NOTES-

Anthony - lives with his grandmother

Anthony - Father passed away from drug use

Daisy - Lives with unemployed father, working mother.

Daisy - Wants to be a vet or doctor

Education is repeatedly "valued" and more money is given to schools. Doubling money spent per child

Reading/math scores have barely improved since 1971

Francisco - Likes math

Francisco - wants to be a "recorder"

Francisco - school has a guard. It is the third largest overcrowded school in the Bronx. 

Bianca - Bianca's mom is trying to teach her sign (on bus)

Bianca - Bianca's mom wants her child to get a "career" rather than a job

No Child Left Behind  required the measure of each students level of education. Goal was 100% proficient in math and reading.

18% math in mississippi. NJ 40%. Highest on image was 43%. DC  was @12%

Most states scored between 24%-35% in grade level proficiency in reading @ eighth grade.

Large numbers of minority children from fifth to eighth grade go from B to D. Builds an expectation of failure in the children.

Daisy - Her mother works as a janitor at the local hospital.

California has a test (the A-G) required to get into a four year college.

Schools where more than 40% of the students don’t finish are termed "dropout factories"

In one mans research he found more than 2000 of these "dropout factories"

Part of the reason is pushing children with sub-par education up

Schools that fail may have a larger impact on their neighborhood than the reverse. Both feeding into one another. A school that produces many dropouts, the students would tend to stay nearby and dragging the community down.

68% of inmates in pennsylvania are HS dropouts

In Pitsburg, 33,000 per prisoner per year. avg term 4 years. 132000.

Avg private school costs 8300 per year.

1 4year term would fund 1 student for 13 years (k-12) with 24K leftover

Anthoney - Never knew his mother. His grandmother was raised by her grandmother. Neither his grandmother or father valued school at the time they went.

Michelle Rea was 7th superintendant in 10 years.

Francisco - has had "bad teachers". He is having difficulty reading.

Students with highperforming teachers advance students 3x as fast as low. Poor performing teachers usually cover 1/2 of the material vs high performing covering 150%

Bad teachers are protected by tenure. Tried to fire teachers for VERY poor behavior. the teachers were rehired with backpay covering the lost time)

Initially teachers NEEDED the protection from abuse by neglect. Poor wages and the like for trivial reasons like "their husbands work". This lead to teachers unions.

The NEA and AFT are the largest political financers (campaign contributors) when put together. Giving over 55 million in 20 years. Mostly to dems (90%)

Teachers Union wants all teachers treated the same. Strict rules for replacing a poor performance teacher with 31 (!) steps.

New Yorks "rubber room" Version of lemondance, costs new york 100 mil per year. This only deals with negligent/abusive/horrible teachers.

Magnet schools were developed to help give parents options where to send their children.

Charter schools were built to be outside the normal legal stuff.

Despite strong efforts on the part of Rheys attempts at reforming the DC system was met with strong resistance from the union

WRAPUP

As a kid I never really thought much about what school I was going to. I do remember once being given the opportunity to go to one of two different schools and I naturally picked the one that my friends would be at. As I get older I start to see the larger workings that go into that decision. I don’t personally feel failed by the education system but after seeing this movie and some of the other stuff we have reviewed in class I do feel that my younger brother was. Starting in first grade his teacher had recommended that he put on Ritalin because he was “to much to handle”. My parents didn’t do that but from there he was tracked into the supposed extra attention classes where the trouble students were put to try to sort them out. In reality it turned out to be more of a collection of these kids who were just bad influences on one another. By the time my brother was a freshman in highschool he was behind most of his peers. I remember overhearing my dad talking about the worst thing he ever did by my little brother was to allow them to put him in that class. All of this started because he was a little rowdier and his first grade teacher (new at teaching) thought he was too much to handle. Tying this back into this movie, I never realized how lucky I was growing up. While my education was not superb I can trace my own failings to myself, not to the system itself. There are areas though where this is not the case. Even in spite of best efforts some kids are just more likely to fail just because of the place they were unlucky enough to be stuck at.