Washington DC schools are no longer used for educating. DCPS has involuntary evolved to a place just to give jobs to people. Accordingly, for schools to succeed they must be treated like a business: management needs to change to higher ranking authorities, while education focused decisions are delegated to school boards and teachers. Washington DC schools are scoring the lowest in the country for reading and math in federal standards. “Many people believed that so long as the city is populated with so many poor, African American families, DC would never have the nation’s best school system,” Leigh Hafrey and Cate Reavis from Management Principles and the Washington, DC Public Schools (A): Choosing a Chancellor quoted Victor Reinoso. assigned deputy mayor. The system is failing even when the DC schools have the resources to focus on student progress.
Instead of focusing on the instruction a lot of DCPS budgets went into administration. A former deputy superintendent said that before decisions were made, you needed to know who you were dealing with and what kind of relationships they had (Hafrey, Reavis). No one would make choices if the choice would negatively influence their employment. Reinoso hired Parthenon Group, a consulting firm with well known education practice. One of the firm’s findings was quoted, “Currently, adult job-saving is prioritized over student achievement.” The people who should be focusing on the students are too busy focusing on how to keep jobs.
State departments of education must be able to build capacity within their state by providing districts the essentials for developing a clear vision of what their schools’ futures entail, and the necessary components of professional development for leadership and teachers to create their own goals at the local level. Once this is accomplished, states need to hold the districts and local levels accountable, including themselves.
Education is an integral part of society, School helps children learn social norms as well as teach them to be successful adults. The school systems in United States, however are failing their students. In the world as a whole, the United States is quickly falling behind other countries in important math and reading scores. The United States ranked thirtieth in math on a global scale and twentieth in literacy. This is even more true in more urban, lower socio-economic areas in the United States. In West Trenton Central High School was only 83% proficiency in literacy and only 49% of the students were proficient in math. These school have lower test scores and high dropout rates. Many of these students come from minority backgrounds and are often form low income families. There are many issues surrounding these urban schools. There is a severe lack of proper funding in these districts, and much of the money they do receive is sanctioned for non-crucial things. Schools also need a certain level of individualization with their students, and in many urban classes, this simply does not happen. While there are many factors affecting the low performance of urban schools, the lack of proper funding and distribution of funds, the cultural divide between teachers and students in urban districts, along with the lack of individualization in urban classrooms are crucial factors to explain the poor performance in these districts. Through a process of teacher lead budget committees and
According to Sanford Graduate School of Education research, almost every school district enrolling large numbers of low-income studies has an average academic performance significantly below the national-grade level average. Achievement gaps are larger in districts where black and Hispanic students attend higher poverty schools than their white peers. The size of the gaps has little or no association with average class size. The most and least socioeconomically advantaged districts have average performance levels more than four grade levels apart. According to Reardon and colleagues, one-sixth of all students attend public school in school districts where average test scores are more than a grade level below the national average. Also, one-sixth
Since last spring, Philadelphia school district leaders have been sounding the alarm about this year’s fiscal budget. Even after months of discussions and headlines, schools have opened with fewer resources than last year. On March 28th the School Reform Commission approved a lump sum budget which showed a need for an additional $220 million in revenue in order to provide schools with same resources as the “wholly insufficient” 2013-14 school year (McCorry). There will be many inadequate funding impacts on the quality of the education. Classroom resources would be stripped to untenable levels. The district would reduce as much as $2.2 million funding to the districts’ multiple pathways to graduation program which affects estimated 300 students. Another $1.5 million could be reduced from the elimination of preparation and professional development time for teachers at the district’s high needs promise academies. The district’s building maintenance budget could have reduction in amount of $9.6 million. Schools will be cleaned less frequently as a result. Building maintenance will also be curtailed as a result. District’s school police budget could also have reduction in amount of $2.4 million. School police officer vacancies will be unfilled, leaving an additional 27 elementary schools to share an officer.
The situation with Detroit Public Schools has been taking turns for the worse. Every day it seems like something is adding up to the pile of Detroit Public School District issues. DPS has been considered as “The Worst School District” in the country. DPS have been struggling to improve the school district, The district has been trying for decades as nothing has been working. Detroit Public Schools main issues that need to be tackled down includes: unhealthy environments, oversized classrooms, and the district’s unbalance of power.
Indirectly, or directly, one can argue, public schools are controlled by the federal and state governments. Several issues have emerged, because of the conflict between federal and state requirements for education. “Under the Tenth Amendment, any authority not given specifically to the federal government is reserved to the states. Thus, the federal government has no authority to regulate education directly; that belongs to the states” (Underwood, n. d., p. 2). To get around this, the federal government controls the schools through funds for complying with certain initiatives, procedures, and policies (Underwood, n. d.). Ironically, both the state and federal levels of government hold the district liable for implementing different agendas and legal obligations. The federal government, however, can ensure that no citizen is denied their rights or privileges, even in a private institution, because of the Bill of Rights and other amendments. Failure to comply by these amendments or statutes can lead to the loss of federal funding and legal reproductions for schools.
For over thirteen years, I have witnessed an enormous amount of change in education. When I started teaching in New York City back in 2003, I remember being told, “whatever you do, don’t wind up of the cover of New York Post”. The room erupted in laughter and my stomach erupted in panic. Shortly after that announcement our principal handed out an enormous book of our district policies. -As I flipped through book of policies and regulations I thought to myself how could there possibly be this many rules about teaching.
Due to financial issues, any districts hardest hit had no choice but to move around resources to make up the difference in their actual spending and funds provided by the state due to the Class Size Reduction (CSRe) experiment in California. While accountability was not intended to so strongly influence what
When looking at District Report Cards all we usually hear about is student data, not realizing that there is also teacher data reported in this document. Looking over the data as a whole the schools are pretty similar in teacher data. Attendance was at between 93% and 94%, while teacher-students ratio per 1000 students was lower than the state average in all schools. Teacher’s average pay was within $5000.00, MCSD was the lowest at $52,000.00 and CCSD being the highest at $57,000.00. Looking at teacher and principal evaluations YCSD and MCSD had no teachers with an Effective evaluation, the highest percentage of teachers fell under Accomplished in evaluations. As for principals YCSD and MCSD principals were either Accomplished or Skilled, the majority were Skilled, in all Districts. As for CCSD, they had no one Accomplished, but they did have Developing and Effective.
If the current system not the administration calculates that the annually will increase as a chance to reinforce the district where it needs the assistance. While increased funding not necessarily equate to improvements in student performance, it’s funding and where it is clearly needs to be addressed. Ambitious effort to lift student achievement and, fundamentally, to undermine the idea of public
Established as a district by the Baltimore City Council in 1829, Baltimore City Public Schools is the fourth largest, out of 24 school districts in Maryland (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.). The Baltimore City school district currently serves 83,800 students in 195 different schools throughout the Baltimore city area. Of these schools, there is one pre-K/kindergarten school, 54 elementary schools, 75 middle elementary schools, nine middle schools, 17 middle/high schools, 31 high schools, one elementary/middle/high school, and seven alternative (non-school) programs (Baltimore City Public Schools, 2013a). The Baltimore City Public School System is currently under the direction of Chief Executive Officer Dr. Gregory E. Thorton and the Baltimore
The Fairfax County Public School system, FCPS, just as other local public school districts is still experiencing the impact of the recession. Consequently, school leaders and officials have to make difficult choices to balance the Fairfax County Public School system budget. Fairfax County Public Schools functions off two primary budgets. The first, Operating Budget, provides for the daily functions of the schools, personnel, and programs. The second, Capital Improvement Program budget, addresses future facility needs.
The superintendent has a lot of power within the decisions of the school system, but he does need to be approved by the board. The superintendent of Baltimore County is Dallas Dance(Dr.Dance), he's been working as a superintendent for many years. Many people believe that he is not trying to solve this problem, some have protested the board to have him fired. But, Dr.Dance is a big believer in spreading out the diversity of teachers throughout schools. He believes that it could aid many students in and out of the classroom, such as; feeling comfortable in class, being able to express problems they are having
Oklahoma as of today is ranked 49th nationally in per-pupil expenditures and ranked 48th in teacher pay (Klein 2). Putting Oklahoma as one of the worst states to be educated in the United States. “Oklahoma is consistently ranked near the bottom for education funding and teacher pay” (“Investing In Education Is Key For Growth And Job Creation” 3). When there are state cuts that need to be made, the departments of education are one of the first that usually tend to suffer. Since the 2008 economic crisis, Oklahoma has continued to cut the budget for education; even though the economy has since then gotten better (Perry). Budget cuts in education affect all parts of the education process for the students. “Some school districts have ordered teacher layoffs and shorter sessions” (“Oklahoma Makes the Poor Poorer” par 4).Schools are now struggling to keep their heads above water. Each year from the budget cutting, schools have had to lay off teachers, cut entire programs, and have limited resources used to educate the students. Even the teachers’ retirement system is suffering, being one of the top poorly funded pension programs nationally (Ash par 3). Seeing as that the schools have to cut down classes and programs, administration has had no other choice than to increase class size, overwhelming teachers tremendously. “Oklahoma has 1,500 fewer classroom teachers and 40,000 more students since 2008-2009” (“Investing In Education Is Key For Growth
Local control of school districts has proven to have mixed results. Local control allows districts to experiment and keeps problems from one district affecting another. At the same time however, local control keeps good ideas from spreading quickly. Local districts have produced a diverse range of possible solutions to the problems that public schools face. Unfortunately, the huge amount of diversity that is present from district to district has also made progress harder to measure.