Trouble continues to brew in our largest city. THe deputy schools' chancellor favors progressive educational methods and has come under fire. Her response has been less than honest.
In a Daily News op-ed, Lam trumpeted the results of a recent U.S. Department of Education study comparing the reading and writing scores of New York City’s fourth graders with those of five other urban districts: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington. In those tests, the city’s fourth graders ranked at the top of the six participating districts in writing and a close second to Houston in reading. According to Lam, “the results of this assessment show our pedagogical approach is sound.”
Unfortunately, Lam neglected to inform her readers that the tests represented a random selection of the city’s fourth graders from January through March 2002.
You left out the kicker. Lam was not the deputy school's chancellor in March, 2002. The test results she quoted actually measured her predecesor's methods, which were the oppositte of hers.
Yes, that is the kicker! I can't believe I editted it out when I was trying for brevity!
Unfortunately Lam also chooses her statistics selectively. Saying NYC's teaching methods are sound compared to Atlanta, GA, L.A., Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Houston is not saying much. You can easily find the worst schools in any state within any inner city.
The worst schools in Illinois are in Chicago. In fact, Chicago’s schools were once called the worst in America until they were surpassed on the race to the bottom by Washington, D.C. public schools.
The worst schools in Georgia are easily inside Atlanta city limits. The Georgia Public Foundation Report Card for Public Schools lists seven of the ten worst public schools in the entire state of Georgia are in Atlanta’s city limits. Georgia public schools regularly rank in the top fifty- barely. Georgia’s public schools cracked a 1,000 average statewide for the SAT only once in 1997. That year the average was about 1,008, or something like that. The next year the state average dipped down to 970 where it has stayed. I guess Georgians can at least thank Washington for bringing up the rear.
The worst schools in California are in the largest school system in America – Los Angeles with over 700,000 students. I wonder if such a large school system is even manageable. This school system is larger than all but two counties in Michigan, and approximately the same size as Detroit.
I will venture to guess the worst schools in Texas are in Houston, too. I do not know Texas that well, but I remember local San Angelo, TX newspaper stories while stationed there in 1983. The local paper said that Texas was at the bottom academically among the fifty states and could not reach passing scores on the Iowa Test for Basic Skills. Things were so bad students even flunked a simpler Texas Achievement Test.
Among the reasons school administrators attributed to this was that students were cutting their sixth and seventh hour classes to play baseball and football! Well golly gee, do ya think? Never were students in my Tecumseh High School days allowed to cut their last two class periods to play any sport even if their last hour was study hall. Texas has since improved its lot. But I am not optimistic looking at how inner cities run public schools.
As for New York City, all you have to read is “Conspiracy of Ignorance”, Martin Gross' pessimistic opinion on poor public schooling in America. He is a retired NYC schoolteacher and school administrator with one biting indictment for public schools. His last line reads: “Public schools in America must in the end become more responsive or they will be replaced by something else that is.”
Martin Gross is himself a product of the New York City school system where he testifies to receiving an excellent public education. However, he cites instances where teacher unions get their way too often and look out for their interests first and the students’ last.
Another recent book citing this problem is “The Worm in the Apple.” A book recommended by and appearing on World Net Daily’s web page is “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” by Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt. She believes America’s public schools have been deliberately undermined for the past fifty years. Iserbyt argues the introduction of behavioral psychology to public schools centers public schooling more around job training while reducing the importance or “education” (i.e., core academic subjects) per se. Her solution is to eliminate the Department of Education, with which I do not disagree. Unfortunately, that is one very difficult task.