by Jeff Salisbury
Mindless underfunding of schools continues, doing irreparable harm to kids
High school graduation season is in full bloom in many communities around the nation, but in some places, parents with kids still in schools have to be worried about the conditions of their schools they’ll return to in the fall – or even if the schools will open at all.
As states wrap up their budget seasons, many lawmakers are proving they simply aren’t up to the task of adequately funding schools.
State spending, which accounts for about half of most public school districts’ budgets, has been in steep decline for a number of years in most states, leaving most local taxing authorities, which provide about the other half, unable to keep up unless the populace is wealthy enough to withstand higher property taxes. (Federal spending accounts for less than 10 percent of school funding, historically.)
Many of these lawmakers say the problem with the nation’s education system is…
Read the rest of this post here: http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/06/mindless-underfunding-of-schools.html
Minority students are the new majority in America’s public schools
There’s a new majority in America’s public schools. In 2014, students of color outnumbered non-Hispanic white students for the first time in public school classrooms.
It’s a demographic shift that’s outpaced changes taking place in the general U.S. population. And it stands in stark contrast to the demographic makeup of the teacher workforce, which is 80 percent white.
So how to bridge the gap?
Read the rest of this post here: http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2016/06/10/49595/minority-students-are-the-new-majority-in-america/
The SAT: Worse than you think (too late for Michigan 11th-graders)
Folks have been questioning the accuracy, validity and usefulness of the SAT for decades, and the chorus of criticism only increased when College Board, the test manufacturing company responsible for the SAT, brought in Common Core architect David Coleman to take over. Coleman’s fast and ugly rewrite of the venerable test was intended to bring it in line with the K-12 standards of Common Core.
Coleman, whose ego has always seemed to be Grand Canyon sized, had finished redefining education for K-12 students– now he was going to fix college, too. And, the College Board hoped, he was also going to recapture a share of the market dominated by the ACT. In fact, a plan to grab huge market share by getting states to use the SAT as their federally-mandated Big Standardized Test– or even an exit exam.
New vocab. New math. New batteries of tests, and a PSAT set up to work as a marketing tool for AP courses (another College Board product). A flubbed delivery on PSAT scores, and then an awkward mess surrounding the spring rollout of the SAT — so awkward that SAT prep professionals recommended sitting out the first round of the test.
It looked like a shaky product was even shakier. You never want to see them make the sausage, but apparently SAT sausage is being made with even worse parts of unspeakable animals than we suspected.
And now a whistle blower has stepped forward to add to the story, and what we’re learning is that as bad as things seemed with the SAT, they were actually much worse.
Read the rest of this post here: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-sat-worse-than-you-think.html
…until next time, keep reading, sharing, discussing, learning.