Sunday, March 8, 2009
Very interesting data on Rick Roger's blog this morning.
http://www.schoolpolice.blogspot.com/
Thanks, Rick. Good job. Note: When you pull up the data on Georgia high school rankings, there is data on the far right side of the spreadsheet as to expenditures per student. To view it, you will need to go to the arrow at the bottom right corner and move over to the right. I would encourage all readers to look at some of the other high schools. Clearly, we are not far from needing to split into two high schools, although those to whom football is far more important than academic achievement will of course thwart that for years to come. Note the ratio of money spent in the school itself versus at the administrative building. I realize that the intent is to say that becuase we are only at #115, we should therefor vote no for ESPLOST. Think about that and tell me what you think. I've been exploring these peoples' web site. Very interesting. Here is a view of the Camden systemm as a whole. http://reportcard.gppf.org/Default.aspx . When you get there, choose the "all grades" button, then select Camden County.
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11 comments:
Unfortunately what I'm seeing is many,many schools spending less money per student and getting much better results.
I would encourage you to go back to those very schools you refer to and take a look at the poverty figures for those schools compared to ours. More often than not, schools with lower poverty rates have much better performing student bodies, semi-independent of expenditure per pupil.
By the way, remember that I mentioned earlier that the deadline for applications for the new JDA director is Tuesday. Stand by for more info on how that is going. I should know something NLT Wednesday.
The intent would be dead on. Improve, first! VOTE NO MARCH 17TH
Although the numbers have suggested Camden needs two high schools. That concept is avoided like a disease. BUT if that happens Camden would have a rivalry. If they do the decent thing and build the new high school first on the land they are acquiring from Evergreen and name it Ralph Bunche High that would upset the GOB.
What I found even more surprising, the race of majorities in the high poverty schools. Just the opposite of what one would immediately assume.
Jay, what are your thoughts on 115? Do you think this is something to focus on.
I'm sorry: I just got diagnosed by chest film, about two hours ago, with "walking pnuemonia." I'm not firing on all of my cylinders. Refresh my memory. Is "115" one of the pending Georgia property tax bills?
Get well, this can wait....
The answer to your question 115 (of 338) is the ranking for Camden County.
Duh!! I remember now. Let me go back and look to see who some of the top performers were. I'll get back to you.
I note that Camden County High School is in the 30th percentile. That's 30 points up from the bottom, not down from the top.
Go to the Rick's blog. take a look at the figures for the top 40 on the first sheet compared to the same figures on the third sheet where Camden is. Look at the correlations between student performance and poverty rates. The pattern is very clear. As yuo go from the top of the pile to the bottom, performance steadily drops as poverty rates steadily rise.
Look at the top 10 or so schools. Odds are that those kids coem from affluent neighborhoods where parents are likely to be college grads with white collar jobs.
Now, I know I'm going to catch hell for what I'm about to say next, but I think that I know what the problem is here. Think about the jobs that have been available in this county for generations and the levelof education that it took to fill them. To work at the mill or at Thiokol (and its successors) a high school diploma was actually MORE than adequate. For years, it was a one doctor county. A couple or three attorneys amd some school teachers were about the only folks who need college degrees.
The result is that we have had multiple generations - black and white - who could be pretty confident that if that adhered to the local tribal mores and kept out of trouble during their formative years, a good paying job you could learn entirely by OJT was virtually a birth right. Witrh regards to the local indigenous tribe, now that heir kids know there are no jobs here, those who do break the family tradition and go to college - and graduate(a much lower percentage than start) of necessity leave the county for work. Consequently, they are not here to contribute highly motivated kids of college grads to the Camden public school student body. We get no demographic help in that area from well healed empty nesters who migrate to Camden because they have long since reared their kids and educated them up north.
One bright spot in increasing the IQ of the gene pool of students - as well as motivation (arguably more imporant)- are our military families. For openers, you have your officer corps, college grads all. Moreover, some of the brightest enlisted men in the Navy are submariners per se, and boomer
crews in particular. Some of high GS tratings out on base are also well educated. Then there are the civilian employees of various high tech companies on base.
In short, there is no easy way to say this, but our student body, overall, does not come from a population of parents who are as affluent, innately intelligent, and involved in pushing their children to pursue academic excellence as are the parents in the communities where the majority of the high performing schools are located.
Those who know high schooll football teams better than I might also want to take a look at the numbers of high performing schools with nationally ranked football teams as compared to the lower performing school with near semi-pro teams such as ours. I have a strong intuition as to how that study would turn out.
In short - in for a penney, in for a pound - I think that the school board and the local teaching commmunity is doing the best they can given the overwhelmingly low ambient level of motivation to succeed of the students they are challenged with.
Thanks, I can always count on a INTELLIGENT response from you. I also agree that you are dead on in your analysis of the problem.
My son maintains a high B average because I insist. He could have a much higher average if he was confronted with the demands placed upon me when I was in high school. But just as you said he understands the system and very rarely if ever studies for a test. He sees instructors giving students two and three opportunities to pass. Therefore its a challenge to motivate him.
I must disagree with you on the ESPLOST though. I believe the Board should show their ability to be good stewards of the taxpayers money. The amount spent on football and everything that surrounds it is ridiculous. The amount spent on Board Administrators is ridiculous based on performance.
Most definitely something needs to done about the nepotism. Which brings me to your theory. How can it ever get better if family members are constantly hired into higher positions because of family heritage.
They should prove to the people they are capable of doing better. They should also show people they do know how to cut a budget. NONE of those examples have been shown.
Jay...I sure hope you get well soon. Sorry to hear you're sick.
Thank you. I don't know what to tell you about the obsession with the football program. Apparently, high school football is to the locals as gladiators, lion, and Christians were to the Roman masses. It is obviously the "third rail" of local politics. Look at all of the votes Bill Smith bought via the football program.
Having said that, should academics suffer because reduced funding because of excesses on the football program?
It may well be that some nepotism in hiring has gone on, but is it not logical that memebers of longtime Camden families would naturally be represented in the population of teachers in the county, even in the total absence of nepotism?
I think I read or heard somewhere that there is an annual 30% turnover of teachers in the system as a whole. Aggod number of those open slots are filled by folks who are not from here. Many are navy wives with prior teaching crdentials and experience. Some are retired Navy people who have gone to college, gotten a degree, and found a second career in teaching. My mentoring teacher, for instance, is a retired RMCM, former COB, and now has a masters in education - and he's working on his doctorate. He is an excellent teacher.
I believe that the B.O.E. will never have the political courage to tame the football expenditures, nor build the second high school until the indigenous tribe is completely overwhelmed politically by the gradual shift in demographics over the coming years.
Let me ask you this: would you be as concerned about the current ESPLSOT agenda if the economy were booming? Do you believe the U.S. will never recover from this. No, I didn't think so. What we need to do on the local level iks light a fire under the JDA (tomorrow is the last day for applications for a new JDA director) and get our local economy fired up to a level where the expenditures will not seem so burdensome - and in fact will not be with a broader tax base and a shift away from roofs to industries.
In the mneanwhile, I think that it makes sense to go forward withthis ESPLSOT. What peole are failing to realize is that the neeed for these new schools is ALREADY HERE. It is only partially predicated on anticipated growth. The kids to fill the new schools are attending public schools in Camden NOW. However, they are attending in portables, former storerooms, etc.
As to pay versus performance, you can lead students to knowledge, but you can't make them partake of it unless there will be hell to be paid if they bring home a bad report card. Trust me - in the vast majority of homes, that is not the case.
Privacy concerns prevent me from being more specific, but you would not believe some of the stuff teachers have to deal with from kids with no parental involvement or motivation. It's a wonder to me that the turnover rate - much less the burnout rate - is not higher than it is.
I vividly recal that when i was a kid, and even through collge, instructors would go to great pains when giving back test to insure that it was doen in such a way that other students did not get to see what their peers had done on the test. This was doen to avoid humiliation for the struggling students and to keep the bright ones from getting too swell headed. Now, you just have one kid pass them out. Then, if the grades have not been recorded, you just have the kids pass them back up to the front row where a couple of kids collect them. Why the change: becuase, as near as I can figure it froim my observations, the kids really don't seem to have any sense of embarrassmnent at failure. In pint of fact, the ones likely to be most squeamish about the current day procedure is the few (5 to 10 % tops) who consistently make good grades for fear that they will be ostracized for their SUCCESS! Go figure.
Thanks for the get well wishes. I'm hoping this two antibiotic approach will put a double whammy on it most ricky tick.
I was telling my doctor today about the time in the Summer of 1966 in Navy boot camp at Great Lakes, Illinois (just north of Chicago) when I had real, honest-to goodness, flat on your back pneumonia. They did not have a lot of the treatments they have today.
I was in the base hopital fora week in a ward fullof other recruits with pneumonia. There were about a dozen of us. Here's the treatment regimin. Three times a day, we were herded into this small, tiled room (tile on every facet. We all sat in chairs. The corpsmen then set up these large, industrial strength vaporizer in front of each of us. These were your wimpy, modern, venturi effect "cool mist" type vaprozer. On no!. The thing were like 220 volt jobs the produced real, singe the-hair-from-your-nose steam which blew right into your face fro a solid hour. After the hour was up, we would go back to our beds for a half hour of "postural drainage." For postural drainage, you lay prone across your single bed, with the edge of the bed at your waist. On the floor, is a short stool with a steel basin on it. With the lower half of your body on the bed, you lean down and place your elbows on the stool, just inches above the floor,then hold your lowered head in your hands and cough up phlegm for 30 minutes with better than half of your blood rushed to your head. You do this for a week, then you're back to training.
That's why that $12.00 for a small bottle of Mucinex down at Walmart struck me as a helluva bargain.
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