Social Class and Education

Equality?

The Schools

What the elite think of public education.

2011 Cecil B. DeMille acceptance speech at the Golden Globes.

“…and for the children you just hope the movies do well enough to keep them in private schools”.

What everybody else gets.

High Socioeconomic school

ratemyteachers.com score: 3.8

Percentage of students on free or reduced lunch: 14%

TEA school rating: Exempalry

Drop out rate of High School that school feeds into: 10.3%

Middle Socioeconomic schoolratemyteachers.com score: 2.0

Percentage of students on free or reduced lunch: 62%

TEA school rating: Recognized

Drop out rate of High School that school feeds into: Split between two High Schools.

Low Socioeconomic schoolratemyteachers.com score: 4.0

Percentage of students on free or reduced lunch: 84%

TEA school rating: Acceptable

Drop out rate of High School that school feeds into: 16.8%

So why a ratemyteacher.com score?ratemyteacher.com bases

it’s rating on easiness. Therefore the easiest teachers as ranked by students are at the poorest school, have the lowest test scores, and highest drop out rates.

Worth every cent…to somebody.Tuition and Fees: $9,650 per year (62% of your yearly salary if you make minimum wage or .31% of Robert de Niro gets paid per film)

ratemyteachers.com score: 3.8

College acceptance rate of students attending IWA 8th Grade through Graduation: 93%

***************************************This means if you start IWA as an 8th grader you have a 10% higher chance of going to College than a student from our low income school has of merely graduating.

Don’t believe it? Check out these facts about Incarnate Word Academy, Houston:

Educational Beliefs

I.Q. Tests

“…often used to justify variations in education, achievement, and awards. The justification usually is that because some people are more intelligent than others, they are entitled to more opportunities and rewards, including curricular track placement and exposure to special education programs and resources.”

-Banks

Terry Martin:Martin was nearly killed at the age of 15 in the summer of 1996, when he was caught in a drive-by-shooting and hit by five bullets in his legs, chest and back. He has since earned a doctoral degree from the Adler School of Psychology's Chicago campus and fought in the UFC for a Light Heavy Weight title shot the following week.

Jeff Monson:Monson has a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree in psychology. For a few years he worked as a mental health professional, both in a crisis evaluation role as well as a child/family counselor. In an interview, he explained, "I am an anarchist, someone who would like to do away with all class hierarchy in society and the institutions that promote this inequality”. He has 40 wins and 11 losses in his professional fighting career, including a 14 fight win streak.

The Mismeasure of Man.

Both of these men went to low income urban schools. They learned to fight to protect themselves in a place where the teachers wouldn’t protect them. They went on to become prolific academics and super star fighters. Who gets to tell them their teachers were subpar because there was no justification for giving them better resources?

High Stakes Testing

Teacher Responses include: working harder with the students obtaining lower scores, providing them with more personal attention, tutoring, and additional experiences. Many underfunded schools don’t have the resources to do this “Educational Triage” .

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So

Why would they do this?“The other point that should be made is that any performance-based pay scheme is going to be highly dependent on standardized test results. Don’t be surprised when people figure out ways to game that. If you think we might be leaning a little too heavily on standardized tests in the curriculum now, going this route will make them even more important”

-Kuffner

Some teachers respond by trying to get rid of students with lower scores by encouraging them to drop out or transfer or by other means. Mandatory testing leads to teachers “teaching in ways that contradicted their own ideas of sound educational practices”.-Winter

What Caused this to happen?

“The NCLB rewards or punishes school districts, schools, and teachers for the tested achievements of their students but does not prescribe consequences for students”.

-Dworkin

The No Child Left Behind act of 2002 was created to “reduce the achievement gap between low income and/or minority children and higher income and/or white children by holding educators accountable”.

But

Speaking of “Incentive Pay”“HR departments copy their performance

review system out of the same Dilbertesque management book, because all programs work exactly the same way. First, you give "anonymous" upward reviews for your direct manager (as if that could be done in an honest way). Then, you fill out optional "self-evaluation" forms, which your manager "takes into account" in preparing your performance review. Finally, you get a numerical score, in lots of non-scalar categories like "works well with others", from 1-5, where the only possible scores are actually 3 or 4. Managers submit bonus recommendations upwards, which are completely ignored and everybody receives bonuses that are almost completely random”. - Spolsky

-DeMarco and Lister

“…any kind of workplace competition, any scheme of rewards and punishments, and even the old fashion trick of "catching people doing something right and rewarding them," all do more harm than good. Giving somebody positive reinforcement (such as stupid company ceremonies where people get plaques) implies that they only did it for the lucite plaque; it implies that they are not independent enough to work unless they are going to get a cookie; and it's insulting and demeaning”.

In a perfect world

Tracking ideally is a common curriculum shared by all students with only the mix of student abilities being varied. It also assumes that, within that curriculum, all groups are taught the same material.

In Reality

“In fact, it seems that group placement becomes self-perpetuating, that students are often grouped at the same level in all subjects, and even the same curriculum may be taught differently to different groups”.

-Banks

Does tracking still sound like a good idea?

Marie Curie: No option for higher education.

Albert Einstein: Told he lacked qualities of a good student.

Thomas Edison: “addled” or slow. Taught by his mother at home.

Maya Angelou: Kicked out of school for pregnancy.

The Teachers

Poor School Rich School

Schools with high percentages of low-income students are more likely to have teachers who are teaching out of their certification area or not certified at all.

Affluent schools don’t have this issue they have a lower percent of non-certified teachers mostly because they pay higher salaries on average.

Alternative Teacher Certification

“Alternative paths to certification are abbreviated paths to temporary certification aimed at career changers. Teachers exiting these programs have more uneven performance ratings compared to trained beginners, particularly in classroom management and instructional techniques. Also, their students conversely score lower particularly in language arts”. These teachers make up about 30% of the staff in the lowest 100 performing schools.-Banks

I’m a lawyer not an educator Jim.

“Policy makers nearly always answered the problem of teacher shortages by lowering standards, so that people with little or no preparation for teaching can be hired”.

-Darling-Hammond

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Teacher Expectations:Teacher training and textbooks have tended to attribute educational failures to deficiencies in the children. Often, such deficiencies are assumed to reside in the social characteristics of the pupils, such as their social class background. Sometimes social class was related to teacher expectations even when the children’s I.Q. and achievement scores were comparable. Socially vulnerable children (younger, lower-class, and minority) seem more susceptible to lower teacher expectations.

Pygmalion in the Classroom suggests that teacher expectations might powerfully influence the achievement of students.

Although, there has been trouble replicating the data from that book consistently, one thing is clear: only expectations teachers truly believe are likely to affect their behaviors.

Consequences of this inequality

Which in turn

Continues the cycle of economic and social inequalities.

Low SES students are:1. Taught less.2. Exposed to less.3. Have less expected of

them.4. Learn less.Making them less prepared for a college education.

Median Income of Full-time Workers Ages 25-34, 2006

High School Graduate or Bachelor's Degree.

Male $30,000 $50,000Female $24,000 $41,000

Source: U.S. Department of Education

What SHOULD you be doing?

1. Work politically to increase educational resources to all children.

2. Support income tax reforms at the national level.3. Support prenatal care for all pregnant women.4. Support Head Start programs.5. Focus on abilities students have rather than the ones

they don’t.6. Support efforts at “de-tracking”.7. Address the learning needs of individual children.8. Don’t waste student time teach them the content.9. Help students see how education is relevant and

useful to their lives.