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thedrifter
10-14-05, 04:36 AM
Teach, study, experiment
USA

Good gets better. For soldiers, sailors and marines looking for post-military careers, a promising avenue appears to be opening. Good news for them, to be sure, but even better for parents and school children who will benefit.

The six-year-old Troops to Teachers program recruits and prepares former members of the armed services to teach in public school. A new report on the 7,500 teachers who have gone through the program from Virginia's Old Dominion University reveals that nine of every ten principals surveyed say the former troops are unusually effective, particularly in areas of greatest need.

They are more likely to teach in high-poverty schools. They are also more likely to teach hard-to-staff subjects such as math and science. The program also adds diversity: 37% of the former members of the armed forces are non-white, compared with 15% of the general teaching force, providing role models for minority children.

The news gets better: more than 80% are men. That's a badly needed jolt. The number of men teaching in K-12 classrooms has plummeted from 31% in 1986 to 18% this year, and the academic performance of boys in those grades has plummeted as they've left — an under-noticed national problem with sweeping implications.

Junior high and middle schools — grades 6 through 9 — appear to have taken the biggest losses, and suffered the greatest impact. During those middle school years, gender gaps in verbal skills double in size, an assortment of research shows. That sets boys up to fail in high school. And they do, graduating and attending college far less often than girls do.

Troops to Teachers is one of the few effective counter-strategies that has been found. Finding a way to boost the numbers would be even better news.

Plan first, prepare never. Soldiers know the importance of preparation, unlike high school seniors who are long on college ambitions but short on preparation to make those dreams come true.

This week, the National Center for Education Statistics defined the problem quite sharply. Though an impressive 62% of high school seniors said they plan to attend a four-year college, only a third of those have mastered even low-level math skills. The news doesn't get any better for the more ambitious students, those planning on getting a graduate degree. Only about half of those can handle intermediate math skills.

This not the first time surveys have picked up this mismatch. A poll sponsored in part by the Gates Foundation this year reported that nearly 90% of young people of all races and income levels would like to get a college degree. But according to the Census Bureau, only about a third of 25-29 year-olds have college degrees. Among African-Americans, 17% have earned degrees. Among Hispanics, 11%.

The reason for the mismatch is clear: Only 32% of high school seniors graduate from high school with the skills they need to succeed in college, according to a 2005 report from the Manhattan Institute.

Recent reports from Achieve Inc., a school reform group led by business leaders and governors, help explain the gap between ambition and reality. While more than 70% of high school seniors enter two- and four-year colleges, nearly half end up taking either remedial English or math courses. The odds of dropping out rise sharply with the number of non-credit, remedial courses a student is required to take.

Much of the blame for the poor preparation falls on the students: Only 56% who took the 2005 ACT college admissions test studied a college-preparation curriculum: four years of English and three years each of math, science and social studies.

So much ambition, so little preparation. Such a needless waste.

A 'B' beats a 'C'. Putting low-income students on the college track is a key goal of the experimental Edison Schools. So Edison was probably hoping to be rewarded an "A" when it paid the RAND Corp. $1.4 million to evaluate its network of 103 public schools in 18 states and the District of Columbia. Their schools, which serve 65,000 students, are pioneers in the experiment to turn schools over to private managers.

It worked out more like a "B".

Edison Schools perform modestly better than traditional public schools do, according to the RAND report released this week.

One finding was promising for Edison, though. Schools that hewed closest to the ideal Edison model had the best results. Other good news for Edison: The longer students stay in Edison Schools, the more likely they are to outperform students in similar schools.

That's good getting better.

Ellie