Chicago public school spending vs something reasonable

After decades of giving money away to people who never prepared for life, we now have a familiy after family after family after family who has zero idea, or inclination to make a living.  Who's fault is this.  Liberals have taught families who expect, and now demand to get free shit.  These are the people in Chicago who are getting 917 on SAT scores and wasting $37,000 each.

Liberal policies are unsustainable.

Boilerman was, tragically, never prepared for life. His reasoning ability would shame a four-year-old.

With only 27% of students performing at grade level & then letting them graduate is the fault of the system

If liberal systems are to blame then liberal states would produce fewer college grads then red states....,and you wouldn't be forced to cherry pick a single school district to make your point.    

but of course the opposite is true as collective data proves which is why you present the argument the way you do.  

Illinois, ny, California and Massachusetts create more college grads per capita then Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and West Virginia.     I know that's frustrating for you, Tom, but it's true.   And it's also why those college educated people vote for Democrats across the country in greater number than Republicans.   They want their kids educated too.

A student performing below grade level can still do well enough to graduate. "Letting" students who perform below average isn't a "fault"--it's equitable. If you give a test and tell your students that 65% is a passing grade, you don't flunk the ones who scored 66%. A "D" student is NOT a failing student.

Get how that works, stupid Tom?

Also...if only 27% of students in a district are performing at or above grade level, then a student there who performs at grade level is doing better than average. That might actually be a more praiseworthy performance for a student in a poverty-ridden district than it would be for a student in leafy suburbia.

As is always the case with a complex topic, simplistic Tom-thinking or silly Boilerbabble won't cut it.

can someone explain why we are advancing someone who is not reading or doing math or sience at grade level.  This is not a trick question,  our local schols are are in the shitter.  And this seems to be a national problem

I can answer that. "Grade level" is an average. Holding back students who don't perform at grade level would mean not letting half the students advance. Lower grades would swell in size, while upper grades would shrink.

Or let me put it another way--the concept of "passing" includes "barely passing"--not very good, but good enough. Every kind of test or evaluation has to have that threshold. Meet that minimum requirement, and you pass. Is someone who gets a 70% on their driving test as good a driver as someone who gets a 95%? Obviously not. But both will get their license.

We should do as we have always done. Establish a minumum performance threshold for moving from one grade to the next and stick with it. Don't worry about how other students in other communities/cities/districts/states are doing.

Why not, you ask? Because a student in an overcrowded school in a low-income community that has sharply limited resources shouldn't be compared to a student in a school in a suburban community packed with resources and funded by near-bottomless tax dollars. A student who achieves "grade level" would be doing fantastic in the low-income school, but would be just skating in the suburban school.

The Grade level satistics are shocking, well under 30 percent.  if everyone is held back one year to catch up, there shouldn't be a backlog after the first time.  Is there no accountability.  Is  reading at a 1st grade level passing for a 3rd grader.  Are we helping that kid or is he or she lost in the system.

t

Not all that shocking when you consider the effects of poverty and a lack of community resources, not the least of which is a diminished tax base.

Holding, back, say, half of the student body in an elementary school (grades 1-6) would result in a 50% increase in the class size of grades 1-5 and a 50% decrease in the class size of grade 6. Could the school handle that, in terms of logistics, supplies, funding, staffing, etc. etc. etc.? Especially if it's already struggling?

How do you think teachers would feel if next year's classes were 50% larger than this year's? No salary increase, mind you.

And while this is definitely tangential, in many schools/districts, people hate the idea of crippling the school sports teams by holding students back, which in almost all cases disqualifies students from extracurricular activities. Just see how it goes over when the star QB has to repeat his junior year and can't play.

So you are saying it is okay to pass a student who is possibly performing at two or three grade levels below  for sports.  Or are you saying that we can't hold these kids back in 1st grade or 2nd because it would cause an imbalance for teachers because we are short in those areas , or is  graduation from grade to next grade just a right in todays world regardless of what is learned