Bin Laden Dead

[Teuthida]

Originally Posted by KillerGremlin

This hugely victim-blaming. But blaming the victim aside, if it was that easy then everyone would be getting straight As and getting out of their bad high school. There are family issues, lack of resources within the school district, and lack of speciality programs. The big issue these days is cutting extra-curriculars, like music or after-school programs. These have been shown to provide structure and support for youth, but in a fleeting economy these have been the first things to go. After-school programs aside, you still have the urban environment, the drugs, the lack of parental figures, the poverty, and a bunch of other issues that feed into the school environment. I believe in the "if you work hard good things will come for you" mentality, but the number of hurdles are astronomical and should be considered.

I omitted this from my post, but it's not just academics. There are a lot of schools where music, art, technology, etc. is the focus. I went to one such school (though you did need at least average grades for that one, but isn't always the case) So in addition to normal classes you have least three periods a day of your focus. Plus there a number of more vocational schools.


And why is an urban environment bad exactly? All of NYC is an urban environment. I've never been to Chicago so perhaps everything is more segregated there? It seems like you have a pretty specific view of city life. It seem to me like a poor community would be much worse off in a more suburban/rural area where their options are limited and there's only one or two schools to a town.

Of course it depends on the teacher more than anything, but the better ones are drawn to better funded schools. I'm looking at ways at fixing the school system. You can't make a kid's father go back home or remove drugs from the streets. You need to think about what you can change.

Originally Posted by KillerGremlin

I regret going to college at 18. I'm glad I did in the long run, and I think ultimately I would have decided to attend, but I could have gained some valuable life experience working for 2 years instead of failing out of and hating engineering. I would guess-timate that about 3 out of 4 of my friends ended up altering their path during college. I would guess that about 2 out of 4 of my friends made DRAMATIC life changes. By dramatic I mean: dropping out of college, doing a total major change, doing a total college change.

That's like....75% of the people I know altered their course...
50% did so dramatically

I went to a liberal arts college at first majoring in biology though not sure what sort of career I wanted. I then attended a talk by returning alumni to see what happened to them after college. Not a single one out of the ten had a job even remotely related to their major. That freaked me out. I transferred to an art school the next year with the idea that it would at least prepare me for a career doing something I enjoyed.

So wrong...so very very wrong.

Art school is the most useless worthless thing you could possibly spend time and money on. I wish I stayed at my first college and just got a decent education and the full college experience . My BFA will never help in getting me an art related job. It'll be more helpful getting anything else, but art ones are purely based on your work. I taught myself more since I graduated with books and instructional videos (so much better being able to hand pick any teacher you want instead of being stuck with whatever the school happens to have) than I ever learned at school. I wasn't prepared in the slightest for the real world upon graduation. Should have dropped out but I felt like I needed the degree...and if I ever decide to do something other than art....I have my art degree for that. That's messed up.


Prof, I would be curious to hear how you imagine home-schooling through internet classes. Most students don't have the drive to learn on their own without adult supervision, and the fear of punishment and failure, unless they are truly passionate about a particular subject. And how young are you talking?

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by Teuthida

Art school is the most useless worthless thing you could possibly spend time and money on. I wish I stayed at my first college and just got a decent education and the full coProf, I would be curious to hear how you imagine home-schooling through internet classes. Most students don't have the drive to learn on their own without adult supervision, and the fear of punishment and failure, unless they are truly passionate about a particular subject. And how young are you talking?

There has to be supervision, without a doubt. This is usually provided by a stay-at-home parent. Is that available to everyone? Of course not, but there is no one answer that works for everyone. This is why central control does not work, because it enforces a top-down, universal approach.

Home schooling, charter schools, smaller/community based and controlled public schools, etc. ALL need to be considered as part of a comprehensive solution. They offer increase opportunity and in most cases, increase educational choice to the family, to help our students reach proficiency.

And none of this can happen until the money follows the STUDENT and not the SCHOOL. Most funds are currently pushed to the schools, so there really little in the way of finding real options (I do not believe shuffling a student from one centrally controlled school to another is choice). These funds need to be allocated per student, and allow them to be applied to choice of school for each family, whether it is a home school, charter school, or already established public school (which will benefit greatly from a reduction in student population).

[KillerGremlin]

Originally Posted by Teuthida

And why is an urban environment bad exactly? All of NYC is an urban environment. I've never been to Chicago so perhaps everything is more segregated there? It seems like you have a pretty specific view of city life. It seem to me like a poor community would be much worse off in a more suburban/rural area where their options are limited and there's only one or two schools to a town.

Of course it depends on the teacher more than anything, but the better ones are drawn to better funded schools. I'm looking at ways at fixing the school system. You can't make a kid's father go back home or remove drugs from the streets. You need to think about what you can change.

I may not get a chance to respond to this until after my last few finals and my move back home/graduation. So in case I don't get to this for a few days, you can simply look at Wikipedia. I mean, this is what I found under the article on Chicago Public Schools, this isn't even specifically about their success or lack thereof:

The April 21, 2006 issue of the Chicago Tribune revealed a study released by the Consortium on Chicago School Research that stated that 6 of every 100 CPS freshmen would earn a bachelor's degree by age 25. 3 in 100 black or Latino men would earn a bachelor's degree by age 25. The study tracked Chicago high school students who graduated in 1998 and 1999. 35% of CPS students who went to college earned their bachelor's degree within six years, below the national average of 64%.[2]

Chicago has a history of high dropout rates, with around half of students failing to graduate for the past 30 years. Criticism is directed at the CPS for inflating its performance figures. Through such techniques as counting students who swap schools before dropping out as transfers but not dropouts, it publishes graduation claims as high as 71%. Nonetheless, throughout the 1990s actual rates seem to have improved slightly, as true graduation estimates rose from 48% in 1991 to 54% in 2004.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago...ls#Performance

I don't have a "pretty specific" view of city life...I have a view of city life since I live in Chicago. I can't generalize to other cities, but I know Chicago is among the worst in the nation if not the worst in terms of public schools. I know Detroit and Minneapolis are right behind (I'm guessing with St. Louis and Indianapolis and all the other main sites that I read about for Teach for America, a program which I no longer look all that positively on), and these are just cities...a lot of these problems extend to rural areas.

I can find more specific articles and studies and I will, but I encourage you to google around. I think your view does not generalize as easily as you think.

[KillerGremlin]

Originally Posted by Teuthida

And why is an urban environment bad exactly? All of NYC is an urban environment. I've never been to Chicago so perhaps everything is more segregated there? It seems like you have a pretty specific view of city life. It seem to me like a poor community would be much worse off in a more suburban/rural area where their options are limited and there's only one or two schools to a town.

Of course it depends on the teacher more than anything, but the better ones are drawn to better funded schools. I'm looking at ways at fixing the school system. You can't make a kid's father go back home or remove drugs from the streets. You need to think about what you can change.

I dug up some hard numbers, just for fun, and oddly 2006 statistics report that New York city's largest school district had lower graduation rates than Chicago's largest school district. I haven't really dissected the statistics because I am lazy and at this point I don't want to invest too much time into this thread, but before I post any statistics let me piss into the wind for a minute.

I attended the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). I was involved in Psychology, Gender and Women Studies and Education. Those were the 3 areas where I probed the most. I actually did a work study with a national Chicago based organization, so I extended my classroom experience a bit and got involved with some large scale educational gatherings. "Fixing" the Chicago Public School system is something that many people are working on. People literally dedicate their lives and careers to this issue. People get PhDs in school management or urban settings and work to try to bring resolution to the CPS problem. I cannot emphasis how many people have dedicated their lives to this issue. The take-home point here is that I am feeble and this is just a forum thread. I can highlight where there are deficits or inequities, I can point to problems, but I certainly cannot fix them.

Suggesting that if someone wants to succeed they need to work harder or attend a different school doesn't provide a very tangible solution to this issue. In the CPS, you are talking about an annual graduation rate of around 50%. The problem is large, it is systemic...and telling kids to go to different schools would literally displace thousands of kids. At this point we are talking about large scale social issues, things that are deeply imbedded and have a history. Like Prof S showed with the social welfare stuff, a lot of this is policy that goes way back. Back to immigration, early Chicago, and early racism.

So some stats:

I'm pulling these numbers from the Chicago Public Schools Office of Performance website. If you'd like to check the info feel free to browse here:
http://research.cps.k12.il.us/cps/ac...llschools.html

Anyway, according to the stats released by CPS, in 2010 55.8% of students graduated high school, with 41.1% dropping out. That is actually an improvement from previous years.

Looking at the College enrollment fact sheet: “54.4% of CPS 2009 graduates enrolled in college – an increase of 1.9 percentage points from 2008.” There has been an increase in college enrollment for the past 5 years – a good thing. In 2009, 10,249 CPS graduates enrolled in college in 2009, which is an all time high for CPS.

Consider this: in 2009 there were 18,846 CPS graduates: 10,249 were enrolled in college, or 54.4%.
54.4% of graduates enrolling into college…isn’t bad right?

Before we look at things from a race perspective, we should frame these graduation and dropout rates compared to the national average.

2003-2004 stats reveal that, on average, CPS has higher dropout rates than the outlying schools as well as the national average:


The good news is that graduation rates in Chicago are rising…


So seemingly, it is not all doom and gloom…on the other hand, in 2009, only 48.1% of African American males and 59.5% of AA females enrolled in college…only 43.2% Latino males and 49.4% Latino females enrolled…

By the way, and oddly enough, according to this article from 2006, in the largest school districts, New York has a lower graduation rate than Chicago does…

http://www.usatoday.com/news/educati...ut-rates_x.htm

So evidently New York could be just as fucked up in certain areas.

Back to Chicago…

OF 100 CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOL FRESHMEN,
SIX WILL GET A COLLEGE DEGREE

Of every 100 freshmen entering a Chicago public high school, only about six will earn a bachelor's degree by the time they're in their mid-20s, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Thursday by the Consortium on Chicago School Research.

The prospects are even worse for African-American and Latino male freshmen, who only have about a 3 percent chance of obtaining a bachelor's degree by the time they're 25.

The study, which tracked Chicago high school students who graduated in 1998 and 1999, also found that making it to college doesn't ensure success: Of the city public school students who went to a four-year college, only about 35 percent earned a bachelor's degree within six years, compared with 64 percent nationally.

...
- African-American and Latino students from Chicago high schools have the lowest graduation rates--lower than the national average for those groups and lower than their white and Asian peers from Chicago. Just 22 percent of African-American males who began at a four-year college graduated within six years.
....

http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/news_citati...gotribune.html

So while there is an increase in College enrollment, and while around 50+% do enroll into college, the graduation rates are HORRIFIC.

According to the US Census Bureau, in 2008 71.8% of Bachelor degrees were earned by White people, 9.8% by black, 7.9% by Hispanic, and 7.0% by Asian. That’s a national number, btw, so when you stack that up to say…the 6 out of 100 people who get a degree who attended CPS…I mean the numbers are harrowing.


These are just the graduation and college RATES. These don’t even touch the social problems. Like the kids who see gang violence.

I guess in my next post I can link to all the Chicago gangs, the crime rates by area/neighborhood, and I can link to articles discussing mortality rates among CPS attendees.

I also propose several solutions that may or may not be steps in the right direction to fixing some of these issues:
1) More parent involvement
2) Longer school days and better school programs
3) Decriminalizing drugs like Marijuana and Crack
4) Figuring out how to tackle the anti-white feelings towards education within the Black community
5) Fixing Affirmative Action and Social Welfare