Teachers Need More Than Just Apples

Let’s face it; the educational system we use is the mold for who will lead us tomorrow. Students are the hope for solving our problems of today: inflation, climate change, international relations. It makes sense, that with so much being placed on their shoulders, laws are being passed that require students to learn more, remember more, and analyze more. So wouldn’t it be important that students are taught well; important to understand that those who teach students are one of the most vital components of the whole process? Wouldn’t it make sense to insure, with all these new mandates, that these teachers are sufficiently provided for to teach students. Despite the seemingly simple logic here, educators are still getting the short end of the stick.

            Many schools throughout the nation are falling on financial problems, and commonly its teachers who take the worst of it. Students benefit from going on field trips, working hands-on, and listening to speakers, the physical interaction broadening their scope of leaning. But all these things cost money, and funding has come up short. Teachers are pushed more and more to provide these things right from their pocket. Unfortunately, this gets expensive due to high inflation and economic recession. The cost of living has gone up, while salaries for teachers have not kept pace. A decade ago teachers received a pay raise of 6% every year, which dropped to 3%, and has moved to nothing in recent years. Teaching positions have never been considered exceptionally high paying jobs, but this was offset by good benefits (health care, retirement, ect.). But that has been attacked recently as well. Some teachers are paying four times as much for prescriptions, medical exams, treatments, and insurance premiums. 

            On top of the financial pressure teachers are often used as scapegoat, getting blamed for a child’s problems. They deal with students who have social and academic issues, and are often held responsible by parents. Some issues that cannot be treated, and some do come from inept teachers, but for the most part these parents need to look at themselves and ask what they can do for their child as well. Instead of blaming a teacher, who often has to worry about over a hundred kids simultaneously, they should assist and encourage their students in whatever way possible at home. Parents, administrators, and the media constantly attack teachers. Is it more often you hear the press present the story the few teachers who make mistakes, or the hundreds of thousands who really care about what they do and do it well? Everyone should take a step back and take a second to truly appreciate the difference educators make in our daily lives. 

           

Most the information above was from an interview with a middle school teacher in a Michigan suburb who has thirty years experience in secondary education.

 

 Other sources were taken from CNN’s Education feed and articles which can be found at http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080224/BUSINESS/802240531/0/FRONTPAGE http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080224/EDIT07/802240379

Is Segregation Gonna Be A Problem for Education Today?

Education is the main focus for many families and individuals who long to be successful. . Many people got the idea that living a good, financially stable future without a certain amount of education is less likely to happen, when the Brown vs Board of Education trial was declared stating that education is the foundation of a good citizen. In present day, it seems as if no one cares where or with who they receive their education as long as they receive the elements that they need to be successful. But receiving an education and finances are not the only problem being presented in public schools throughout the United States. Re-segregation has been presented in a number of public schools which takes away from the diversity that helps kids learn the values of life. The re-segregation and the financial issues are the main reasons why elementary and secondary schools have slow progress throughout the years.

It was reported that the most segregated schools are located in the big cities in the Midwest and Northeast even though these are the areas in which many minorities are relocating to. Elementary and secondary schools in the suburbs educate almost 4 times the amount of white people as the do minorities (specifically Blacks and Latinos). The smaller towns in the South and West are more diversified which is better for the teachers when educating the students. Here are some statistics from www.woodtv.com;

About one-sixth of black students and one-ninth of Latino students attend what Mr. Orfield calls “apartheid schools,” at least 99 percent minority. In big cities, black and Latino students are nearly twice as likely to attend such schools. Some two-thirds of black and Latino students in big cities attend schools with less than 10 percent white students; in rural areas, about one-seventh of black and Latino students do. Although the South was the region that originally integrated the most successfully, it’s beginning to resegregate, as in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district.

The problem is not that predominately white schools are forbidding minority students to attend them but the segregation between the schools make it seem like students are assigned to schools by the color of their skin. “Once you separate kids spacially from more privileged kids, they tend to not get the same things,” says Amy Stuart Wells, an education professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York. “And we need to start thinking about how a school that’s racially isolated can be preparing students for this global society we live in.”

The white population is very low due to the decreasing birth rate. This down fall is the cause of the decrease in the percentage of white people enrolling in schools. The percentage of white people enrolling has decreased 16 percent. Compared to the statistics in the 1960’s schools have become predominately minority educating Hispanic and Black students who’s families have low income or have been left behind in the economy, which is not a real cause for the minority school seeing that the amount of impoverished white children in the school system doubled the amount of impoverished minority as a whole.

Here are a the links to the pages in which I found my information. Please feel free to check them out for yourself.

http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/Fall05/resegregation.html

http://www.woodtv.com/global/story.asp?s=7809148

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/aug1999/rese-a23.shtml

Dropouts: Who and Why?

Every school year, there are always some students that just can’t seem to handle all the stress that comes along with high school. They just want to get out of school. Since the year 2000, the dropout rate has been declining. It went from 15 percent in 1972 to 9 percent in 2005. In some years the dropout rate does go up again, but it always seems to go back down the following year.

People always wonder why students are dropping out of high school. The reasons why students drop out vary from student to student, but there are some similar reasons why they leave school before graduation. A few of the reasons why students drop out are that they don’t like school in general or they were failing their classes. they also may drop out because they had to get a job to support their family or they couldn’t seem to balance school and work. Not all factors related to dropout reduction are school controllable, and solutions to the complex problem of dropouts cannot acheived by the schools alone, parents have to try and keep their kids in school. If parents did more to try and keep their kids in school, there might be fewer dropouts. A simple thing they could do is to pay attention to their kid’s lives. Then they could detect any warning signs.

Poor academic performance is the single strongest school-related predictor of dropping out. The most recent Department of Education annual dropout report relates that students who repeated one or more grades were twice as likely to drop out than those who had never been held back, and those who repeated more than one grade were four times as likely to leave school before completion. Student-related risk factors include personal  problems independent of social/family background. Substance abuse, pregnancy and legal problems are frequently reported along with school-related problem behaviors such as truancy, absenteeism, tardiness, suspension, and other disciplinary infractions.          -Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory

Different kinds of students are at risk for leaving school before graduation. Students are twice as likely to leave school in large cities than students in non-urban areas. About 20 percent of dropouts were held back a grade and almost half failed a course. Youth that spend time in a juvenile home or shelter make up 8 percent of the dropouts.

People wonder what kind of students are dropping out of high school. The ones are most at risk are the students who repeat one or more grades. The amount of dropouts also differ by ethnicity. In 2005, Whites made up 6 percent of the dropouts. Blacks made up 10.4 percent of the dropouts and Hispanics made up 22.4 percent of the dropouts. Those rates are slowly declining at different rates by race or ethnicity.

The status dropout rates for Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics each generally declined between 1972 and 2005. However, for each year between 1972 and 2005, the status dropout rate was lowest for Whites and highest for Hispanics. Although the gaps between the rates of Blacks and Whites and Hispanics and Whites have decreased, the patterns have not been consistent. The Black-White gap narrowed during the 1980s, with no measurable change during the 1970s or between 1990 and 2005. In contrast, the Hispanic-White gap narrowed between 1990 and 2005, with no measurable change in the gap during the 1970s and 1980s.          -National Center for Education Statistics

People wonder why so many youth are leaving school before graduation. It is all almost a formula for who is going to dropout. If you put together a non-white student with a troubled life and they live in a large city, you will get a student that is more likely to leave school before graduation than a white student with a normal life living in a suburb. Even if that white student has a troubled life and has spent time in a juvenile home, the non-white student with the troubled life is still more likely to leave school before graduation.

Here are the links to the websites for the information used: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16            http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/9/c017.html       http://www.focusas.com/Dropouts.html

School by Obligation, Leader by Choice, Student of Life

You start off in preschool then kindergarden. Then real life hits you hard and you start “real school” spending 6 hours a day in a building for 9 months out of the year for the next twelve years of your life. Next, you’re 18 the time of your life, you’re finally an adult and can do anything you want, so you think. In reality you are volunteering over 100 thousand dollars for four more years of school. Then comes adulthood, you’re on your own and not to mention completely and totally devoured in debt.

Ran by the government, we are given more than 18 years of occupations. It promises success to all who participate. If you stick with it throughtout its duration, you will come out on top, is the idea of it all. Though it seems like a perfectly good system, it has its faults and is altered constantly. This blog will keep you informed on all aspects of the educational system.

This blog will be periodically updated by four informed and involved individuals who are concerned about education today. We will be using Google Reader to present information from the following sites and more; CNN, BBC, New York Times, World News, and local newspapers and broadcasts. Primary sources such as interviews from students and teachers will also be posted and evaluated.

College prices are getting way to pricey

College, it’s a real possibility for many people in the near future. Seniors in highschool are waiting to hear from all those colleges that they applied to, hoping that they get into one of their top choices. But for many, the prices of those colleges are overwhelming and cause many people to apply to community colleges or cheaper public ones instead of the higher notch private colleges. It is a fact that over the past year the price for a 4 year college has significantly gone up. The price for a public college has gone up 6.6% bringing the average cost per year to around $6,185. That means that you are spending around $24,740 on a 4 year education. The smaller private colleges that cost an average of $23,712 a year has gone up about 6.3% from last year. That means that, for a 4 year college experience at a private school you are paying around $94,848. Public two-year $2,361 a year, up 4.2 percent from last year.

    Students will pay, on average, from $371 to $406 more than last year for this year’s room and board, depending on the type of college. The average surcharge for full-time out-of-state students at public four-year institutions is $10,455.
        -college board
It is amazing that in the US, people can pay anywhere from $25,000 to almost $100,000! And that is not even counting the IVY league schools which can get up to $200,000. Then you must consider that, right now, the prices are not going to start falling.
    Over the past 20 years, inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, increased by 84 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the cost of tuition, fees and room and board at both public and private colleges and universities grew at a rate much faster than inflation. According to The College Board, those costs tripled. In the 1985-1986 academic year, comprehensive costs at public schools totaled $3,791. For this academic year they are $12,796. At private colleges and universities 20 years ago, comprehensive costs totaled $8,902. This academic year, the number is a stunning $30,367.- abc world news.

It is getting way over the top with the prices of colleges. Sadly, soon, more and more people will start to think that the cost of going to college in the US is not worth it. I say the US because I found and interesting fact. While the United States is pushing the majority of college kids into debt, there are places that have a wonderful solution. Europe, for example, is providing tuition FREE colleges and universities for people to attend. That is saving the average student anywhere from $5,000-$12,000 a year. That may not seem like much to some, but it takes a good chunk out of the cost of colleges in the end. after four years you end up saving from $20,000 to $48,000!

‘Why?’ you may ask is the price for college so high. An article from CNNMoney.com had this to say about the rising costs for colleges.

The College Board doesn’t examine the reasons for tuition increases in its report. But Baum said she sees a correlation between the rise in tuition to the decline in state funding at public schools and to the reduction in endowment income and private giving at private schools.

She also attributes the price hikes at both private and public schools in part to the rising costs of health care – a component of compensation, which is a big part of school budgets – and to the cost of technology, which schools invest in to maintain state-of-the-art facilities.

This entry was not meant to scare anyone away from going to college. Once you find that college or university that is just right for you, you should go for it. Just be careful and watch out for the quickly rising cost of that education. Think really hard to see if the benefit outweighs the cost. And hay, if you really need to you can go over to Europe where the government pays the tuition for the colleges and universities.

(A special thanks to CNNMoney. com, ABC world news, and college board for the info!)

Here are the web pages if you want more information on colleges and their costs;

http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/18/pf/college/college_costs/index.htm http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/PersonalFinance/story?id=2865814&page=1 http://apps.collegeboard.com/fincalc/college_cost.jsp