Driving home the other day I heard a discussion on NPR Talk of the Nation about putting hospital statistics online so people can compare them. I immediately thought that if one substituted the word schools for hospitals the discussion would be the same.

Challenges of comparing high-risk patients to low-risk patients. Check.
Hospitals not being eager to provide data. Check.
Benefits of openness and transparency. Check.
Need to put checks in to prevent hospitals from gaming the system. Check.

The show concluded by the experts agreeing that this is an important but still small first step in accountability, openness and transparency. The biggest benefit comes not from patients being able to compare hospitals but from hospitals sending staff to high-scoring ones to learn from them.

In that spirit, if I were a superintendent in the St. Louis metropolitan area, I would send someone to Fox to find out why they have the highest percentage of free and reduced lunch students in the St. Louis area scoring at proficient or advanced in both math and communications MAP scores.

I chose this picture because I liked it and Children’s is, unfortunately, the hospital I have used the most often as I have three children. The website focuses on acute care and doesn’t include pediatric hospitals like Children’s or Cardinal Glennon even though it has a section for children’s asthma.

Tags: Fox School District, Assessment, Talk of the Nation, MAP Scores

A commenter to skoolboy’s post on the Chicago protest wondered if wealthier districts did a better job educating students eligible for free or reduced lunch. So I ran some St. Louis numbers. Nope.

There is no correlation between per pupil spending in a district and the percent of free or reduced lunch students who test proficient or advanced on the math MAP test. (-.24) There isn’t even a correlation between per pupil spending and the percentage of total students who test proficient or advanced on the math MAP test (-.04)

After looking at the numbers, however, I was surprised at the districts’ spending levels. Clayton having the highest spending is no surprise to anyone, but the number two district is Wellston, the district that has the lowest test scores in the county and that has lost its accreditation.

Does per pupil spending reflect a community’s wealth though? Not as much as we would expect. In fact, not at all. The correlation between per pupil spending and median household income is -.15 (This differs from skoolboy’s findings on Illinois and could from the state of Missouri, but I focused on the St. Louis metro area. I also didn’t use the exact same method he did.)

My next attempt to find a commonality was to draw a map. Bingo. I colored in the top third per pupil spending purple, mid third medium blue and bottom third yellow.



Since the city and middle corridor obviously spend more irrespective of community wealth, I hypothesize that the older buildings cost more to maintain. Obviously, teacher salaries could play a factor here too, but those are numbers to run another day.

I’m not arguing that since there’s no correlation, we should reduce funding for all the districts. However, we also can’t equate funding with equality as so many other factors come into play.

Tags: Finances, Per pupil spending, Clayton School District, Wellston School District, skoolboy

While my natural inclination is for local control as much as is feasible, nationalizing standards has some appealing arguments. For example, fourth graders throughout Missouri aren’t studying world history, American history, civics or other typical social studies topic. Nope, they’re taking a year to learn all there is to know about—Missouri. The state of Missouri. I’ll grant you we have some interesting history in the state. I even understand how they can acquire necessary skills such as reading maps, comparing and contrasting geographical regions etc. But, really? A whole year on Missouri?

If you live in another state, don’t start feeling superior because the children in your state are also studying it for a year most likely. If you’re lucky, they will revisit it in a later grade (here’s looking at you South Carolina!).

I think a unit or even two on the state is sufficient. I would even spiral that back around in later grades as students get closer to voting age. Heck, by then they might even still live in the state by the time they’re 18, so learning the names of their governor, state reps and state senators isn’t asking too much of a high schooler.

If families never moved, you could make the case for studying their own state in such depth, but that is not reality. With mobility rates of 15-20 percent, we can hardly justify spending an entire year on a single state.

Some may make the case that kids start out learning about their family, their neighborhood, then their community, and work their way up to their state, country and finally the world. How boring is that! Besides, kids have an easier time understanding other countries than state or county divisions, so learning is not quite so linear as that.

I suggest choosing high-interest topics such as ancient Egypt, pre-Columbian Maya or medieval Europe to introduce historical methods and skills. You could certainly include some Missouri-related units such as Lewis & Clark. I would then emphasize the state history within context of U.S. history as kids develop a sense of time flow in later elementary. That would seem to make more sense.

I think lack of world knowledge is a bigger problem overall than lack of state knowledge, so I can’t see how reducing time spent studying the state will harm our country’s ability to compete in the global economy.

Tags: History, MIssouri, National standards