IS YOUR son an accomplished violinist? Buy a house near one of the many state-funded schools that can now prefer pupils with musical talents, and he will sail to the front of the queue for a place. Is little Johnny a whizz at maths? Alas, only a few scattered patches of England now have academically selective “grammar” schools that can legally admit him ahead of his innumerate friends. Piety might help: have him baptised and attend services regularly and he could win a place at one of the many high-performing church schools.
England’s state schools have an absurdly complex rule book for how they may and may not choose their pupils. (The rest of Britain goes its own way in education policy.) This infuriates conscientious parents and forces them to resort to all sorts of tricks to get their offspring a decent, publicly-funded education. Michael Gove, the education secretary, is bent on overhauling the rules. But it will not be easy.
4 thoughts on “Schools and parental choice: Admission impossible”
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i’m still not hearing anyone talk about where our state needs to be educationally for our citizens to be globally competitive. right now, WI is “several months of learning” educationally behind states such as MN and MA. On an international testing basis, MA is in the top 10. why aren’t we setting our sights on being in the top 10 internationally. i do not see evidence that any of the current models are getting us there – there are strong ideological rather than substantive educational arguments taking place. to be a competitive state nationally and internationally, we need to set our sights on higher goals, continually assess best options to get there and allocate resources accordingly. walker has no such goals, is pushing models of delivery without wanting to know if they work and gutting funding for public education. foolish. why would a parent want to see their child educated in a state where the leadership is not focused on substantive learning goals for education? too risky.
According to Wisconsin’s NAEP reading scores, our national ranking has dropped from 3rd to 30th in the last decade. The beginning of this timeline corresponds perfectly with Wisconsin’s wholehearted embrace of the Literacy Collaborative, Balanced Literacy, Reading Recovery and other constructivist teaching methods in general. If you mix that in with a non-republican DPI, governor (for the most part) and statehouse, I fail to see how blaming Walker explains the situation we are in.
To Reed: I checked to see if you are right on the drop in NAEP test scores in Wisconsin and I don’t see your results. Please let me know where you find them. There might be some truth in the thought that Wisconsin scores have softened a bit, but I think it is more a result of the loss of school infasructure since the budget limitation act of 1993. I would not blame Walker for that softness, but would put the names of Tommy Tom Tom and Jim Doyle on the bad list. Walk will just make the situration worse. Walker will make it much worse.
There is some variance depending on grade levels and subjects. Bottom line is that we are in decline as others catch up and pass us.
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0Bwxb6EyDRsU8MDIzY2U1M2EtMzU0Ny00NWRmLTg4MzUtOTIzZTVjOTNkMzA0&hl=en
http://maciverinstitute.com/2011/03/national-assessment-of-educational-progress-wisconsins-status/
http://www.wisconsinreadingcoalition.org/problems
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/ed-secretary-duncan-no-one-can-be-satisf