Graduation rates, teacher travel

The Daily News writes today about an audit of high school graduation rates from L.A. Unified schools. "With the current school climate and instructional quality, a significant proportion of the students who enter the ninth grade in 2012 ... will not only fail to meet college eligibility, but will also fail to graduate from high school," the paper quotes the report as saying.

The New York Times writes today about Shakira Brown, a young teacher in New York, who is going to Antarctica on a trip sponsored by the National Science Foundation. "I'm tired of having a bunch of white people running around doing science," says Stephen F. Pekar, the Queens College professor organizing the trip. Read the story.

-- Mary MacVean

Comments

[sweetchuckd]

If you read http://detentionslip.org you will quickly realize all the problems students are facing with public education.

[Barbara]

Tired of a "bunch of white people?" Those people are individuals with many varied backgrounds and cultures. It is not some conspiracy that there are many whites in science and actually, I have met many minority science teachers.

[Herb]

Not everyone is college material. The education establishment in the last 30 years has stopped talking about intelligence differences. Now, when students fail algebra one (which many do, due to lack of background and motivation) the teacher is blamed and told to use other modalities. But in a class of 32 it is hard to teach one student through dance and another through dramatic skits and the rest through drill. All students need practice and study to master algebra. Consider the plight of the student who has taken four straight years of algebra one and failed each time. He is now overage for his grade and has almost no chance of getting a regular diploma. Consider the plight of the teacher if he wants to disrupt class! The "Academics for All" initiative was based on a misunderstanding of human intelligence.