George Lucki;51047 wrote:

Dennis,

I’m very much in favour of musical educaton. What I can’t help wondering is - of all the genres of music that are worth learning - why would we focus on marching bands in schools? If young people have musical talent there are probably better foundations for musical education.  De gustibus I guess.

(PS - I have no issue with sports, arts, music, dance, etc.)

Reality check—being choosy about music genres is not on the "radar of importance" for American high schools. We pretty much suck when it comes to high school education in the 3 Rs.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0923110.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071030/ap_on_re_us/dropout_factories

For serious musicians, marching bands may seem less than desirable.  But to interject a smidgen of on-topic logic, we don’t expect to win newbies and kids to heraldry with a copy of Nisbet in a university library reading room—Moncrieffe & Pottinger and the SCA are much more appealing!  In the context of music, marching band—both the stirring music and the moving about— is simply a lot more fun than tooting the scales in a classroom or playing "old fogie" music at a band recital. In both contexts, more serious study and appreciation may, or may not, eventually follow; but the cart can’t follow the horse unless there is a horse.

(How many more mixed metaphors can I toss into the mix?  Stay tuned..)

Michael,

Rather sad results - but excellent educational results come from excellent schools - and that means attention to not only the three Rs but the arts, music, athletics and social climate - and above all a coherent mission and program. You need the whole package - a school with a clear mission and a commitment to a sound educational program that engages parents and the community along with a public education environment in which there is accountability, choice and competition. Ultimately we get the schools we ask for as a society.

(I’m biased - for a number of years I served on the Board of the first ‘charter school’ in Canada - a governemnt funded public school operated by a voluntary society independently of the school districts and educational bureaucracy)

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/product_files/Sept07ffGoodschool.pdf

(bias warning - Fraser Institute is a conservative think tank in Canada)

George Lucki;51059 wrote:

Ultimately we get the schools we ask for as a society.

Yep.  And "we" (the collective USA "we", not me) do not believe that excellence and liberal education is the goal of public education.  "We" think that public school is for creating minimally literate people, and 70% average dropout is acceptable.

Those band instruments and uniforms—they are usually bought with student and parent fund raising.

In Tennessee, charter schools, by law, are only for children from failing public schools.  The state law does not allow a charter school to be set up to promote excellence—they are all remedial.

http://www.community-media.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/bakesale.jpg

I have spent months in the state legislative building talking with legislators about public education.  There is no vision for excellence in education.  Zilch.

My experience tells me Joe is right. My HS had band in football and basketball (we have a large gym). They were there for opening day festivities in baseball. But, after that they were focused on their marching band competitions. In the 4 years I was there they went to nationals twice. However, they were also the bulk of the concert band/orchestra. So they were doing things throughout the year other than marching, but marching was also important as they competed at the nationals.

Also I think Mike S perception is unfortunately right. In Colorado there has been over the last ten years a decline in funding for all sorts of things and it is reflected IMHO in the poor 3R scores on state and naitonal tests for our kids here in Colorado.

I also think George is on to something with charter schools ... I support charter schools as well, of course, as parochial schools (my first 8 years of education) ... competition is a good thing even in schooling. I’ve found that the kids I know who attend a charter school seem to be more polite, better dressed, and quite a bit sharper in conversation than those kids from public schools (neighbor families of mine). Charter school kids remind me a lot of parochial school kids in that regard.

Mike M is right in that the band is an excellent way to introduce kids to music in general and a great pathway to other, perhaps higher, musical expressions. His analogy to heraldry is right on IMO. I think this is one more merit of a marching band at least here in the States.

OK…off to visit with Grams and then to the docs ...

Michael,

I think the Tennessee approach (if I understand it) is not a bad one. If there is a failing public school based on whatever accountability criteria - then it would be appropriate to look at removing it from the public education system - (with a full financial penalty to the public education system for every student who was enrolled or will enroll) and giving a charter to a voluntary society or to a private sector organization to operate that school as an independent public school, i.e. responsible for meeting curricular and educational results as well as parent satisfaction outcomes but removed from the oversight of the system that failed the youth in that school in the first place. A well run independent school will of course draw students from other schools failing their children and demonstrate that failing schools are often a reflection on failing educators. There is nothing to suggest that ‘failing schools’ should not promote excellence or that educational outcomes are locked into neighbourhood or socio-economic considerations. It is also not a question of overall funding levels - more money is good, but educational achievement is not particularly related to expenditure - good public schools hold their own with the best private schools. Take a look at: http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/AlbertaScores.pdf The methodology of this study focused on factoring out the influence of a broad range of socio-economic considerations affecting school performance including parental education, income, employment, housing status, mother tongue, single-parent, Aboriginal, etc. (New Horizon Charter School Society came out pretty well).

In Alberta for example the Catholics have their own public school system - the public system is nominally Protestant and there are numerous other publicly funded Christian, Jewish, Aboriginal, etc. faith based schools - the same difficulty arises in these systems - so you might be interested in an alternative ‘parochial’ school from the public Catholic system (which system can suffer the same ills as any public system) - see: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=fb63c2b5-ee9c-4a4f-aaf5-d9d093435c13&p=1 (I should add that in Alberta all private schools (even the really expensive or exclusive ones) receive public funding as well - to the level of 2/3 of the funding of public schools. Competition has been good for education.)

George Lucki;51063 wrote:

Michael,

I think the Tennessee approach (if I understand it) is not a bad one. If there is a failing public school based on whatever accountability criteria - then it would be appropriate to look at removing it from the public education system…

I am surprised we have not been warned by moderators….

In TN the failing schools are not closed.  They just fire the administration and get new people.  This, unfortunately, eliminates the penalty to the local school district.

I’d like to see a federal education system (in the US the state education system controls funding) that gives everyone a voucher, the amount reduced for extreme wealth, to attend any school or college public or private. The only requirement would be that for the school to receive the voucher they could not discriminate or indoctrinate, and that some high percentage of students actually show academic improvement.

But the boat anchor on our system are not laws or funding.  It’s that we have so many other societal priorities and problems that education takes a back seat.

You have to experience a conversation with a legislator to understand the depth of the "vision" problem.  When they get 50% of a school body reading at grade level, they celebrate.  And in TN, "proficient" is defined as above 13 percentile in the state, and TN is 60 percentiles below the national average in achievement.  So, that means that children seen as very bright in TN (90%ile in TN) are actually not so bright (really 30%ile nationally) when compared to the rest of the nation.  Add to this the fact the the nation trails most other countries in achievement in reading, math, and science, it follows that TN children barely register brain activity when compared to the rest of the world.

Michael Swanson;51064 wrote:

I am surprised we have not been warned by moderators….

I thought you were one of the moderators.

This non-heraldic thread probably has gone on more than long enough, and we’re getting into contentious ground when it comes to vouchers and the federal vs. state vs. local role, so let’s close it down, shall we?