I'm not sweating South Dakota's F on Michelle Rhee's K-12 ideological scorecard. I am a bit more rankled by Education Week's state education report card, which puts South Dakota's K-12 system dead last. Our schools get the only D+ on the list. Here's Ed Week's summary of South Dakota's performance in the six categories surveyed:
The Huffington Post leaps to this dangerous supposition:
Lawmakers in South Dakota are apparently aware of this inferior status -- they're trying all kinds of different things to change education in the state, including a failed ballot initiative that would have abolished teacher tenure. Those lawmakers might find the state's grade useful in pushing their agenda again this year [Joy Resmovits, "Quality Counts 2013 Education Rankings Come In: Maryland First, South Dakota Last," Huffington Post, 2013.01.10].
Noooooooo! Lawmakers in South Dakota are not aware of this inferior status. Their failed proposal, which became a ballot referendum that we South Dakotans overwhelmingly rejected last November, would have abolished teacher tenure and done a number of other things that might have boosted our standing on the Quality Counts report card (centralized teacher evaluations and merit pay would have pumped up our teaching profession scores) but, according to the majority of research available, would not have increased our actual educational performance. And if lawmakers take this report as justification for pushing the agenda we rejected last year, we'll spend a lot of time ignoring a real problem identified by the Quality Counts report: school funding, where we get a hard F for underfunding our schools.
There's much to debate about this report, and I'll keep reading and looking for reasonable policy solutions. But I ask you, dear readers: how do you interpret this report? Could two-thirds of South Dakotans have been wrong? Should we revisit the Daugaard education agenda from last year? Should we seek a whole new crop of reforms for our public schools? Or should we throw this Quality Counts report in the dustbin with the Rhee report and keep doing the good things we're doing in K-12 education?
What jumps out immediately is that adult outcomes (B-) are far above spending (F). Adult outcomes are the real test of any school system. The rest of it is pretty much b.s. College readiness is more a function of curriculum and course selection in high school, which can reach into middle school. Just accelerate classes, and you take care of college readiness. SD has reasonably high standards, but the curriculum does not always meet the standards because of this lack of funding. What it tells me is that SD's funding structure is not sufficient. Put more money into improving teachers and curriculum. Forget doing most of the stuff in HB 1234 and start with fixing the basics.
What's your take on their opinion that you and all other teachers in South Dakota are failing to ready our high school graduates for college? I'm also suprised our university system accepts so many who are failed in college rediness.
I'm not opposed to saying "we should spend more money on education" so long as we have a solid plan to improve adult outcomes - create successful adults from our education system.
But we need a plan.
You wouldn't tell a contractor "I want a better house", have him say "I can do that for $40,000" and just say "Sure, here you go!"... you'd ask "What will I get for that $40k? How will that make my house better? How will it affect my resale value?"
That's what we need to have when it comes to an education discussion. Let's talk about what specifically can be done to help produce more competent young adults.
We can do a better job in education. That's obvious. What have you done to make your school better? Have you volunteered? Have you thanked a teacher for the job that they do? Have you held your kids accountable for their school performance and have you lead them by example? Have you gone to a school board meeting?
The single greatest stupidity in my opinion is that somebody came up with the DUMB SHIT idea that we could save money by eliminating all of the funding for the alternative schools. I know of several young men who turned their lives around and graduated with the help they received from Dean Koster in Madison. I appreciated what he did with them.
If our legislature felt no need to do anything about being ranked #49 in potential for corruption,.why do you think they would do anything now?
This song has been sung for so long, it could be labeled "traditional".
Still, this report card is a joke. How do SD's standardized test scores compare? Where do we rank in wealth and parent education? Considering those factors I'd say we are doing a lot better than this report card indicates.
If you can tell me with a straight face Louisiana and Mississippi have better schools than SD, I would like to hear exactly how you came to that conclusion (not directed at anybody specifically).
Meanwhile in the appropriations committee our winged AG testifies that the good folks in South Dakota's police-prosecutorial-prison industrial complex are underpaid. Yawn. They are successful beyond any measure since we imprison at twice the rate of adjacent states. We should pay them down to 50ieth in the nation - then maybe the money we save will pay for the prisons they've forced us to build to hold non-violent felons.
This seems to be a pretty bogus report card. It sort of reminds me of the ALEC stuff that comes out every year. Just skimming this, it doesn't seem to follow that doing all that accountability stuff does much for student outcomes, though it bumps up your scores in this report card. Ohio has great accountability scores, but lower ACT scores than SD. I'd say that's an argument against accountability and merit pay.
Flys with honey teach?
Wayne, I'm all about having a concrete plan for dollars appropriated.
(1) Raise all teacher pay to compete with surrounding states. It's economically and morally justified to pay people for the work they're already doing.
(2) Restore the alternative schools. Michael makes a good point: those programs serve needs that can't be met in the regular classroom. There's no way around the fact that creating an alternative school requires staff and space, and that requires money.
(3) Hire a corps of math and reading tutors. Our universities spend a lot of resources creating tutoring programs for athletes and for at-risk students (far from identical groups at the university level). Moving some of that help to the high school level would reduce those remedial-need rates (as would the universities raising their admission standards).
(4) Require foreign language for state university admission, the way 47 other states do. Foreign language study boosts English skills and general brain power. Make every take two years of Spanish, French, Chinese, etc., and you'll boost college readiness.
(5) Fund debate programs in every high school. Debate prepares students for university-level research, writing, speaking, and critical thinking. Money well spent.
Justin, you make a good point about what rankings on what issues the Legislature chooses to respond to. If they start shouting "Last in the nation?! We've got to do something!" we should most certainly ask why the corruption report card didn't provoke the same drive for reform of state government.
I will be keenly interested to hear whether this EdWeek report card works its way into the discussion. The report card covers enough metrics to reach its conclusions that it doesn't fully support anybody's political agenda, not the Governor's, not mine.
Donald thinks our adult success metric trumps all the other metrics. Is that they key to justifying mostly carrying on with the status quo?
Rayo, I can tell you this: I work in a district where my colleagues appear to be hitting on all cylinders. I'm not sure how you squeeze more performance out of them given current resources.
Cory,
1) Boost Teacher Pay:
Counter Plan (I've wanted to say that for a while now, I confess): Move to a year-round school calendar and pay should be commensurately boosted 25%, and also eliminates the problem of summer learning loss and socio-economic related disparities. SD Teacher Salary would then average $49,800 (up from $39,850) putting us solidly in the middle (and on par with Iowa), and simultaneously ensuring better outcomes for our students.
I grant it's not Apples - Apples because of the workload, but it's the only way I can see justifying paying teachers *significantly* more than the median income of the state. If we're going to request the tax payers of South Dakota to open their wallets, we need to show them demonstrably how outcomes will be better.
There's also a reasonable argument for being able to select who to give more salary to. A universal raise above the rise in Cost of Living shouldn't sit well for anyone. I'm not proposing going back to our Governor's plan of testing to death, but we should be able to figure out some metrics that allow us to identify who's performing well and who isn't.
2) Is it necessary to create whole new infrastructure for this to work? Is it possible to make alternative class tracks within our current schools? The proposition doesn't sound unworthy on face, how much of a bump will it provide in life readiness vs cost?
3) Not a bad idea... but why not seek to have the brightest of our students help those who're struggling? Teaching is a great way to enhance mastery of a subject, and we know the benefits of service...
4) Not a bad idea either. Dual language also appears to help prevent Alzheimers disease. There's a deeper philosophical debate though about our universities accepting anyone with a pulse.
5) You & I are biased on that so I'm inclined to agree ;-) Can you provide data which shows the impact debate has on adult outcomes?
I'd sign on to Cory's improvement plan, but I'd make reading/math tutoring a priority in all grades, not just high school. People who fall behind in reading and math early are going to be greatly disadvantaged in all subjects. It's best to deal with those deficits right away, and not let students get too far behind.
As a college student at Western Dakota Tech and University of South Dakota (Rapid City) I can tell you tha our educator's professionalism is sorely lacking and this is reflected in the institutions they serve.
As a parent of a middle school student I can tell you that many of the teachers are also quite immature and irresponsible in their behavior.
I've always been curious about the bullying rules and regulations SD schools have. As a student in the SD educational system in the 80s, anti-bullying enforcement was unheard of (I went to both public and private and bullying was rampant in both). Do schools in SD take bullying seriously these days? Being bullied and harassed, and just downright afraid to go to school can obviously hinder a child's learning.
The MN legislature passed a pretty strict anti-bullying law with extra anti-bullying education the schools have to do and mandatory reporting. I fully supported this bill, and so far I really haven't heard any negative effects from these stricter standards.