Health & Fitness
Will renovating Salem High School improve education.
One of the issues I have with pubic education in general is that Educators make dubious claims on many aspect of education. One claim you might hear is that renovating Salem High will improve education outcomes.
A recent article in Education Next profiling the BASIS schools might foster some doubt.. BASIS schools are not at all selective. Everyone has the same chance of getting into BASIS schools. Students are selected by lottery. Students get a world class education by any standards.
"While U.S. schools struggled to reach even an average score on a key international exam for 15-year-olds in 2012, BASIS Tucson North, an economically modest, ethnically diverse charter school in Arizona, outperformed every country in the world, and left even Shanghai, China’s academic gem in the dust."
Yet if you read further you find the facilities are modest at best.
"The Phoenix school building, like all other new BASIS schools, follows a template: it’s a strikingly modern steel and glass structure that was fabricated in Texas, trucked to Arizona, and assembled in four months at a cost of about $8 million, including the land. "
"There’s no cafeteria or library. Floors are polished cement; the ductwork is exposed. Theater and orchestra audiences assemble on the parking lot; a garage door in front of them opens into the performing-arts room. I noticed overhead projectors and a cart of laptop computers, but there’s no technology lab. Fifth graders do their math on 8×10-inch white boards."
"If proscenium stages and audiovisual equipment made a difference in student learning, the U.S. wouldn’t be struggling to keep up with the international average score on PISA, of course. That makes the BASIS model worth a long look."
http://educationnext.org/high-scores-at-basis-charter-schools/I am all for fixing schools such as Salem High School. I am not advocating we buy a prefabricated building. But if anyone claims that kids get a better education the better the facility, BASIS schools are great examples negating that argument. When educators use that line, to me they lose credibility as well. It leads me to question other claims they make.
