As entrance in top schools has become more and more competitive, parents are becoming more aggressive in seeking to guarantee every advantage for their children. In the case of Nicole Imprescia, this means going to court to sue a school over its failure to prepare her daughter for the Ivy League. Her daughter, Lucia, is four. The school is the York Avenue Preschool. It seems that there are “Tiger Moms” but then there are “Tiffany Moms.”
The preschool is $19,000 a year and Imprescia insists that she paid the money because (and this is actually in the filing) “[i]t is no secret that getting a child into the Ivy League starts in nursery school.” Imprescia insists that the pre-school was not grooming Lucia for the Ivy League but simply letting her play with friends.
The filing also notes “[s]tudies have shown entry into a good nursery school guarantees more income than entry into an average school.” Wow.
Imprescia insists that the school should have been prepping Lucia for the intelligence test known as the E.R.B. and that she has fallen behind her competitors among the four-year-old crowd.
I know little about the E.R.B. and my wife and I are committed to supporting the public school system. While we have had serous concerns over class size in Fairfax County, we believe strongly in reinforcing the public school system. With Madie completing kindergarten, it now appears that I have already missed the window for top schools and probably set her on a course for a penal institution. On the other hand, she just made a really really cool Leperechaun trap.
Source: NY Times and first seen on ABA Journal
Jonathan Turley
Buddha,
Ghost Peppers are the answer…remember that….
Thank you all for the well wishes. I’m feeling a bit better, but still sleeping a lot and mildly feverish. At least my back no longer feels like it is being smashed with sledgehammers having downgraded to the slightly more manageable croquet mallets. Having had enough toast to calm my stomach for the industrial strength A/B’s I’m taking, I am going back to bed now, but it does make a body feel better to know that my stalwart compatriots have the truth spreading and troll wrangling well in hand while I am recuperating. Thanks for providing some interesting reading to go with my toast.
A little information about Diane Ravitch that was included in the Mother Jones article:
“Ravitch, who served as Assistant Secretary of Education in George H.W. Bush’s administration, came by her fiercely pro-teachers union views the hard way. An early and ardent supporter of No Child Left Behind, she backed charter schools, merit pay, and school vouchers. Then, sometime around 2004 when the effects started to become apparent, she changed her mind. Ravitch now opposes aggressive Michelle-Rhee-style education reforms, and her work provides important “fact-checking” on proposals that overstate their capacity for solutions (like charters or using student test scores to evaluate teachers). This matters when reformers like Rhee sometimes receive untempered adoration in media and policy circles.”
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/diane-ravitch?page=1
Patric,
Apology accepted.
*****
From Mother Jones
The Education of Diane Ravitch
Should public schools fear billionaires? Is Finland a poster nation? An interview with the nation’s leading education historian.
— By Kristina Rizga
Thu Mar. 10, 2011
Page 1 Link
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/diane-ravitch?page=1
Page 2 Link
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/diane-ravitch?page=2
Excerpt:
MJ: In your book you have a chapter called, “The Billionaires Club” in which you critique what you see as overly top-down education reforms by the big foundations. Many grassroots organizations in the US are supported by billionaires like Ford, Rockefeller, and Soros. How is what Gates, Walton, and Broad doing in education different?
DV: What’s happening now is venture philanthropy. They look at their philanthropy as an investment. They start off with strategy and a reform idea which they believe is right and then they say here is the money, but you have to do what we tell you to do. When Eli Broad funds medical research, he doesn’t tell them how to do medical research. But he has very clear directions for public schools with a pro-charter school and teacher evaluation obsession. Gates gave a billion dollars to break large high schools into small high schools and then decided that wasn’t working. And now he’s moved on to teacher evaluations. Well, he never made a public accountability statement about why small high schools weren’t working. We don’t really know what his inner logic was. The big issue that concerns me is that they are using their money to control public policy and they have no accountability.
MJ: Speaking of teacher evaluations, what does your ideal teacher evaluation look like?
DR: A good teacher evaluation would primarily rely on an experienced supervisor, who has had many years as a teacher. Who was a successful teacher, who visits classroom on a regular basis. And if he sees a teacher who needs help, he is able to provide help, and to refer teachers for professional development. This should not be a gotcha game. It should be used as a way of figuring out how to support teachers and mentor them and give them whatever they need to be better at their craft. A supervisor should look at the scores, take them into account, consider them a part of a personnel file, and not turn them over to the Los Angeles Times. But it’s something to consider if no one ever learns to read in Ms. Jones’ class, if you see if it’s a particular class, and then use it to make decisions about whether she is in the wrong career.
I had a falling-out with a foundation executive who doesn’t agree with me on this. He went to visit different places and he said, “what do you do when you have a bad teacher?” and the response was “we help them.” “And what if you help them and they are still a bad teacher?” We help them more.” I think at a certan point when you get a peer review and you get supervisors and you get help, at some point it does become clear if this is not the right job for you.
Part of the mania that we’ve been living with in the past two years is this idea that our schools are overwhelmed with bad teachers, and it’s not true. I think that is a part of the effort to undermine public education. The biggest problem we face with teaching is high turnover rate. Fifty percent of the people who enter teaching are gone within five years. That creates a revolving door when most communities want and need a stable experience. Instead of how to fire the bad teachers, we should talk about how to help teachers and give them the confidence to be the best they can.
MJ: What is your opinion on teacher tenure?
DR: First of all, there is no such thing as automatic tenure. Tenure is a decision made by an administrator and it should be taken with deliberation and after sitting in a teacher’s class. It also doesn’t mean life employment. If an administrator watched you teach, evaluated you, and makes a decision that this person is entitled to a due process, then depending on state—some have three years of probationary teaching and some have four—tenure in K-12 education means that if someone wants to fire you, you have a right to a hearing.
And the reason this exists is to protect against political favoritism. Before there was tenure, there were many cases where people hired their friends and relatives and then the political party changed and other people brought in their friends, or contributors. Tenure makes sure that teachers are not fired for their race, sexual or political orientation, or just because the principal didn’t like you.
MJ: What about layoffs based on seniority?
DR: We don’t have a merit system, so seniority makes sense more than any other system we currently have. If you base layoffs solely on test scores, you incentivize making these tests the measure of all things. And we will have a dumbing down of education.
If you were going into a hospital, and had the services of an intern or a resident, that’s what you’d be getting in education if you remove seniority. What you’ll see are people who are enthusiastic, but who come and go frequently. And you’ll see principals who save money by laying off experienced teachers no matter how good they are.
Elaine –
Please accept my apology. I wigged out somewhere along the line and missed the fact that is was indeed in the text of Diane Ravitch’s material.
Please do keep writing.
PatricParamedic
1, March 15, 2011 at 8:43 pm
Elaine said:
“Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers.”
*****
You need to read more carefully. I NEVER wrote that! Please reread my earlier comment.
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/03/15/forget-tiger-moms-make-way-for-the-tiffany-moms-ny-woman-sues-preschool-for-failing-to-prepare-4-year-old-for-ivy-league/#comment-212773
I was quoting Diane Ravitch. Here is the pararaph that Ravitch wrote from which you took that excerpt out of context:
“The message of these films has become alarmingly familiar: American public education is a failed enterprise. The problem is not money. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers. They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only hope for the future of our society, especially for poor black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a profit.”
**********
I was a longtime member of the NEA, Massachusetts Teachers Assoctiation, and our local teachers association. I have nothing against unions. They did not have a negative impact on the educational system where I taught. In fact, they had a positive effect.
SWM,
Well…isn’t that funny…someone asked me if I had died my hair….I looked at them funny as I was shocked….something I’d never do…
AY Your hair is getting darker all the time. Maybe your stress has lessened. lol
Blouise,
That is one of those things I could respond to and get myself in all sorts of trouble…Today, I won’t….lol….but both have possibilities…
Buddha
I hope you are feeling better soon. Don’t worry about this school thread – Tootie is bound to chime in soon and straighten us all out.
Truly, I hope you’re getting better.
AY, You don’t look old just too old for a cougar.
AY,
Well, I suppose you could try moisturizing … helps with wrinkles but probably not with egos.
SWM,
LOL…ROFLOL….ROFLMAO…..
Ya think….I thought it was the slight gray edging I put on my hair to look more distinguished….
Blouise,
Fragile ego….Blouise….it has been crushed and mangled…but nothing that I can blame anyone else for but myself….it does heal…not that I ever thought it would…
Swarthmore mom
1, March 15, 2011 at 8:59 pm
AY, Go to Aspen. My son says the the place is full of “cougars” but they are after the twenty somethings. You are too old for a “tiger mom” and maybe a cougar,too, unless she he in a retirement home.
===========================================
Male egos are fragile … shame on you 🙂
AY, Go to Aspen. My son says the the place is full of “cougars” but they are after the twenty somethings. You are too old for a “tiger mom” and maybe a cougar,too, unless she he in a retirement home.
Is your name per chance Wanda…..
AY,
One is never too old for a tiger mom … especially if she’s wearing cougar stripes … or is that cougar mom in tiger stripes …
Elaine said:
“Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers.”
Could not agree more about the monstrous negative impact of unions. But I submit this: In the same way there are “bad” patients who demand miracles from health care, there are an astounding number of “bad” students. They are churned out by a breed of parents of faulty mentality: biological capability equals social & familial mandate. Bad combination.
Like an ER staff, teachers have to cope with the hand they’re dealt, and classrooms, too, become triage arenas where you do the best you can for those who might make it.
There are absolutely a ton of incompetent teachers.
But our teachers are surrounded by too many incompetent, often petulant, usually distracted, prone to violence when frustrated, kids.
And thousands of them are emotional misfits for the existing school environment we have created.
I submit that the impact of our sub-cultures are changing reality faster than we are equipped to deal with it.
How do we put the brakes on change?
Am too old to find a tiger mommy… or is that cougar….I am not sure its a term I just recently heard….
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2043313,00.html An article about “tiger moms”