Advancing
the Goal of Ending Education as We Know
It
Problems with the
Status Quo:
To enable Asora®
Education Enterprises to
better justify its new kinds of schools, as envisaged in
Stellar Schools, we need to review the problems with
existing systems of public and private schools. So let's
discuss: "What is wrong with K-12 education?"
High Dropout Rates
and Achievement Misrepresentations:
We can begin by looking at two problems that beset nearly
all public education systems in the United States.
Our first area of concern is that of the high dropout
rates. Nationwide, within the regular public school systems
(not including charter schools), about 30% of entering 9th
graders never graduate from high school with an academic
diploma.
The second issue is one of accountability. It is about the
misrepresentation of students' achievement in regards to
state administered achievement test scores where the public
systems routinely and grossly inflate the scores. It is
also about the high percentage (over 75%) of bogus 12th
grade diplomas issued to sub-par students. Private schools
are not much better-where nationally about 55% of their
diplomas are similarly unearned. This is all done with
impunity. (You can verify this by reviewing U.S. Department
of Education statistics. See, for example,
www.schoolmatters.com where you can compare the performance
statistics.) We are also working in this area. For more
details please consider our Reports on Reform
section where you can
download some further information on dealing with test
score inflation.
On this latter point, it is clear that the practice of
social promotion, that is endemic in both public and
private schools, is the essential cause of the low
proficiencies. Asora's Stellar Schools are designed to
structurally prevent social promotion.
Aspects Of These
Problems Are Worldwide:
A recent
study from the American Institutes for Research
suggests that European and
Asian public school systems also suffer under the
"weight" of social promotion- though not quite as
severely as in the United States. When, as the study
indicates, the best public education systems in the
world have only half of their children at proficient
levels it suggests that the problems of social promotion
and their remedies should be considered on the global
stage. Asora Education, therefore, seeks foreign
collaborations in the development of its schools or ones
similar to those we espouse.
High School
Graduation Rates:
A currently
"popular" issue among educators is that of "high school
graduation rates" and how they might be increased. We think
this is a mistaken approach to measuring high school
success. Public schools systems can (and do) award diplomas
that reflect low and inconsistent standards such that
graduation rates become an almost meaningless statistic.
Better measures consider the student's actual performance
upon leaving school. They are discussed next.
High School Failure
Rates:
By combining
the analyses of dropout rates and student proficiencies, we
have defined something we call the "high school failure
rate" (sometimes called the "real dropout rate") that reveals what
percentage of entering 9th graders fail to have 12th grade
proficient skills when they graduate from high school. The
national average "high school failure rate" is about 84%.
This is discussed in quantitative terms and in more detail
in our downloadable short report: Real Public High School
Dropout Rates.
High School Success
Rates:
A related
measure is the "high school success rate," which is the
percentage of entering 9th graders who actually have 12th
grade proficient skills when they graduate from high
school. Nationally, this percentage is about 16%.
K-12 Education's
Abuse of Children:
A broader issue related to the foregoing is about the
extent to which public and private education authorities
are culpable for the demonstrable harm their schools are
doing to students and the surrounding society? We delve
into that question in another downloadable short
report: Are K-12 Schools Engaged in
Child Abuse? School Reform News also published an
essay we wrote on this subject in its April 2007 issue,
"Integrity Is Remedy for Harms Caused by Social
Promotion."
Private School
Mediocrity:
It is generally presumed that when public schools are
failing that there will be nearby private schools where
children can be sent to get a good education. However,
there are indications- at least in suburban areas- that
non-profit private schools, while almost always better than
their public school counterparts, are not all that much
better. It is generally believed that non-profit private
schools primarily compete with the public schools and
therefore they need not be markedly better to succeed- they
simply must be "enough better" to fill their seats. This tendency
towards private school mediocrity does not seem to extend
to those few private schools that are for-profit. This
latter observation has led us to explore what kind of
for-profit educational enterprises might work best to
provide children a superior K-12 education at reasonable
cost. Our best description of some of these issues is found
in one of our earliest downloadable reports and its
downloadable appendices: Profitable Education in
Stellar Schools. We also have additional background
information about public schools in our
downloadable Business
Plan.
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