Heading towards the end of Bush’s 8 years of “No child left behind”, the numbers are in and our mediocre public education is farther along towards worthless.
Bush’s response: Change the way we calculate the numbers!
The Bush administration announced Tuesday it will require states to report high school graduation rates in a uniform way instead of using a variety of methods that critics say are often based on unreliable information.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced the change at a news conference at which a report was released showing that 17 of the nation’s 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent.
“When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it’s more than a problem, it’s a catastrophe,” said former Secretary of State Colin Powell, founding chair of the alliance.
Trading excuses for lousy administration is in the political DNA of America’s history of state vs. federal government. The end result of the cavil continues to be incompetence.
Maybe it’s time to tear down our educational administration and start from scratch?
Here’s the whole report in .pdf.
Interesting. The vast majority of the school district cited in the report are and have been run by Dems & NEA for decades. Since student performance in those same areas has been declining for decades it sounds like local regime change is in order…
#1 – Thanks for providing an illustration of “cavil”.
Here I go on my high horse again.
As I have said before, the first and best thing we as a nation can do to fix our educational system is to separate those who want to learn from those who don’t. It only takes one kid criminal in a class to destroy it for all the rest.
Of course the bleeding hearts would be ok, and in fact demand, destroying the educations of all the other kids who deserve it just for the sake of the one kid who probably won’t achieve anything except free government room and board, and an orange jumpsuit.
Wow, moving the finish line. How very Democrat of him….
Hey someone has to scrub those toilets, and also this way there will be less competition when I go job searching. Keep it where it is yo
#4, Whom obviously has never sat in an inner city classroom once in their life. What actually happens, and I’m far from a bleeding heart, actually those that know me will say I don’t even have one, is teachers and administrators that simply do not care and show up for their paychecks. In a high school classroom with 60+ students and one mediocre teacher; it’s impossible for the ones that even want to learn to learn. I’ve sat through entire semesters in classes that never even had a dedicated teacher, all temps, changing almost weekly. And I can tell you from experience my lack of high school education had zero to do with the “kid criminal” or whatever you would like to call them and everything to do with the terrible teaching, or complete lack there of and the careless administration. I was lucky enough to be a motivated self learner, and have good caring family to help grind my way out and into a decent university. Not all kids have that option.
I think kids are leaving because they sense that school is a bit of as scam. It’s a system that readies them for lives of grumpy servitude in similarly hierarchical companies. Once they realize that and say “there’s no way I’ll cooperate with this”, its usually too late and they end up fucking themselves even worse.
$10,000/year per kid in public school.
Solution: Let’s spend more money! Just don’t dare try to judge any of the teachers’ job performances.
The ironic part of this is that when the true numbers are finally disclosed, NCLB will be exposed as one cause of the problem. But facts have never gotten in the way of Bushco, so naturally they’ll blame it on the schools.
The minute Washington and much of state governments get out of their “go to college or you’re a dumbass” mode, things will change. Some kids need vocational training, not calculus. This plays right into #4’s point…teach them something that’s useful both personally and to the local economy, and they’ll want to learn. Some however are unreachable.
Fifty One Years of Math 1957 – 2008
Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The counter girl took my $2 and I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking at the screen on her register. I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried. Why do I tell you this?
Because of the evolution in teaching math since the 1950s:
1. Teaching Math In 1950s
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?
2. Teaching Math In 1960s
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100 His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?
3. Teaching Math In 1970s
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?
4. Teaching Math In 1980s
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his pro fit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
5. Teaching Math In 1990s
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, and if you feel like crying, it’s ok. )
6. Teaching Math In 2008
Un hachero vende una carretada de madera para $100. El costo de la producciones es $80. Cuanto dinero ha hecho .
Let’s not make things look so bad. See, here’s a report that says that our students lead the world.
Report: U.S. Students Lead World
#10, you are exactly right. One size does not fit all.
#7, I haven’t sat in an inner city classroom , I TAUGHT in an -inner-city classroom (South Central LA).
I absolutely agree that we need better teachers and smaller class sizes. 30 in a class is too much. 25 with a good teacher and an assistant is about right. It costs money to do this but there is no other option.
This – along with good parents and administration (which administration will become good with good parental involvement) – creates the environment where learning can occur.
# 11, very funny and all too true.
Here is on of my real life experiences. No joke, I had a class of 10th graders where half the class could not figure out this simple math problem.
“If there are 10 cents in a dime, and 10 dimes in a dollar, then how many cents are there in a dollar?”
#10 – How is it that NCLB hurts the inner city schools more than the burbs?
NEA needs to go, tenure needs to go, vouchers need to come, disclipline needs to come, parental involvement needs to come, merit pay needs to come…
#14, you nailed it.
How is it that all these foreign countries do so well with much larger class sizes, while spending less money?
I guess things were just wonderful when Bill Clinton was president, and only when George Bush showed up did education go in the tank.
I thought all the criticism was that schools were cheating with the numbers, but now you criticize for trying to stop that.
NCLB probably is a waste of time since it doesn’t stop the real problems. Merit pay for teachers would help, as would dumping the unions. If a school wants to hire qualifies math and science teachers, they have to boost the pay for the first grade and English teachers too.
Our government is trying to make way for a more privatized “public” education system.
They want to put a Federal Reserve like organization in place to control our pubilc schools.
So, the only way they can do this is to create a crisis (real) so they can point out that the system is a failure and introduce a new “public” system operated by a private corporate entity.
Peace
#16 – Don’t confuse the issue! Strengthening the Teacher’s Union is the only way to go.
Seriously though. I remember a US Civics teacher I had. (tenured) He was teaching the class that the only viable gov’t structure for a large population was what they had in the USSR. This was years before it fell. When I challenged him by pointing out what a dismal economic failure it was, he kicked me out of the class.
The principal just gave me an A for being brighter than the teacher but he couldn’t get rid of the guy because of tenure.
I like how the teachers unions say we need smaller class size and then say that home schooling is terrible.
Teachers are a small part of the blame, but lack of parental involvement is a far greater problem. Divorce has turned this nation into a society that raises each others kids. A step-parent naturally won’t care as much for the performance of a child that isn’t theirs. Divorced parents tend not to get tough with kids in an effort to be the favorite parent. Parents today want to be their kids buddies and not fulfill their obligations in teaching kids basic social traits not found in a textbook.
Instill better societal values and conduct and then all other measures have a chance to succeed.
I agree that perhaps we need to burn this particular village in order to save it. The NEA has been around since the 1857. It served the interests of education and students until around the 1960’s when it started functioning as a labor union rather than a professional association. I believe this has led to a top heavy bureaucracy that is an abysmal failure for a significant percentage of children that have no choice but to attend these wretched institutions.
“No Child Left Behind” was signed into law on January 8, 2002. The data from the report are from the school year 2003-2004, which I discovered from reading the report. I sincerely doubt that we would see sweeping improvements OR complete disaster in the educational system after only one year of administration of the law. I believe the reference to NCLB was just a red herring thrown in by Eideard for entertainment purposes.
Maybe what we also need is the equivalent of NCLB for parents. How effective is it to force our teachers to be accountable if we don’t hold parents to the same standard? Both sides of this equation need to be addressed if we are to have any hope of improving this mess.
This is exactly what the Bush regime wants. Watch, they’ll call (spin)for the privatization of the public school system to fix it. A few will get rich and the religious right will have their religion taught in schools.
Why would W want to fix the problem? Dumb people are easier to misslead and they identify with him.
The people who can fix the problem won’t. George Carlin gets paid to spout ideas like this but I think they are more truth than fiction.
The spin politicians use to cover-up who is at fault keeps the stupid people confused. Shinny objects work great.
Schools are primarily run by Democrats. You can’t blame Bush or the Republicans. I do believe we don’t have enough emphasis on science and techology.
#11
I use a lot of math at my job. Whenever I have a math question, I ask the immigrant co-worker because he/she is more likely to have the answer than somebody who went through the same school system that I went through. It’s pretty sad, but that’s the way things are these days (in my own personal experience).
It is a complicated problem with many to blame, and Fifty-One Years of Math is what we’re left with!
Fact is that teachers aren’t very competent. They come from the bottom third or quarter of college graduates for the most part. If they gave serious testing, then so many would fail. Bill Clinton actually implemented such testing in Arkansas, but then panicked when so many failed. Instead of holding the line, he lowered the cut line and let many pass. The big problem is the unions protecting their weakest members.
Hoe much do the Amish spend on education? Their results are much better.
“The first and best thing we as a nation can do to fix our educational system is to separate those who want to learn from those who don’t.”
I wholeheartedly agree and I’m speaking from experience as an former math teacher in Dallas.
“Bush’s response: Change the way we calculate the numbers!”
If they can point and shoot a rifle (and not at the “friendlies”). Then that’s probably good enough for Dick Cheney. I often think the only thing the politicians are truely worried about, as far as students’ health and smarts, is whether they’ll be enough of them fit enough to fight the next pointless war?
Everytime a post comes up dealing with education in the U.S. it always turns into a simplistic litney of excuses for whatever poor showing we happen to be talking about at the moment.
The fact is, that there are more reasons for the decline in educational standards in this country than there are students.
Just to name a few, when Universities started requiring degree’s in Education for teachers, the quality of teachers took a hit. Go to any campus in this country and you will find out that a large part of the people taking Education degree programs aren’t the brightest bulbs in the room. Then you can add the time in the 60’s when the NEA became a real union and teachers were more or less locked into their jobs regardless of performance. Then when states took over funding of education because of the massive changes in using local property taxes for education became **unequal**. Then throw in bussing, a good idea that wasn’t given a lot of thought. Good students from good schools were shipped off to bad schools and kids from bad schools were shipped off to good schools. The result was good students became bad students and the poor school students dropped out or failed completely because they were suddenly thrust into a melieu where everyone else was years ahead of them. You can add the department of education as a cause, once the Feds got into the act they did what all federal agencies do, over regulate and probably killed off any last hope of improving schools and learning.
Teachers are like any profession, there are good, bad and the ugly. If you don’t have the skills or the funds to do your job then you aren’t going to improve a bad situation.
Then cultural mores had a hand in this failure as well. Blacks in the inner cities have somehow decided that learning is selling out to whitey, and students who try to learn are looked at like traitors.
We have placed so many obsticals in the way of school districts and teachers and parents who care that no amount of good wishes will help many districts anymore.
This study shows a huge difference between rural and urban school graduation rates. If you look at the social aspects of rural verses urban you can figure out the reasons very quickly. Urban kids come from more broken homes, single parent families, lower income levels and blighted neighborhoods than rural kids. Those things matter. If your only parent has to work 10 to 12 hours a day just to feed, cloth and house you then they aren’t going to be able to take a hands on approach to your education, they just can’t.
Add to all these things the illegal immigration problems and you have your large mess that education is in. Liberals might want to gloss over it, but large populations of kids of illegals can bankrupt a system that barely gets enough to get by from the state as it is. In California alone, the unfunded K-12 costs to educate the children of illegals is now at close to 3 BILLION dollars a year. Thats the federally mandated, but only partially federally paid for laws on education illegals children. That money has to come from the states, which would normally be available for improving schools for citizens children, but isn’t.
I don’t have a clue as to what we can do. As long as all of the above things stay the same nothing is going to change.
But, even for all the problems, most schools are turning out kids that aren’t as bad as the articles make us believe. Most teachers are pretty decent. And graduation rates of kids who go to college is still high.