Living in Mill Valley, we are very fortunate to receive such a good education, and we know it. We spend hundreds of dollars on SAT prep, AP tests, tutoring, and whatever else we can lay our hands on in exchange of our money for a better grade. What I'm wondering is, do you guys feel like this actually helps prepare us in terms of readiness for college? Do you think we have an education gap between low and high income students at Tam? What do you think of the study that says this gap is often determined by how prepared students are upon entering kindergarten? How do you think the government could better close the gap between classes and education level?
This is very relevant today because the School Board as well as the larger Marin community is beginning to understand just how prevalent this is in our community. TUHSD is completely redoing their curriculum to help lower income students succeed. At the last board meeting Michael McDowell, Assistant Superintendent and in charge of curriculum, made an hour and a half presentation about what he's doing to help lower income students in TUHSD schools. Another presentation was made on the same subject by a nonprofit organization called Marin Promise. They suggested that our community come together to help students succeed from the time they enter preschool to the time they leave high school. This approach seems very promising because just changing one step of the educational journey. If you improve 9th grade cirriculum but not 7th or 8th grade, students come into 9th grade almost guaranteed to fail because they have not been aptly prepared. There is most definitely an education gap in Marin and I think it's going to take a huge, wide-swept effort to even attempt to remedy it.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/no-rich-child-left-behind/?src=mv