Tim,

I am interested in learning more about what district improved 80 percent in two years. Tell us soon.

The goal should remain for students to perform at or above grade level, but don't you think saying the avearge 8th grader can't read a newspaper is going overboard?

I am also interested in the proposal that was briefly discussed about different pay for different subjects. Can you write more about that?

If a school goes up 80 percent is it a good thing? They must of started pretty low, no? I don't think it was a decent school that became great, but I am expecting you to surprise us.

Brian

No shock to me, I sub for the 10th graders who read at a 2nd grade level. All that the class can do is look at rifles in the Big 5 ad and compare the prices to Wal Mart.
And I wouldn't be surprised if your district was doubling our scores in Palm Springs. I'd be curious to know. As a whole district, I have the numbers at school but not at home.
We've got work to do! You can see that more kids fail than do well at the present time. And I'm very jealous of your district being so high. Be proud!

What is the number one predictor that a student will get a college education?

The student's parents have graduated from college. Maybe, to get scores up, we should push for parents to get a college education. Maybe, this is where we need to target.

Schools gets students for a minimum of 230-240 minutes per day while parents get their kids for a lifetime. We've tried a lot of reforms in the schools, but most reforms don't seem to focus on parents doing anything different than dropping their children off at school.

The best way to bridge the achievement gap, in my opinion, is to entice parents to get a college education as this seems to be a great predictor of whether their children will graduate from college.

College isn't for everyone, but if we are going to talk about academic achievement, I think we should start a discussion on parental educational background and how this influences their children.

Scott

I agree! As a teacher, I must! Not much parent involvment at all chez moi. Its lovely to hear about all the volunteers that help in elementary school and how nice it must be to have help grading the 20 papers they have. But I'd love it for a reliable person to help me handle my 160 students and the 500 papers they produce a week for me to grade!

Scott, have you been to a college class at the community college level lately? I have. Three years ago I took at Spanish class at Grossmont College in San Diego. It was where I went for my first two years. It was miles better than any other university I went to at the time.
But I was embarassed for the teacher. The young students (clearly just out of high school) sat in the back, laughed, caused problems, and were eventually all kicked out! It was worse than my classroom in high school. I felt horrible for the teacher. I'd love to sent 100% of my students on to a four year or a community college. But not if they were to behave as they did in that class. I'd be embarassed to know that my students were behaving like that!

If we're going to educate them all at the same level to the same degree, at least know that all students aren't bread for that. With the huge population of muslims coming from out of the united states, the problems arise when the boy students won't even look at a female teacher, let alone listen to her. They're reared to take over the family store and work there. They barely stay awake in class or listen to anyone. I almost had a fire hydrant smashed over my head one day! Its not fun to make people learn what they don't want to learn. And he has the right to be at school, so within 10 minutes he was back in my room - although I had some trust issues after that!

Brian,

The answer is Inglewood, where scores went up from 5% to 9%.

Tim

...I am also interested in the proposal that was briefly discussed about different pay for different subjects. Can you write more about that?