revelarts
03-20-2010, 10:12 AM
This is a 2 parter, part 1 is a couple of good news success stories.
Part 2 is How teachers unions and cities actually spend MORE money per chlid than many Private Schools cost to do a good job.
http://www.hispanicprwire.com/news.php?l=in&id=9535&cha=6
5 schools around the country with 80% plus Hispanics where test scores are rising and more kids are college bound.
"....-- YES Prep Public Schools, Southeast Campus: The student body of this charter school in Houston, Texas, is 96 percent Hispanic. One of the program’s requirements for graduation is acceptance to a four-year college or university. As a result, all Southeast seniors take the SAT college entrance exams, and from 2000-2001 through 2005-2006, their average scores were higher than those students of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) and the state as a whole. Eighty-seven percent of their graduates are the first in their family to attend college.
While the report highlights the programs’ innovative approaches and progress, it also underscores how they each address one or more of five common barriers facing low-income students:
-- Inadequate preparation entering high school
-- Perception that college is an unattainable goal
-- Disconnected curriculum and low student expectations
-- Inadequate preparation for college
-- Insufficient educational opportunities for dropouts...
The next one is Amazing, an urban, All Black, all male prep school in Chicago have 100% of it's rising seniors accepted into colleges.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/happynews/ct-met-urban-prep-college-20100305,0,3299917.story
...The achievement might not merit a visit from top brass if it happened at one of the city's elite, selective enrollment high schools. But Urban Prep, a charter school that enrolls all comers in one of Chicago's most beleaguered neighborhoods, faced much more difficult odds.
Only 4 percent of this year's senior class read at grade level as freshmen, said Tim King, the school's founder and CEO.
"There were those who told me that you can't defy the data," King said. "Black boys are killed. Black boys drop out of high school. Black boys go to jail. Black boys don't go to college. Black boys don't graduate from college.
"They were wrong," he said.
Every day, before attending advanced placement biology classes and lectures on changing the world, students must first pass through the neighborhood, then metal detectors.
"Poverty, gangs, drugs, crime, low graduation rates, teen pregnancy — you name it, Englewood has it," said Kenneth Hutchinson, the school's director of college counseling, who was born and raised in Englewood.
He met the students the summer before they began their freshman year during a field trip to Northwestern University, the first time many of them had ever stepped foot on a college campus. At the time, Hutchinson was Northwestern's assistant director of undergraduate admissions. Inspired by what he'd seen, he started working for Urban Prep two months later.
"I'm them," he said Friday as he fought back tears. "Being accepted to college is the first step to changing their lives and their communities."
Hutchinson plays a major role in the school, where college is omnipresent. Students are assigned college counselors from day one. To prepare students for the next level, the school offers a longer than typical day — about 170,000 minutes longer, over four years, than other city schools — and more than double the usual number of English credits, King said
Even the school's voice-mail system has a student declaring "I am college-bound" before asking callers to dial an extension.
The rigorous academic environment and strict uniform policy of black blazers, red ties and khakis isn't for everyone. The first senior class began with 150 students. Of those who left, many moved out of the area and some moved into neighborhoods that were too dangerous to cross to get to the school, King said. Fewer than 10 were expelled or dropped out, he said.
At last count, the 107 seniors gained acceptance to a total of 72 different colleges, including Northwestern University, Morehouse College, Howard University, Rutgers University and University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Alexander was accepted to DePaul University.
....
Now, Why can't all "public" schools do this. A CATO study says that they are lying when they say they need more money.
"...Just as an example, the CATO study found that, while Washington DC public schools claim to spend about $17,000/student, the actual price tag is closer to $28,000. Just to put this in perspective, this is a higher price than the private Potomac School, Georgetown Preparatory School, Stone Ridge School and Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. In fact, it’s only $2,000 less than Sidwell Friends, the ultra-exclusive private academy where President Obama’s own daughters attend.
In other words, parents in Washington are spending nearly as much on schools with a 41.8% dropout rate as they could be on a school that produced Nancy Reagan and Bill Nye and is widely regarded as one of the best private schools in the nation. One is reminded of Ronald Reagan’s quotation during his 1964 speech that “But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we’re going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.”...
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http://biggovernment.com/mholt/2010/03/13/new-cato-study-shows-educators-lie/
Part 2 is How teachers unions and cities actually spend MORE money per chlid than many Private Schools cost to do a good job.
http://www.hispanicprwire.com/news.php?l=in&id=9535&cha=6
5 schools around the country with 80% plus Hispanics where test scores are rising and more kids are college bound.
"....-- YES Prep Public Schools, Southeast Campus: The student body of this charter school in Houston, Texas, is 96 percent Hispanic. One of the program’s requirements for graduation is acceptance to a four-year college or university. As a result, all Southeast seniors take the SAT college entrance exams, and from 2000-2001 through 2005-2006, their average scores were higher than those students of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) and the state as a whole. Eighty-seven percent of their graduates are the first in their family to attend college.
While the report highlights the programs’ innovative approaches and progress, it also underscores how they each address one or more of five common barriers facing low-income students:
-- Inadequate preparation entering high school
-- Perception that college is an unattainable goal
-- Disconnected curriculum and low student expectations
-- Inadequate preparation for college
-- Insufficient educational opportunities for dropouts...
The next one is Amazing, an urban, All Black, all male prep school in Chicago have 100% of it's rising seniors accepted into colleges.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/happynews/ct-met-urban-prep-college-20100305,0,3299917.story
...The achievement might not merit a visit from top brass if it happened at one of the city's elite, selective enrollment high schools. But Urban Prep, a charter school that enrolls all comers in one of Chicago's most beleaguered neighborhoods, faced much more difficult odds.
Only 4 percent of this year's senior class read at grade level as freshmen, said Tim King, the school's founder and CEO.
"There were those who told me that you can't defy the data," King said. "Black boys are killed. Black boys drop out of high school. Black boys go to jail. Black boys don't go to college. Black boys don't graduate from college.
"They were wrong," he said.
Every day, before attending advanced placement biology classes and lectures on changing the world, students must first pass through the neighborhood, then metal detectors.
"Poverty, gangs, drugs, crime, low graduation rates, teen pregnancy — you name it, Englewood has it," said Kenneth Hutchinson, the school's director of college counseling, who was born and raised in Englewood.
He met the students the summer before they began their freshman year during a field trip to Northwestern University, the first time many of them had ever stepped foot on a college campus. At the time, Hutchinson was Northwestern's assistant director of undergraduate admissions. Inspired by what he'd seen, he started working for Urban Prep two months later.
"I'm them," he said Friday as he fought back tears. "Being accepted to college is the first step to changing their lives and their communities."
Hutchinson plays a major role in the school, where college is omnipresent. Students are assigned college counselors from day one. To prepare students for the next level, the school offers a longer than typical day — about 170,000 minutes longer, over four years, than other city schools — and more than double the usual number of English credits, King said
Even the school's voice-mail system has a student declaring "I am college-bound" before asking callers to dial an extension.
The rigorous academic environment and strict uniform policy of black blazers, red ties and khakis isn't for everyone. The first senior class began with 150 students. Of those who left, many moved out of the area and some moved into neighborhoods that were too dangerous to cross to get to the school, King said. Fewer than 10 were expelled or dropped out, he said.
At last count, the 107 seniors gained acceptance to a total of 72 different colleges, including Northwestern University, Morehouse College, Howard University, Rutgers University and University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Alexander was accepted to DePaul University.
....
Now, Why can't all "public" schools do this. A CATO study says that they are lying when they say they need more money.
"...Just as an example, the CATO study found that, while Washington DC public schools claim to spend about $17,000/student, the actual price tag is closer to $28,000. Just to put this in perspective, this is a higher price than the private Potomac School, Georgetown Preparatory School, Stone Ridge School and Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. In fact, it’s only $2,000 less than Sidwell Friends, the ultra-exclusive private academy where President Obama’s own daughters attend.
In other words, parents in Washington are spending nearly as much on schools with a 41.8% dropout rate as they could be on a school that produced Nancy Reagan and Bill Nye and is widely regarded as one of the best private schools in the nation. One is reminded of Ronald Reagan’s quotation during his 1964 speech that “But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we’re going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.”...
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http://biggovernment.com/mholt/2010/03/13/new-cato-study-shows-educators-lie/