TJUSD Board Meeting - January 12, 2017

[panamint_patty]

White Teacher has a personalized secret handshake for each of her students
Who knows how many teachers are going to do this with their classes, but I don't see it as a bad thing, so much as just another one of those silly fads that quickly fade away into oblivion.

[mrfish]

Homie Don't Play That
I was never a school teacher, nor did I ever aspire to do such a thankless job, but if I were to be a teacher I'd be like "Homie Don't Play That" before I'd ever even consider degrading myself with this stupid handshake routine!

[surfsteve]

After the hand shake the teacher spent the remainder of the class individually reviewing last semester's common core math problem adding one million plus one million and then class was dismissed.Then the students went home to watch CNN who reported that they were just as smart as the top 25% of kids in any nation...

[wildrose]

surfsteve: CNN generally reports that schools are underperforming, but what MojaveMike said about our top 25% performing as well as the top 25% in any country is quite true and is backed up by stats. However, the MSM never focuses on the successes of public education. The focus is almost exclusively on the failures or shortcomings. Sometimes a cute video like the handshake video is shown, but most news coverage of public schools is negative. The gross corruption and 90% failure rate of charter schools is mostly ignored. Similarly issues regarding homeschooling, private schools, and religious schools mostly stay under the radar. BUT any little issue or isolated incident that can be used to denigrate public schools almost always makes the headlines.

[surfsteve]

I think Mike actually said the top 25% can compete with the top 25%; whatever that means.

[cactuspete]

Every legitimate information source I've come across supports the idea that the top students graduating from our public schools are every bit as well-educated as the top students graduating from any other school system around the world. Where we do poorly is with below average students and students from dysfunctional neighborhoods. Not that any other school system does any better, except they sort of send them off to other educational programs and so their test scores don't bring down the overall average. Our school system should do two things to help kids get more out of school. First of all, students should suffer real consequences for failure. Secondly, students not cut out for higher education should be tracked to some form of training more appropriate to their abilities.

[surfsteve]

I was sort of expecting you to share where you got that from. Never mind.

When I googled it this morning
https://www.google.com/search?num=50&si ... h0pQ_GV_GI

the top 4 results weren't that impressive.

1. American Schools vs. the World: Expensive, Unequal, Bad at Math
2. Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?
3. National University Rankings | Top National Universities | US News
4. Why Can't U.S. Students Compete With the Rest of the World?

Forgetting about the top 25% for a while let's focus on the bottom 75%. It kinda sounds like you are saying that 75 percent of US students are below average. Google seems to agree. Shouldn't that number be 50%? Sounds like a common core math problem if you ask me!

[cactuspete]

If you google BEST UNIVERSITIES IN THE WORLD and select the link for thebestschools.org you'll see that 16 out of the top 20 universities on the planet are in the USA with SIX of them here in California. Most of the students attending those universities graduated from public schools here in the USA. The problem is that there is a large gap between the high performers and the low performers here in the USA. Normally we talk about bell-shaped curves. There's another kind of curve called the U-shaped curve. When test scores are distributed in that fashion it is very possible for 75 percent of the scores to be below the arithmetic mean.

[surfsteve]

If you google BEST UNIVERSITIES IN THE WORLD and select the link for thebestschools.org you'll see that 16 out of the top 20 universities on the planet are in the USA with SIX of them here in California. Most of the students attending those universities graduated from public schools here in the USA. The problem is that there is a large gap between the high performers and the low performers here in the USA. Normally we talk about bell-shaped curves. There's another kind of curve called the U-shaped curve. When test scores are distributed in that fashion it is very possible for 75 percent of the scores to be below the arithmetic mean.

Please forgive me. I thought we were talking about publicly funded education. I didn't realize it had to do with universities which I've always assumed were privately funded. At least we are number one in hand shakes. I read yesterday that Betsy DeVos was confirmed. I have to agree with Sparky. What have we got to loose with her at this point?

[shadylady]

surfsteve: You should probably reread cactuspete's post and pay special attention to the second sentence. If the majority of students enrolled in the top twenty universities graduated from public schools, then it must be the case that public schools are at least doing a good job preparing top students for college. Otherwise, all the spots in top universities would be taken by other students. Also many of the schools listed in the top twenty list are publicly funded schools. All University of California schools are publicly funded and I believe four appear in the top twenty. The competition to enter those schools is stiff, but they are publicly funded nevertheless.