Monday, December 01, 2014

How Bad Are The Students In Some Areas?

Is it the schools that are bad in Paterson, NJ, or is there something about the community that causes the following sad statement to be true:
In Paterson, New Jersey only 19 kids who took the SAT's are considered college ready. This means that they scored at least a 1500 out of 2400 on the standardized test, and this number is truly shocking considering how large the school district is.

Paterson resident Jason Williams is one of the lucky ones. He just graduated high school last year and has been enrolled in college since September, after taking the SAT's three times determined to score over 1500. He says that the key to his success was not falling victim to the streets...

However, the Paterson school district said that they no longer use SAT scores to gauge students' success.
According to Wikipedia, Paterson has about 150,000 residents and almost 39% of all households have children under age 18 in them.

Read the entire article and determine, as I did, that perhaps still to be breathing at age 18 is how the district judges "success".
at

3 comments:

  1. Auntie Ann4:28 PM

    New Jersey publishes their school spending numbers by district. Paterson is in Passaic county, and the Paterson City schools are listed here:

    http://www.nj.gov/cgi-bin/education/csg/14/csg.pl?string=dist_code4010&maxhits=650

    Last year's budgeted costs per pupil were: $16,323. Most of the breakdown in below...

    2013-2014:

    "Total Classroom Instruction": $8,993/pupil (teachers & textbooks)

    "Total Support Services" (2013-14 budget): $3,565/pupil (health care, IEP support)

    "Total Administration" (2013-14 budget): $1,576/pupil

    "Total Operations and Maintenance of Plant" (2013-14 budget): $2,070/pupil

    Student to Teacher Ratio (2013-14): 11.3
    (Median) Teacher Salary (2013-14): $54,182

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jerry Doctor4:09 AM

    As Captain Renault might have said: "I am shocked, shocked to find that half the money is being spent on instruction in there."

    ReplyDelete
  3. Auntie Ann7:38 PM

    I have no idea what is reasonable for operation and maintenance, especially when the buildings pay no property tax or rent to pay.

    The support services part is a bit vague. The description talked a lot about health and mental health services and much less about IEP support. I have a hard time thinking of health care as a part of education, but that seems to be the norm these days. I wish they had broken the two aspects apart to see the IEP aspect separately.

    $1576/pupil in admin adds up to over $30,000 spent per 20-student classroom. That seems a wee bit high!

    ReplyDelete