Audrey Johnson MPS BOE wrote: > Mr. Atherton is right, current research shows that student acheivement can > be accurrately measured as follows: 49% attributed to parent involvement, > about 42% teacher quality, and about 8% to class size.
Reference please! I have no faith in numbers that fall out of the sky. Especially when they sum to 99% and only 1% of the variance in student achievement can be attributed to factors other than the three that you have named. > A top priority of > the district is currently to provide staff development in a way that is > shown to raise teacher quality. In the past year, Dr. Johnson has worked > to bring staff development to the classroom instead of remote course work > that is not very effective. I'm a little confused here. Are you speaking of yourself in second person or is there another Dr. Johnson? Or a guest author. > She has done this by having mentor teachers, > teachers that have done an outstanding job with all types of students and > learning styles, take their skills, experience and expertise and work with > new and less experienced teachers in the classroom. These teachers have > been assigned to our most challenged schools, they tend to be those schools > with the highest poverty rates. This sounds like a promising program are you recording data and do you have a research design to analyze the results? > Many schools have established professional development centers (or PDC) > that have strong ties to specific colleges of education. New teachers can > intern at those schools and many of them come back as good full time > teachers to the same schools in which they interned. Henry H.S. is a great > example, that school was in the"pits" 7-8 years ago. They had huge > problems. The school administration took it on to put into place the PDC > and the results are very evident. The results are very evident to whom? Numbers please. > This is a school with IB and Advanced > placement classes that are full, and was named as one of the top 500 high > schools in the country in a Newsweek article a short time back. > (Incidentally, so was Southwest). One school does not a district make. > Another school that has made great strides forward and has a high poverty > rate is Lincoln Elementary. But these results are not achieved overnight, > it takes 2-4 years of good leadership and strong commitment to professional > development to really turn things around. Numbers please. 2-4 years is a reasonable time frame; so is this scalable and if so why hasn't it been implemented district wide. > In the League of Women Voters > Middle School Study, it was found that the middle schools had made the > structural changes neccessary to increase student achievment, but that real > change had not occurred in teaching practices as much as was needed. The > way to that goal is through professional development. Where can this study be accessed? > This is very much in > the control of the district and that is why it is a huge priority now. > That is why the Board is bringing in Education Trust to help us further > advance teacher quality in our district. Right. But if, as you say, 49% of the variance to attributable to parent involvement, what kind of parent involvement programs are you testing? > Children who are home schooled receive continous individualized attention, > one on one, or small group learning opportunities. So it would stand to > reason that the smaller the class size, the more likely a student is to > receive individualized attention, along with teacher quality, this is a > measurable factor in sucessful learning. Poverty is no reason or excuse > for student failure, teacher quality is the largest factor that the > district can directly affect. The district is working and aligning > resources to do just this. This is not a valid argument. There is no data to support the assumption that the performance of home schooled children is due to individualized attention, and the small amount of variance attributable to class size in the public schools would suggest that it is not. The superiority of home schooling could just as likely be due to high expectations, lack of peer pressure, or better teaching methods, etc. There is deep irony in someone who is responsible for the public schools citing home schooling to support public education policy. Doug Mann wrote: > I don't assume that MA is arguing in favor of going back to > large class sizes. You assume wrong. If as you suggest, teacher experience is the most important factor (I think at one point you said 40+%) and if we can tentatively accept Ms. Johnson's figure of 8% attributable to class size, THEN it only make sense to try putting experienced teachers in charge of larger classes. It's a no-brainer. Of course I am not claiming that this is true for all types of classes, just for many. Why not test it? Michael Atherton Prospect Park _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
