these advantages continued to diminsh as students moved through the system.
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^ actually SLPS is making progress and very well may regain its accredidation in a few years.... and its students test better than those in city charters, which on a whole are spectacularly crappy. (The Imagine charters, a for profit mess, is closing with over 3,000 children now needing a new school.... bravo, Imagine!)
One good thing to come out of the legislative session is a bill passed bringing more accountability to what essentially was a license to steal money from taxpayers. (Having said that, there are a few quality charters here such as Citygarden Montessori with proven testing scores.)
I don't know what the impact of vouchers would be on SLPS, but I would be concerned about whether it would impede the slow, but measurable gains of SLPS. A similar issue, of course, is whether the Turner case ruling is upheld that the state law allowing for students in unaccredited schools to attend those in neighboring districts. SLPS was concerned this would drain its coffers while the county schools said there was no way they could absorb thousands of new students.
One good thing to come out of the legislative session is a bill passed bringing more accountability to what essentially was a license to steal money from taxpayers. (Having said that, there are a few quality charters here such as Citygarden Montessori with proven testing scores.)
I don't know what the impact of vouchers would be on SLPS, but I would be concerned about whether it would impede the slow, but measurable gains of SLPS. A similar issue, of course, is whether the Turner case ruling is upheld that the state law allowing for students in unaccredited schools to attend those in neighboring districts. SLPS was concerned this would drain its coffers while the county schools said there was no way they could absorb thousands of new students.
^^ oops, my last post was for zun and the comments about vouchers.
As for tracking a la the German system, I agree that it could be helpful to get more in skilled trades.... I think our society has gotten two things wrong in recent decades: that everyone needs to go to college and everyone needs to own a home.
As for tracking a la the German system, I agree that it could be helpful to get more in skilled trades.... I think our society has gotten two things wrong in recent decades: that everyone needs to go to college and everyone needs to own a home.
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Lots of open questions in the study, but it also stated this:RobbyD wrote:http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/hs ... _final.pdf
"However, the advantages children gained during their Head Start and age 4 years yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade for the sample as a whole."
And one can only assume these advantages continued to diminsh as students moved through the system.
"Providing access to Head Start has a positive impact on children’s preschool
experiences. There are statistically significant differences between the Head Start
group and the control group on every measure of children’s preschool experiences
measured in this study."
It then does show that benefits begin to trail off. Is that because the environment provided for in head start is not maintained and that children are taught to the same level? Does it mean that a child's skill set is predetermined and that head start, or any other early childhood education focus is misguided?
Dead serious on the idea of pricing out the poor. The education problems in STL, are directly related to the concentration of poverty in the city limits. I think a mistake many cities make is going after the result problem - in this case schools, rather than the root problem - which is the number of poor people in their city limits as a proportion of total population. The proportion of poor people in STL is way too high and it is a burden that is not really shared by the rest of the region. This puts STL at a very distinct disadvantage when it comes to making serious improvements in crime, education, neighborhood quality, etc. So when I say it might make sense to adjust STL policies to make the city inhospitable to being poor, I am serious. Because ultimately I think that might be easier than increasing the number of affluent people as a proportion of population in the short term, and because as of yet, no one has found real solutions to poverty besides education and community support - but if a city lacks the tax base to provide those support services...you get the point. If you can make poor people want to leave the city limits in droves, and disperse themselves throughout the region or wherever, you turn an isolated problem that the county, surrounding cities don't really want to deal with - an "oh, that's a city problem" - into everyone's problem. If you want results quickly, that is one way to get them, I think.
Well my longer answer got lost on the web somewhere.Alex Ihnen wrote:Lots of open questions in the study, but it also stated this:RobbyD wrote:http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/hs ... _final.pdf
"However, the advantages children gained during their Head Start and age 4 years yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade for the sample as a whole."
And one can only assume these advantages continued to diminsh as students moved through the system.
"Providing access to Head Start has a positive impact on children’s preschool
experiences. There are statistically significant differences between the Head Start
group and the control group on every measure of children’s preschool experiences
measured in this study."
It then does show that benefits begin to trail off. Is that because the environment provided for in head start is not maintained and that children are taught to the same level? Does it mean that a child's skill set is predetermined and that head start, or any other early childhood education focus is misguided?
IMO, the findings are damning for the program given its intentions and promises. Most advantages are lost after only a year? At a cost of roughly $7300 per child, the program doesn't seem to work. But it lives on and grows, essentially giving false hope to citizens and votes to "compassionate" politicians.
Even more damning for Head Start is the fact (I'm pretty sure...) that the study compares Head Start participants and students who stay at home watching TV or stay at daycare screaming down slides. If we compare anyone who has been through a program of training/instruction and someone who has not, it would be pretty easy to justify the program of instruction.
We have to find ways to increase parental participation in their child's education, not find more ways to do the parents' job for them.
Wow. I think this is as simple as walkability. If you're poor, you likely don't have vehicle, and if so are pushed to where you can walk to find help, housing, and a place to hang out: not the suburbs.onecity wrote:Dead serious on the idea of pricing out the poor. The education problems in STL, are directly related to the concentration of poverty in the city limits. I think a mistake many cities make is going after the result problem - in this case schools, rather than the root problem - which is the number of poor people in their city limits as a proportion of total population. The proportion of poor people in STL is way too high and it is a burden that is not really shared by the rest of the region. This puts STL at a very distinct disadvantage when it comes to making serious improvements in crime, education, neighborhood quality, etc. So when I say it might make sense to adjust STL policies to make the city inhospitable to being poor, I am serious. Because ultimately I think that might be easier than increasing the number of affluent people as a proportion of population in the short term, and because as of yet, no one has found real solutions to poverty besides education and community support - but if a city lacks the tax base to provide those support services...you get the point. If you can make poor people want to leave the city limits in droves, and disperse themselves throughout the region or wherever, you turn an isolated problem that the county, surrounding cities don't really want to deal with - an "oh, that's a city problem" - into everyone's problem. If you want results quickly, that is one way to get them, I think.
How would you make the city even more inhospitable for the poor?
(And I could not disagree with your prescription strong enough.)
I don't know...some examples might be a city income tax that is regressive for incomes below the level at which crime and income are known to be linked (and deliberately higher than surrounding municipalities), and progressive above that point. Increased policing and administrative surcharges for zip codes with violent crime stats above the metro average. Expand the list of crimes for which prohibitively high bails are required. Limit the density of low income housing, e.g. no more than 1 in 10 contiguous rental units or parcels may be used for low income housing. Increased enforcement of codes relating to building maintenance. Higher property taxes for real property based strictly on square footage, not property value. Relocation assistance stipends. Those are a few examples/possibilities - who knows what effect they might have. It is okay to have a certain proportion of poor people, and to have them spread out among everyone else, but I think STL has too high a proportion of crushingly poor people for its overall population, and they are geographically concentrated. Having a predominately poverty-ridden public school population (and all the issues that comes with that), makes the school situation in the city highly unattractive, which makes the city a non-contender for many folks who would otherwise like to live there but aren't willing to risk their childrens' safety, education, etc. Policy aims should be just as focused on dispersing some portion of the poor population outside the city or metro as addressing the special educational needs of remaining poor children, because one causes the other. Show me one large, poverty ridden community that functions well and doesn't include a lot of trashy people. If you don't address that first and foremost, the schools problem is infinitely harder to fix due to the sheer scale of the problem in relation to the city's resources. The next best solution is to form independent school districts for the various neighborhoods or need levels so at least in the poorest parts of town the school district could focus all its efforts on mitigating the effects of poverty without running middle class families through the ringer as SLPS currently does. It is ridiculous, as in a source of ridicule, that a parent in STL should have to jump through so many hoops (lotteries, admissions, wait lists, tuition etc) to get a quality, affordable, safe, diverse, and reliably accessible source of K-12 education for their children. If you pay taxes for public schools, you should expect to be able to use those schools not to your child's detriment. I know I do.
If St. Louis seeks to lead in the region, then this leadership must also include how the region deals with the least among us. I agree that large concentrations of poor folks present different sets of issues. But a mindset of pushing the poor (citizens who have done nothing illegal) onto someone else's plate isn't leadership, it's in fact the opposite IMO.
That said, some of your ideas make sense to me and have been used (I believe there are already efforts to limit the density of low income housing). The city should be smart. The best way to solve this issue, though, are regional efforts to pool resources, expand housing options, and coordinate services. My work for the Church over the years has always attmepted to match those willing to help throughout the region with those needing the help. The city should adopt a similar approach. Better coordinating those committed to helping the poor with the population at large is what is need too. But this takes leadership.
That said, some of your ideas make sense to me and have been used (I believe there are already efforts to limit the density of low income housing). The city should be smart. The best way to solve this issue, though, are regional efforts to pool resources, expand housing options, and coordinate services. My work for the Church over the years has always attmepted to match those willing to help throughout the region with those needing the help. The city should adopt a similar approach. Better coordinating those committed to helping the poor with the population at large is what is need too. But this takes leadership.
BTW, you should begin a new thread if this topic is pursued any further. I'm done with it here =D
In closing, then, I do think this is the fundamental issue regarding schools. I think if you could persuade half the poverty population to leave STL or the region, there would be a fighting chance of solving the schools problem in a reasonable time frame. The current poverty population is not sustainable. And that would be excellent leadership, showing a willingness to do something with the potential to look really really bad, because at least it would make the poverty/non-poverty school population ratio manageable.
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^I know this is way OT now, but wouldn't a better solution be to raise the population of middle class and wealthy families by a factor of 2 in the city as opposed to trying to force out lower class citizens?
But how do you do that without good schools? I feel like this is one of those chicken and egg deals, where no answer is wrong, because the process is cyclical.newstl2020 wrote:^I know this is way OT now, but wouldn't a better solution be to raise the population of middle class and wealthy families by a factor of 2 in the city as opposed to trying to force out lower class citizens?
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^I think this whole conversation about forcibly attempting to exile poor people absurd. I was simply offering the counterpoint. If you are going to expend all this energy to attempt to remove poor people, why not instead focus that same energy figuring out how to get wealthier people in the city despite the schools.
Because my gut feeling is it would probably be a lot easier to increase the wealthier population (capable of funding the city's needed upgrades) more quickly if they didn't have to deal with all the poverty culture BS. I know it's anti altruistic, but I speak pragmatism. So reduce the scale of the problem first. Really done this time.
Alex Ihnen wrote:^ The per student expenditures of "better" schools in the County and City of St. Louis schools isn't dramatically different. In fact, it's higher in the City than in many school districts that are considered to be much better.
Here is a short report by FOCUS St. Louis, explaining some of the basics of SLPS financial issues. It is a bit dated (over a decade old), but it provides an excellent introduction to some of the issues that continue to contribute to the struggles of SLPS.
What I think should be of particular importance to this discussion is their explanation of the unique cost burdens of SLPS that need to be considered when comparing per pupil spending between neighboring school districts. According to the report, while it may be true that per pupil spending in SLPS appears to be similar to and even exceeds that of many better performing districts in the region, this number does not reflect what is actually spent on mainstream students vs.special education students in the City. In many districts in St. Louis County, special education students attend the separate countywide Special School District, which has its own budget. The costs of educating these special students (which, according to the report, ran at the hefty price of $31,000 per pupil in 1999 dollars) are not accounted in per pupil spending reports of many districts in the County. In the City, there is no separate Special School District, thus the increased costs of educating special education students are accounted with expenditures on instruction for mainstream students and so skew the per pupil average.
Additionally, the capital costs of maintaining the beautiful, but severely aged school facilities are a very unique cost burden to the SLPS District that many County districts do not face. Thankfully, due to the capital bond issue that the District was authorized to issue a couple years ago to address this particular problem, the district is on its way to more sound financial footing and accreditation.
Link: http://focus-stl.org/LinkClick.aspx?fil ... d&tabid=65
On a separate note, while I think the goal of poverty de-concentration is vital to growing a much healthier city, region, and most importantly, citizenry, I think onecity's prescriptions for achieving this by pricing the poor out of the city limits are incredibly misguided and would have severely negative consequences for the City.
I get this thread isn't the best place to discuss this topic though, so I'd be happy to discuss what people here think could be effective strategies to reduce poverty in the city if such a thread were started.
I get this thread isn't the best place to discuss this topic though, so I'd be happy to discuss what people here think could be effective strategies to reduce poverty in the city if such a thread were started.
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Check out the rendering of the City Garden Montessori in Botantical Heights...that map wall is sweet. This is going to be fantastic! Love the design.
http://www.17thwardstl.com/wordpress.co ... ter-school
http://www.17thwardstl.com/wordpress.co ... ter-school