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And I do agree that having more middle class kids in classrooms with lower class ones would be good for them and I apologize if my last post made it seem otherwise. But the point is, it's incredibly easy to say "Oh well if there were good families, the schools would be better, duh." What is hard to understand however is that, in many many St. Louis Public School boundaries, even those near the very best neighborhoods, you've still probably got 50-75% of the kids eligible for free and reduced meals. There aren't necessarily enough middle class families to go around and make that difference. That's a very hard sell for a parent who values education.
Agree completely. If a decent neighborhood school (by St. Louis public schools standards) still has 70% of its kids on meal assistance, then there are going to be performance issues that are highly correlated to poverty. Even if a bunch of highly involved, middle class families decided to go to school x and the meal assistance rate dropped to 50% or 60%, that's not really enough to create a seachange. It helps some, but teachers and administrators are so far past the point of being overwhelmed that it doesn't change things much.
Integration efforts in St. Louis are a double edged sword. In principle, they're a great idea, but unfortunately, race and economics are highly correlated and economics and parental involvement are too. The city could form small neighborhood schools in gentrified parts of the city...which, lets face it, isn't far from what magnet schools are anyway in many cases. But then you'd be segragating economically and indirectly by race. No easy answers here.
Agree completely. If a decent neighborhood school (by St. Louis public schools standards) still has 70% of its kids on meal assistance, then there are going to be performance issues that are highly correlated to poverty. Even if a bunch of highly involved, middle class families decided to go to school x and the meal assistance rate dropped to 50% or 60%, that's not really enough to create a seachange. It helps some, but teachers and administrators are so far past the point of being overwhelmed that it doesn't change things much.
Integration efforts in St. Louis are a double edged sword. In principle, they're a great idea, but unfortunately, race and economics are highly correlated and economics and parental involvement are too. The city could form small neighborhood schools in gentrified parts of the city...which, lets face it, isn't far from what magnet schools are anyway in many cases. But then you'd be segragating economically and indirectly by race. No easy answers here.
Part of the problem though is that the "neighborhood" school boundaries are forced to stretch so far because so few of the parents in the better neighborhoods send their kids to public schools. If the parochial schools did not exist to the degree that they do then more parents would be sending their kids to the neighborhood schools and that would shrink the boundaries some.
In Arizona I taught at a school that had 35% on free or reduced lunch. Our school was rated excelling (the highest rank) for 3 of the years I was there and highly performing (2nd highest) the other 3 years. We received a great schools rating of 8 or higher each year I was there as well.
maybe private education was looked at differently in Phoenix than it is in St. Louis as well. As stated, I was private educated K-12. The first 9 years were spent in a local Catholic grade school that probably had worse funding than the public schools surrounding it. My four years of high school were at a West County Catholic high school that didn't pay their teachers much, but had a great selection of students, and parents who sent their children there.
If you poke your head around St. Louis you'll find parochial schools throughout the region, and even in areas with the best school districts. Often there are more reasons that people send their children to parochial schools than simply escaping terrible school districts. The parochial school option however gives individuals an extra option for moving into areas without stellar public education...As you might have noticed since moving here, St. Louis City is in a slow revival. Some neighborhoods are booming faster than others, but honestly, "forcing" individuals to go to standard public education by increasing their financial burden may do more to hurt the city rather than help it. What happens if your plan fails, and instead of simply abiding by the "proposed education rule" your gentrified families say "screw it, while I don't want to leave the city i'm going to have to put my family first. Let's move to Webster/Kirkwood/University City/etc"?
maybe private education was looked at differently in Phoenix than it is in St. Louis as well. As stated, I was private educated K-12. The first 9 years were spent in a local Catholic grade school that probably had worse funding than the public schools surrounding it. My four years of high school were at a West County Catholic high school that didn't pay their teachers much, but had a great selection of students, and parents who sent their children there.
If you poke your head around St. Louis you'll find parochial schools throughout the region, and even in areas with the best school districts. Often there are more reasons that people send their children to parochial schools than simply escaping terrible school districts. The parochial school option however gives individuals an extra option for moving into areas without stellar public education...As you might have noticed since moving here, St. Louis City is in a slow revival. Some neighborhoods are booming faster than others, but honestly, "forcing" individuals to go to standard public education by increasing their financial burden may do more to hurt the city rather than help it. What happens if your plan fails, and instead of simply abiding by the "proposed education rule" your gentrified families say "screw it, while I don't want to leave the city i'm going to have to put my family first. Let's move to Webster/Kirkwood/University City/etc"?
I'm not sure why my plan would be increasing the financial burden. It would be decreasing it by not having to pay for the parochial education. It's more about convincing them than "forcing" them. This is America, I would never advocate not allowing a parent to send their kids to a private school. This would have to be a grass roots effort that a group of parents decided to do.
I'd like someone to answer my question of how is it that SLPS has the ability to produce great teachers and great administrators at their magnet schools, but somehow loses their ability to higher high caliber educators at all the neighborhood schools? Doesn't that prove this is not a teacher/administrator problem but rather a student body/parental problem? As I stated earlier the school will always adjust to their clientele. But the change has to be substantial.
I might have misread something, but i thought a previous poster wanted to increase the costs of private education to make it prohibitively expensive with the hopes of increasing public school enrollment. Very dangerous road to go down considering there are some many good public school districts in the area that can be had for little more than city living...Considering that many of the new urban dwellers often move towards the county or seek out alternative education options anyway, makes me think it could be a deal killer for current urban revival.
1) I grew up in the metro.
2) I was gone for 10 years. A lot of positive things appear to be happening, including significant population growth in the downtown area and the transformation of several neighborhoods.
3) Having lived in other places, in particular Minneapolis - which everyone on this board should visit because it is the template for what STL needs to be - I saw that a city can be blindingly amazing if the people in it care enough to take ownership, put the cash on the table, and make things happen. I think STL has the potential to be blindingly amazing too, but lack of faith in neighborhood schools in good neighborhoods is a major obstacle.
4) I am a parent. If my child fails it is because I did a poor job raising him, not because of teachers.
1) Congrats, we'll get you the "I survived the Lou ribbon of valor".
2) Positive things are happening across the metro region. Downtown population has boomed significantly, like 300%+ much of that boom is in Loft living along Washington Ave and the majority of those residents aren't folks who are worried about education as they're typically young enough and single enough to not have kids.
3) MSP is a pretty cool town, i should go spend some more time there. Unfortunately, it's cold a good chunk of the year, and forget that!
4) I am a parent, and I take personal responsibility for my child's livelihood, education, and personal safety. It is my job to rear them in the best way possible, expecting them to achieve and challenge themselves both physically and mentally, and to take their own personal responsibility when the time is right. I understand that there are many reasons a child can fail in our current education system, but I also understand that not everything will fall back on the parent. I will provide support to my child's educators, as much as I provide support to my child. Allowing my child to understand diversity, economics, etc is important but also important are providing her a safe and positive learning environment.
I can only speak from my own personal opinion. But if I was residing in St. Louis City, I would be searching for the BEST education available for my child. If that was a neighborhood school, so be it, or a charter school, or a private school. Pardon my "old fashioned ways" but some of the national trends of removing any form of God, and to some extent Country from our children's education is a disservice to our education system and the future of this nation. This alone gives me reason to be very careful in my child's education decision, with the hope that she will hold the same type of pride in this country, our inalienable rights, liberties, and beliefs that helped establish us and make us great in the first place.
Part of the problem though is that the "neighborhood" school boundaries are forced to stretch so far because so few of the parents in the better neighborhoods send their kids to public schools. If the parochial schools did not exist to the degree that they do then more parents would be sending their kids to the neighborhood schools and that would shrink the boundaries some.
In Arizona I taught at a school that had 35% on free or reduced lunch. Our school was rated excelling (the highest rank) for 3 of the years I was there and highly performing (2nd highest) the other 3 years. We received a great schools rating of 8 or higher each year I was there as well.
Yeah, we've noticed just how prevalent private schools are in STL and their impact on public ed here too. Private school enrollment rates are higher than they seemed to be in Chicago and NYC. They're also much higher than they are in my hometown (Indy) and overall, I think the general quality of public ed is higher in Indy as a result when you compare areas with similar economic traits.
When I grew up there, there were 4 coed schools run by the diocese. One on each side of town. There was a Jesuit school, a Catholic prep school, one small Lutheran school, and independent similar to an MICDS, and a smaller Christian school. Bigger private schools were maybe 200 to 300 kids per class and the smaller schools were below 100. I would expect STL to have more private schools given the fact it's 50% larger, but there are roughly 3x the number of private options here. It's just part of the culture here.
My home district was probably similar in academics to a Parkway, Kirkwood, or Webster Groves. The private schools siphoned off maybe 3% of the student pool. Obviously in the extremely wealthy areas where money was no object, that rate was higher. In lower performing districts it was also higher. It surprised me a lot when I'd see where some of my friends in college grew up, and yet they went to Ursuline, De Smet, etc. I figured they were just more religious until they told me they hardly ever went to mass and it was just a my mom/dad went there, and his mom/dad did too kind of thing.
^It sort of goes back to the "cultural Catholic" thing we were talking about recently in some other thread. Catholicism in St. Louis, particularly in this generation, is often less about Catholicism as a religion. I hesitate to compare it to the secular Jewish crowd, because of course they actually are a race and Catholics are not, but I think there really are a ton of parallels.
Given that even those who already pay taxes in great districts like Parkway and Clayton and even Francis Howell in St. Chuck like I mentioned yesterday, it's pretty clear that St. Louis city could have the absolute best schools in the universe and there would still be plenty of people who go the parochial/private Catholic route. It is a way of life thing. That's not to say it's everyone and it's not to say that means we shouldn't even attempt to improve the city schools -- that's definitely not my point, but St. Louis is an odd duck when it comes to private schools and is likely to always be that way, and, as such, it should be a key part of any discussion about education.
It's definitely a huge component. When my parents were asking me about house hunting and school and I had to explain it to here kind of like this:
Not all parents are involved in their kids' education. In private schools, nearly 100% of all parents are involved.
In Indy, 60% of all kids living in a decent district might have good parental involvement. You might lose 5% of those kids (all with good parental involvement) to private schools, but that still means that the public has 57-58% of its remaining kids getting good support at home.
The same type of district here might lose 30% of its kids to private schools in STL. This means the public is left with only 42-43% of kids getting good support at home.
If you're a public school supporter, this makes it a little more restrictive in terms of where you may want to live to get the involvement and overall public education value you expect. In the city where the rates are probably even more skewed, it just goes to show you that it's just about impossible to find a quality education outside of certain speciality magnets.
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