Katrina, Green Schools, Child Farm Workers, and Teachers' Cost of Living

Hundreds of thousands of students were displaced after Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi and Louisiana region.  Government allocated funds to relocate those students and further encouraged schools to be more than accepting to the new students in the time of crisis.  Parents had an option of shopping for schools for their children in their new cities.  The rankings of schools were designed around the minorities in attendance at the schools as well as the test scores.  It was discovered that schools that had a high rate of students passing in well to do neighborhoods, may have just had a demographic of students that come from demanding households as far as an expectation towards academics.  Those schools may not have necessarily had a great value added record.  This was proved when students of Katrina moved into these schools and showed little to know gains on their value added scores.

"Going Green" is a concept that has caught on in every sector of the economy today.  Just as ethanol costs more fuel to make than it actually saves in petroleum based fuel, green energy isn't always the less of the two evils.  In a study of "Green Schools" intended to reduce emissions, save in energy costs, and reduce absenteeism, the outcomes were less than stellar.  The findings were that the energy savings weren't as much as originally estimated.  In addition to those depressing results, student attendance was actually higher than that of nearby traditional schools.

I've always kept an open mind with students coming from rough situations when I teach in class.  I understand that every student comes from a different background and may have to care for a sick parent or work a full time job after school to help pay for the groceries for their household.  I once read a statistic that one in four students come to school hungry each morning.  In today's economy, I've noticed a trend in more and more students becoming eligible for free and reduced lunch.  I was totally unaware that there could be as many as half a million child farm workers in America.  This is really disturbing to think that there could be students in my class who could be involved in intense illegal labor before or after school each day.  If that labor doesn't include farming, it may be possible that some students may work in construction or other intense labor jobs that could obvious have a detrimental effect on their sleep and classroom performance, especially when it comes to finding time for homework.

Finally, the pay salaries of teachers in other states may be ten to twenty thousand dollars a year higher than that of Tennessee.  However, those states also have an extremely high cost of living.  When the cost of living is considered into the equation, Tennessee is actually one of the higher paying states in the nation.  This was a great example of how data can be manipulative unless all aspects of the data are presented.