Class Update

3/31-4/5: Today we watched Waiting for Superman, a public school documentary. The documentary focused on four children--Anthony, Daisy, Francisco, and Bianca.

• Washington D.C. has the worst education system, with only a 12% reading proficiency.
• 'Dropout Factories' are found across the nation. They are the schools with a 50% dropout rate between freshman year and sophomore year of high school. 
• In Pennsylvania, which I am sure is common among many states, $33,000 a year is spent on inmates. 
• The difference between a high performing and low performing teacher affects each child by the loss of one academic year.
• The 'lemon dance' is the passing on the bad teachers between schools. One schools passes their bad teachers onto another school, but take in another schools bad teachers also.
• The United States is ranked 25th in Math and 21st in Science.
• Families are moving into homes with high mortgages, thinking that will be a high expectation in the local schools.
• KIPP schools are charter schools. With that, they have a lottery system like all other charter schools. The difference is, KIPP schools believe in not letting their children fail.
• Our school system is broken. We need great teachers and great leaders to fix our system.

4/7: Group Six, Chapter Nine: School Governance, Finance, and Choices

• Large cities are choosing to authorize the Mayor to take over the running of their school districts.
• Reasons for this include fiscal management and low academic achievement
• The formula for funds = money, times the number of children in the district
• Compensatory Aid- percent of children in poverty in the district.
• School Choices:
• Public schools
• Private schools
• Charter schools
• KIPP school
• Homeschooling
• Vouchers