Thanks for Commenting
I just read how Bill was talking about education priorities during his trip to Nevada. And...
during the Democratic Debate, he said his top priority for his first 100 days in office would be education ("upgrading" schools, increasing teacher's pay to 40K/yr) which I find interesting considering where our state is compared to national (or even top 50 largest school districts which is the survey measure you refer to) and, well, then, of course, there is the NCLB debate.
There is more to those cohort statistical numbers than meets the reporter's eye. If you delve into it further, you will note that there are many, many factors contributing to grad rates (as you point out the need for consistency) and if you look at the numbers... we are failing our kids most heavily in the 9th grade through drop-out rates. The 9th grade. Yowzer!
Here's a suggestion for you:
as a political blogger, potential political leader, businessman, and father... attend one of the APS' district "Community Conversation" meetings with Beth Everitt. The cohort data will soon be updated and she gives presentations to the community about the district. It was my first introduction to her and although I was polite, I spoke during this meeting and questioned statistics, communication methods, and other stuff and it was very interesting to hear information straight from the superintendent. A learning experience...
If you decide to do this, email them at superintendent@aps.edu and they will let you know when the next meeting is and put you on the list.
Just a thought... as it's always interesting to hear how the numbers are composed.
Take care!
I tend to think that pushing education issues to the Federal level is the wrong thing to do all around. No doubt some funding is nice, but just about anything done works to take away the ability to make decisions on a local level. And *all* education problems are local.
I'd say all solutions are local as well.
What I'd like most is to see is the promotion of choice, alternatives, and local control.
As for those who don't graduate. I tend to think that most people have a reasonably good grasp on the facts of their own lives. Making it *much* easier for people to *both* leave school and return to school and the school environment (the equivalent of Students Older Than Average in colleges, who participate in campus life as much as anyone else) and the availability of technical education in a *non* high school type environment for students who think school is lame and just want to start working, would be a good idea.
But we've decided that all young people must endure (and I use the word "endure" on purpose) the same education in the same sequence with the same overall goal.
Can you *really* say that the students who feel that they are wasting their time in high school are wrong about that? We can be sad that their time is wasted and wish that they were motivated and getting something out of it, but they *aren't*.
If you think it's confusing as to how many New Mexican Students are graduating, try figuring out how the APS district is calculating GPA's. The district has arbitrarily changed the weighting system so that even the teachers are misrepresenting the amounts to the students. Then every administrator has a different formula and excuse to go along with it as to why a student with a 4.4 last year now has a 4.0. If someone decided to change the pay scale for these bumbling paper pushers they might realize that colleges (especially ones in other states) don't change the grading scales. No wonder kids drop out.
Commenting by HaloScan
