Root Cause of US Education System Failure

[CrusaderFrank]

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Root Cause

 

[KissMy]

Last Saturday, I watched the widow of Carl Sagen get shouted down by two conservatives on a talk show. Apparently, scientists are liars and fools who are not only lazy, but on the take.

Now we know rdean gets his news & talking points from the want-a-be dictator Bill Maher show. I knew you had screws loose. I can just see you now jumping & cheering all his weekly new rules he wants to impose on people.

The teachers union & the lack of school choice vouchers are the biggest problem with the public school system.

Lack of school choice vouchers is also the number one reason well to do people flock to the suburbs causing the inner cities to decay & urban sprawl to consume enormous resources. Don't you just love how Obama took away school choice vouchers while he sends his kids to private school?

 

[Bern80]

Just watching Meet the Press showing that the US is at the bottom of developed countries' for education. The top US 5% of students are still in the lower half of the world's kids.

Why is this? Who has ideas how to improve the US kids' performance?

Is it the teachers? The teacher's unions? The parents? The apparent lack of discipline in schools? The kids are too distracted from studies? The drug culture and societal changes in younger sexuality (i.e. the kids get sexually active younger and studying takes a back-seat to fun in the back-seat)

Could it be that politicians penalized having kids so professionals had fewer kids and only the welfare queens had large families, then did not have the skills to educate or care for their large families?

Lets take a poll....

It's the right wing.

They want to end the Department of Education.

They don't want to pay for schools.

They don't see the value of education. This has resulted in an enormous drop out rate. PROOF: How could anyone vote for a vice presidential candidate whose daughter is a drop out un wed mother and who rolls her eyes at the teaching profession?

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9lA1s4LUYA]YouTube - sarah palin rolls eyes at teacher[/ame]

Last Saturday, I watched the widow of Carl Sagen get shouted down by two conservatives on a talk show. Apparently, scientists are liars and fools who are not only lazy, but on the take.

When you have half of the country undermining and delegitimizing education, is it any wonder people stop? After all, education is hard work. Calling it a "worthless piece a paper" only makes the situation worse. Rewriting textbooks in Texas is a disaster.

We are seeing the fruits of 30 years of Republicans fighting education and winning.

Did you ever consider the possiblity that the reason some want the Dept of Education ended is because they are the reason why our education system is failing?

That and it's unconstitutional.

 

[jillian]

Oh. We forgot to include bogus lawsuits. A majority of educational decisions are made with only one question in mind: "How do avoid the lawyers"?

Interesting that a teacher would pass the buck that way.

I know, though, those court decisions de-segregating schools and keeping you from making them into churches must really gall you.

 

[chanel]

Not at all. I'm talking about locker searches, drug testing, IEP's, the Pledge of Allegiance, discipline... The Education Law Center of NJ has done more damage to the safety, management, and fiscal health of our schools than any union or lawmaker could possibly do. If it were up to them, a drugged out kid carrying a knife and telling the principal to go fuck himself would be within his constitutional right to do so.

And I'm sure the ACLU has cost other states millions.

 

[Bfgrn]

The unions have influenced the schools for decades now.....our student performance has also steadily declined....just coincidence?....and you're right....a lot of union teachers today are not all considered to be that hot any more....but then they are the sad products of our dumbed-down liberal colleges....

Why is it so many charter schools do better for our students than union schools today....? And many with less moolah..? And if the unions care so much for the children why are they politically opposed to charter schools and school vouchers...? Why would the unions rather leave the kids to rot in the ghetto schools....?

We need to break the stranglehold of union power before any meaningful school reform can really begin..... from the local and state levels like it used to be....but that's not exactly happening today what with the Education Jobs Fund being passed and Obama wanting to control education from the federal level....

You have a firm grasp of the effect, but you CAN'T start somewhere in the middle and create cause & effect.

Let's look back to when America's public schools were the best in the world. I went to public schools in the 50's and 60's when there were 2 realities...

1) America's public education system was the best in the world
2) Unions had MORE power and influence than they do today..

There were no attacks on teachers and unions back then, THAT STARTED 2-3 decades ago.

Se let's properly rephrase your question:

The unions have LOST influence in the schools for decades now.....our student performance has also steadily declined....just coincidence?

Point 1) - agree

Point 2) - disagree

How could the NEA have "lost influence" when it has grown ever larger over the years since the sixties....?
...not to mention its transformation from just a "professional" organization to also a "true labor union"...?
...not to mention recent affiliations with the powerful AFL-CIO...?

Before the 1960s, only a small portion of public school teachers were unionized.[5] But that began to change when, in 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to pass a collective bargaining law for public employees. Over the next 20 years, most other states adopted similar laws. The passage of these laws had a significant impact on NEA, which began to serve members as a labor union, in addition to serving members as a professional association. Passage of these new labor laws, along with NEA's new role as a labor union, helped NEA membership grow from 766,000 in 1961 [6] to roughly 3.2 million today.

In the 1960s, the NEA's demographics were changing. This was due the merger with ATA and the decision to become a true labor union, among other factors.[19] In 1967, the NEA elected its first Hispanic president Braulio Alonso. In 1968, NEA elected its first Black president, Elizabeth Duncan Koontz[20].

In 2006, the NEA and the AFL-CIO also announced that, for the first time, stand-alone NEA locals as well as those that had merged with the AFT would be allowed to join state and local labor federations affiliated with the AFL-CIO.[7]

National Education Association - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I stand corrected. Maybe it is more regional than I realized. The school I attended in Western New York had union teachers. And my children attended a school in an adjacent district in the 1990's and early 2000's and that school has union teachers. My wife and I were involved in their education and always met with all their teachers. We were very satisfied with the school, the curriculum, the level of their education and the competence and commitment of the teachers.

I do not believe people enter the teaching profession because it is a union job. The teachers I had growing up and my children's teachers were dedicated to their profession, and went above and beyond the minimum requirements. Some of the best mentors I ever had were teachers and coaches that were also teachers.

I don't have a problem with parents who want to spend their own money to send their kids to charter schools or parochial schools, just as long as it doesn't degrade or undermine the public system. When a quality education becomes a privilege in this country instead of a right, America as we know it will cease to exist. It will be even MORE of the plutocracy the failed Reagan revolution created.

Testing, school choice undermining education
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 02:51 AM

The Columbus Dispatch

For almost 10 years, our leaders have aimed at the wrong targets and used the wrong tools while trying to improve public schooling.

Diane Ravitch, an early pioneer of President George W. Bush's education plan No Child Left Behind, admits as much in her newly released book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

A noted education historian, Ravitch joined President George H. W. Bush's administration as assistant secretary of education in 1991. By the time she left in 1993, she was a rabid advocate for national standards, school choice and charter schools. As a founding board member of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Koret Task Force at the right-wing Hoover Institute, she became a loud and persistent advocate for the younger Bush's No Child initiative.

She now realizes that school choice and test-based accountability are damaging public schools. In her book, she identifies some of the fault lines that underlie these misguided notions. "Accountability turned into a nightmare for American schools," she writes, and blames that on what, early on, was obvious to No Child's critics: the need to teach to tests.

Her disillusionment with charters is no less profound. She acknowledges that years of research done by its advocates show occasional advantages but, more often, disadvantages of charter compared with public schools.

The greatest disaster, however, is that during the two decades that Ravitch and her colleagues promoted No Child, they severely undermined Americans' confidence in public education. The misuse of standardized tests and incessant pounding of classroom-teacher-preparation programs by politicians, corporate interests and their tax-free foundations, along with misguided reformers, increased cynicism toward public education, particularly about poor urban schools.

They ignored trade and fiscal policies that are unraveling the social-safety network, hollowing out the middle class and causing the loss of good jobs and increasing poverty for children and their families. Instead, they place blame for our economic slide on the backs of schoolchildren and their dispirited teachers. Thus, much of the public believes the unsubstantiated claim that America competes badly in the global economy because of poorly achieving public-school students.

The Race to the Top education-funding competition between states is no less a sham than was No Child. Poor children and their teachers can make incremental progress for years on tests and graduation rates and still not reach the required goals; meanwhile, their schools are losing money that could make a difference. These mandates falsely assume that academic achievement is divorced from the rest of students' lives.

Do these policymakers really believe that drill-and-practice teaching of inner-city children, raised in impoverished neighborhoods by poorly educated parents, will be sufficient for them to catch up with students whose environments are rich in educational resources and whose parents are themselves well-educated? Is this not akin to a smoke-and-mirrors pitch?

No matter how hard teachers and students try and how good the instruction, the impact on poor children's school achievement often will fall short of better-off peers.

Those who speak glibly of national standards for all students ignore the varied learning needs of our youth, a need that Ravitch has come to understand. Our public-schools population, perhaps the most diverse on Earth, requires options and goals based upon the real-life needs of students.

Ravitch looked at the results of what she and her cohorts have been peddling and, to her credit, admits gullibility. But the admission comes after billions were spent and countless lives damaged. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama seems as blind to these realities as Bush and Ravitch were.

Thomas M. Stephens is professor emeritus in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State University and is executive director emeritus of the School Study Council of Ohio.

Thomas M. Stephens: Testing, school choice undermining education | The Columbus Dispatch

 

[Annie]

I don't think the ideas behind NCLB were all bad, just many problems with implementation and no flexibility for areas with high poverty and the accompanying problems of often bad parenting and lack of enrichment. NCLB also hurt 'good districts' that had well deserved top notch departments of special eduction. The numbers of special needs students in these schools along with the lack of poverty often cause these schools to fall onto the 'watch lists.'

I've yet to see Obama address the problems with NCLB. It's all about waiting for Superman.

Standardized testing in decent schools has little impact towards teaching towards tests. Decent teachers plan and write their lessons to meet the standards to begin with.

 

[Titanic Sailor]

So, if I understand Borg's take, don't do anything, no reform, and let unions have more power in education decisions.

Who's in?????

The Democrat way, a century of control on education and now they are whining. They OWN education top to bottom in this nation, and own it's failure as well. And now they have the gall to point fingers at those that recognize their failure, and call them "right wingers", or "uninformed". Labels for everybody, and that's their solution.

Yippee. "It's a sick world, and I'm a happy guy"
Uncle Lar

 

[ScreamingEagle]

You have a firm grasp of the effect, but you CAN'T start somewhere in the middle and create cause & effect.

Let's look back to when America's public schools were the best in the world. I went to public schools in the 50's and 60's when there were 2 realities...

1) America's public education system was the best in the world
2) Unions had MORE power and influence than they do today..

There were no attacks on teachers and unions back then, THAT STARTED 2-3 decades ago.

Se let's properly rephrase your question:

The unions have LOST influence in the schools for decades now.....our student performance has also steadily declined....just coincidence?

Point 1) - agree

Point 2) - disagree

How could the NEA have "lost influence" when it has grown ever larger over the years since the sixties....?
...not to mention its transformation from just a "professional" organization to also a "true labor union"...?
...not to mention recent affiliations with the powerful AFL-CIO...?

Before the 1960s, only a small portion of public school teachers were unionized.[5] But that began to change when, in 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to pass a collective bargaining law for public employees. Over the next 20 years, most other states adopted similar laws. The passage of these laws had a significant impact on NEA, which began to serve members as a labor union, in addition to serving members as a professional association. Passage of these new labor laws, along with NEA's new role as a labor union, helped NEA membership grow from 766,000 in 1961 [6] to roughly 3.2 million today.

In the 1960s, the NEA's demographics were changing. This was due the merger with ATA and the decision to become a true labor union, among other factors.[19] In 1967, the NEA elected its first Hispanic president Braulio Alonso. In 1968, NEA elected its first Black president, Elizabeth Duncan Koontz[20].

In 2006, the NEA and the AFL-CIO also announced that, for the first time, stand-alone NEA locals as well as those that had merged with the AFT would be allowed to join state and local labor federations affiliated with the AFL-CIO.[7]

National Education Association - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I stand corrected. Maybe it is more regional than I realized. The school I attended in Western New York had union teachers. And my children attended a school in an adjacent district in the 1990's and early 2000's and that school has union teachers. My wife and I were involved in their education and always met with all their teachers. We were very satisfied with the school, the curriculum, the level of their education and the competence and commitment of the teachers.

I do not believe people enter the teaching profession because it is a union job. The teachers I had growing up and my children's teachers were dedicated to their profession, and went above and beyond the minimum requirements. Some of the best mentors I ever had were teachers and coaches that were also teachers.

I don't have a problem with parents who want to spend their own money to send their kids to charter schools or parochial schools, just as long as it doesn't degrade or undermine the public system. When a quality education becomes a privilege in this country instead of a right, America as we know it will cease to exist. It will be even MORE of the plutocracy the failed Reagan revolution created.

Testing, school choice undermining education
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 02:51 AM

The Columbus Dispatch

For almost 10 years, our leaders have aimed at the wrong targets and used the wrong tools while trying to improve public schooling.

Diane Ravitch, an early pioneer of President George W. Bush's education plan No Child Left Behind, admits as much in her newly released book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

A noted education historian, Ravitch joined President George H. W. Bush's administration as assistant secretary of education in 1991. By the time she left in 1993, she was a rabid advocate for national standards, school choice and charter schools. As a founding board member of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Koret Task Force at the right-wing Hoover Institute, she became a loud and persistent advocate for the younger Bush's No Child initiative.

She now realizes that school choice and test-based accountability are damaging public schools. In her book, she identifies some of the fault lines that underlie these misguided notions. "Accountability turned into a nightmare for American schools," she writes, and blames that on what, early on, was obvious to No Child's critics: the need to teach to tests.

Her disillusionment with charters is no less profound. She acknowledges that years of research done by its advocates show occasional advantages but, more often, disadvantages of charter compared with public schools.

The greatest disaster, however, is that during the two decades that Ravitch and her colleagues promoted No Child, they severely undermined Americans' confidence in public education. The misuse of standardized tests and incessant pounding of classroom-teacher-preparation programs by politicians, corporate interests and their tax-free foundations, along with misguided reformers, increased cynicism toward public education, particularly about poor urban schools.

They ignored trade and fiscal policies that are unraveling the social-safety network, hollowing out the middle class and causing the loss of good jobs and increasing poverty for children and their families. Instead, they place blame for our economic slide on the backs of schoolchildren and their dispirited teachers. Thus, much of the public believes the unsubstantiated claim that America competes badly in the global economy because of poorly achieving public-school students.

The Race to the Top education-funding competition between states is no less a sham than was No Child. Poor children and their teachers can make incremental progress for years on tests and graduation rates and still not reach the required goals; meanwhile, their schools are losing money that could make a difference. These mandates falsely assume that academic achievement is divorced from the rest of students' lives.

Do these policymakers really believe that drill-and-practice teaching of inner-city children, raised in impoverished neighborhoods by poorly educated parents, will be sufficient for them to catch up with students whose environments are rich in educational resources and whose parents are themselves well-educated? Is this not akin to a smoke-and-mirrors pitch?

No matter how hard teachers and students try and how good the instruction, the impact on poor children's school achievement often will fall short of better-off peers.

Those who speak glibly of national standards for all students ignore the varied learning needs of our youth, a need that Ravitch has come to understand. Our public-schools population, perhaps the most diverse on Earth, requires options and goals based upon the real-life needs of students.

Ravitch looked at the results of what she and her cohorts have been peddling and, to her credit, admits gullibility. But the admission comes after billions were spent and countless lives damaged. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama seems as blind to these realities as Bush and Ravitch were.

Thomas M. Stephens is professor emeritus in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State University and is executive director emeritus of the School Study Council of Ohio.

Thomas M. Stephens: Testing, school choice undermining education | The Columbus Dispatch

You realize of course that the NEA supported both the No Child Left Behind Act and the Race To The Top.....and that Ravitch, altho she now finds fault with NCLB, she is still a strong supporter of the NEA...

The NEA, Obama, Ravitch, and others are all part and parcel of the push for a new world order of education.....you say you don't want our public system undermined.....sorry to inform you, but it has already been undermined by those who are pushing for an international socialist order with global standards and UN goals....and the NEA is right there in the mix....

...once you realize what is really going on you may reject the current public school system.... and welcome going back to strictly local public schools and/or a good old-fashioned private school system...

"Those who rose highest in the public schools establishment and the NEA were those most strongly committed to secularism and statism," wrote Blumenfeld. Those two complementary philosophies fueled the vision of NEA leaders who sought an utopian world, freed from Biblical constraints and ruled by humanist politicians and taught by progressive educators. Parental rights and religious freedom would be swallowed up by the surpassing rights and rules of the greater community -- the controlled collective.

http://www.crossroad.to/Excerpts/chronologies/nea.htm

 

[uscitizen]

Sesame Street caused the failure of our education system!

And a purple furry thing with a geometric shape on it's head finished it off.

 

[Bfgrn]

Point 1) - agree

Point 2) - disagree

How could the NEA have "lost influence" when it has grown ever larger over the years since the sixties....?
...not to mention its transformation from just a "professional" organization to also a "true labor union"...?
...not to mention recent affiliations with the powerful AFL-CIO...?

I stand corrected. Maybe it is more regional than I realized. The school I attended in Western New York had union teachers. And my children attended a school in an adjacent district in the 1990's and early 2000's and that school has union teachers. My wife and I were involved in their education and always met with all their teachers. We were very satisfied with the school, the curriculum, the level of their education and the competence and commitment of the teachers.

I do not believe people enter the teaching profession because it is a union job. The teachers I had growing up and my children's teachers were dedicated to their profession, and went above and beyond the minimum requirements. Some of the best mentors I ever had were teachers and coaches that were also teachers.

I don't have a problem with parents who want to spend their own money to send their kids to charter schools or parochial schools, just as long as it doesn't degrade or undermine the public system. When a quality education becomes a privilege in this country instead of a right, America as we know it will cease to exist. It will be even MORE of the plutocracy the failed Reagan revolution created.

Testing, school choice undermining education
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 02:51 AM

The Columbus Dispatch

For almost 10 years, our leaders have aimed at the wrong targets and used the wrong tools while trying to improve public schooling.

Diane Ravitch, an early pioneer of President George W. Bush's education plan No Child Left Behind, admits as much in her newly released book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

A noted education historian, Ravitch joined President George H. W. Bush's administration as assistant secretary of education in 1991. By the time she left in 1993, she was a rabid advocate for national standards, school choice and charter schools. As a founding board member of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Koret Task Force at the right-wing Hoover Institute, she became a loud and persistent advocate for the younger Bush's No Child initiative.

She now realizes that school choice and test-based accountability are damaging public schools. In her book, she identifies some of the fault lines that underlie these misguided notions. "Accountability turned into a nightmare for American schools," she writes, and blames that on what, early on, was obvious to No Child's critics: the need to teach to tests.

Her disillusionment with charters is no less profound. She acknowledges that years of research done by its advocates show occasional advantages but, more often, disadvantages of charter compared with public schools.

The greatest disaster, however, is that during the two decades that Ravitch and her colleagues promoted No Child, they severely undermined Americans' confidence in public education. The misuse of standardized tests and incessant pounding of classroom-teacher-preparation programs by politicians, corporate interests and their tax-free foundations, along with misguided reformers, increased cynicism toward public education, particularly about poor urban schools.

They ignored trade and fiscal policies that are unraveling the social-safety network, hollowing out the middle class and causing the loss of good jobs and increasing poverty for children and their families. Instead, they place blame for our economic slide on the backs of schoolchildren and their dispirited teachers. Thus, much of the public believes the unsubstantiated claim that America competes badly in the global economy because of poorly achieving public-school students.

The Race to the Top education-funding competition between states is no less a sham than was No Child. Poor children and their teachers can make incremental progress for years on tests and graduation rates and still not reach the required goals; meanwhile, their schools are losing money that could make a difference. These mandates falsely assume that academic achievement is divorced from the rest of students' lives.

Do these policymakers really believe that drill-and-practice teaching of inner-city children, raised in impoverished neighborhoods by poorly educated parents, will be sufficient for them to catch up with students whose environments are rich in educational resources and whose parents are themselves well-educated? Is this not akin to a smoke-and-mirrors pitch?

No matter how hard teachers and students try and how good the instruction, the impact on poor children's school achievement often will fall short of better-off peers.

Those who speak glibly of national standards for all students ignore the varied learning needs of our youth, a need that Ravitch has come to understand. Our public-schools population, perhaps the most diverse on Earth, requires options and goals based upon the real-life needs of students.

Ravitch looked at the results of what she and her cohorts have been peddling and, to her credit, admits gullibility. But the admission comes after billions were spent and countless lives damaged. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama seems as blind to these realities as Bush and Ravitch were.

Thomas M. Stephens is professor emeritus in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State University and is executive director emeritus of the School Study Council of Ohio.

Thomas M. Stephens: Testing, school choice undermining education | The Columbus Dispatch

You realize of course that the NEA supported both the No Child Left Behind Act and the Race To The Top.....and that Ravitch, altho she now finds fault with NCLB, she is still a strong supporter of the NEA...

The NEA, Obama, Ravitch, and others are all part and parcel of the push for a new world order of education.....you say you don't want our public system undermined.....sorry to inform you, but it has already been undermined by those who are pushing for an international socialist order with global standards and UN goals....and the NEA is right there in the mix....

...once you realize what is really going on you may reject the current public school system.... and welcome going back to strictly local public schools and/or a good old-fashioned private school system...

"Those who rose highest in the public schools establishment and the NEA were those most strongly committed to secularism and statism," wrote Blumenfeld. Those two complementary philosophies fueled the vision of NEA leaders who sought an utopian world, freed from Biblical constraints and ruled by humanist politicians and taught by progressive educators. Parental rights and religious freedom would be swallowed up by the surpassing rights and rules of the greater community -- the controlled collective.

Chronology of the NEA

You just lost ALL credibility with me when you provided a link to end-timer Berit Kjos.

You far right wing Christians need to start your own country. America was NEVER, EVER yours.

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

 

[USArmyRetired]

Our schools and education system went to hell when segregation started. It's true.

 

[jillian]

You just lost ALL credibility with me when you provided a link to end-timer Berit Kjos.

You far right wing Christians need to start your own country. America was NEVER, EVER yours.

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

whining eagle has no credibility anyway.

and barry goldwater was correct.

 

[Titanic Sailor]

Desegregation caused the flight of whites and others to private schools, and also caused a massive bailout of urban areas to better suburban public schools. This also had an effect on teacher flight as well, they knew the system went to crap and was unmanageable.

Now in Boston many acknowledge the ill effects of busing, and are trying to rebuild local schooling as the priority. Another case where the courts got involved, and created a mess. The battle always ends up in the people's laps to deal with, when government failure from the start was the reason for the fight.

"I grew up during busing, and we didn't get a long with blacks. Now they're our best friends. They're the only minority that speaks English."
Lenny Clarke

I just read the news article on the Texas teacher arrested for sex with scores of children. on PAID leave. Dance teacher, must be a Republican...............

 

[Titanic Sailor]

Nope, no problem with public schooling, give the unions more power..............

The Democrat solution for their failure: Give us more money.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

I stand corrected. Maybe it is more regional than I realized. The school I attended in Western New York had union teachers. And my children attended a school in an adjacent district in the 1990's and early 2000's and that school has union teachers. My wife and I were involved in their education and always met with all their teachers. We were very satisfied with the school, the curriculum, the level of their education and the competence and commitment of the teachers.

I do not believe people enter the teaching profession because it is a union job. The teachers I had growing up and my children's teachers were dedicated to their profession, and went above and beyond the minimum requirements. Some of the best mentors I ever had were teachers and coaches that were also teachers.

I don't have a problem with parents who want to spend their own money to send their kids to charter schools or parochial schools, just as long as it doesn't degrade or undermine the public system. When a quality education becomes a privilege in this country instead of a right, America as we know it will cease to exist. It will be even MORE of the plutocracy the failed Reagan revolution created.

Testing, school choice undermining education
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 02:51 AM

The Columbus Dispatch

For almost 10 years, our leaders have aimed at the wrong targets and used the wrong tools while trying to improve public schooling.

Diane Ravitch, an early pioneer of President George W. Bush's education plan No Child Left Behind, admits as much in her newly released book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

A noted education historian, Ravitch joined President George H. W. Bush's administration as assistant secretary of education in 1991. By the time she left in 1993, she was a rabid advocate for national standards, school choice and charter schools. As a founding board member of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Koret Task Force at the right-wing Hoover Institute, she became a loud and persistent advocate for the younger Bush's No Child initiative.

She now realizes that school choice and test-based accountability are damaging public schools. In her book, she identifies some of the fault lines that underlie these misguided notions. "Accountability turned into a nightmare for American schools," she writes, and blames that on what, early on, was obvious to No Child's critics: the need to teach to tests.

Her disillusionment with charters is no less profound. She acknowledges that years of research done by its advocates show occasional advantages but, more often, disadvantages of charter compared with public schools.

The greatest disaster, however, is that during the two decades that Ravitch and her colleagues promoted No Child, they severely undermined Americans' confidence in public education. The misuse of standardized tests and incessant pounding of classroom-teacher-preparation programs by politicians, corporate interests and their tax-free foundations, along with misguided reformers, increased cynicism toward public education, particularly about poor urban schools.

They ignored trade and fiscal policies that are unraveling the social-safety network, hollowing out the middle class and causing the loss of good jobs and increasing poverty for children and their families. Instead, they place blame for our economic slide on the backs of schoolchildren and their dispirited teachers. Thus, much of the public believes the unsubstantiated claim that America competes badly in the global economy because of poorly achieving public-school students.

The Race to the Top education-funding competition between states is no less a sham than was No Child. Poor children and their teachers can make incremental progress for years on tests and graduation rates and still not reach the required goals; meanwhile, their schools are losing money that could make a difference. These mandates falsely assume that academic achievement is divorced from the rest of students' lives.

Do these policymakers really believe that drill-and-practice teaching of inner-city children, raised in impoverished neighborhoods by poorly educated parents, will be sufficient for them to catch up with students whose environments are rich in educational resources and whose parents are themselves well-educated? Is this not akin to a smoke-and-mirrors pitch?

No matter how hard teachers and students try and how good the instruction, the impact on poor children's school achievement often will fall short of better-off peers.

Those who speak glibly of national standards for all students ignore the varied learning needs of our youth, a need that Ravitch has come to understand. Our public-schools population, perhaps the most diverse on Earth, requires options and goals based upon the real-life needs of students.

Ravitch looked at the results of what she and her cohorts have been peddling and, to her credit, admits gullibility. But the admission comes after billions were spent and countless lives damaged. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama seems as blind to these realities as Bush and Ravitch were.

Thomas M. Stephens is professor emeritus in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State University and is executive director emeritus of the School Study Council of Ohio.

Thomas M. Stephens: Testing, school choice undermining education | The Columbus Dispatch

You realize of course that the NEA supported both the No Child Left Behind Act and the Race To The Top.....and that Ravitch, altho she now finds fault with NCLB, she is still a strong supporter of the NEA...

The NEA, Obama, Ravitch, and others are all part and parcel of the push for a new world order of education.....you say you don't want our public system undermined.....sorry to inform you, but it has already been undermined by those who are pushing for an international socialist order with global standards and UN goals....and the NEA is right there in the mix....

...once you realize what is really going on you may reject the current public school system.... and welcome going back to strictly local public schools and/or a good old-fashioned private school system...

"Those who rose highest in the public schools establishment and the NEA were those most strongly committed to secularism and statism," wrote Blumenfeld. Those two complementary philosophies fueled the vision of NEA leaders who sought an utopian world, freed from Biblical constraints and ruled by humanist politicians and taught by progressive educators. Parental rights and religious freedom would be swallowed up by the surpassing rights and rules of the greater community -- the controlled collective.

Chronology of the NEA

You just lost ALL credibility with me when you provided a link to end-timer Berit Kjos.

You far right wing Christians need to start your own country. America was NEVER, EVER yours.

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

Well buddy just go stick your head in the sand......you're not the first in your myopic world to reject stuff written by ordinary people (a lawyer and a registered nurse) raised as Lutherans because they are....omg....outspoken CHRISTIANS....

Barry Goldwater also said ""Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." ...so maybe you shouldn't be knocking the "far right wing" so much......

fyi i just found the referenced page to be informative and IF YOU WILL NOTICE it was provided with FOOTNOTES which list the SOURCES from where he got the quotations.....

....many supplied by Dennis Laurence Cuddy, PhD., former Senior Associate of the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION...
....and Charlotte Iserbyt, former Senior Policy Advisor with the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.....

....but maybe you don't believe them either because maybe they are Christians too....

 

[Bfgrn]

You realize of course that the NEA supported both the No Child Left Behind Act and the Race To The Top.....and that Ravitch, altho she now finds fault with NCLB, she is still a strong supporter of the NEA...

The NEA, Obama, Ravitch, and others are all part and parcel of the push for a new world order of education.....you say you don't want our public system undermined.....sorry to inform you, but it has already been undermined by those who are pushing for an international socialist order with global standards and UN goals....and the NEA is right there in the mix....

...once you realize what is really going on you may reject the current public school system.... and welcome going back to strictly local public schools and/or a good old-fashioned private school system...

"Those who rose highest in the public schools establishment and the NEA were those most strongly committed to secularism and statism," wrote Blumenfeld. Those two complementary philosophies fueled the vision of NEA leaders who sought an utopian world, freed from Biblical constraints and ruled by humanist politicians and taught by progressive educators. Parental rights and religious freedom would be swallowed up by the surpassing rights and rules of the greater community -- the controlled collective.

Chronology of the NEA

You just lost ALL credibility with me when you provided a link to end-timer Berit Kjos.

You far right wing Christians need to start your own country. America was NEVER, EVER yours.

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

Well buddy just go stick your head in the sand......you're not the first in your myopic world to reject stuff written by ordinary people (a lawyer and a registered nurse) raised as Lutherans because they are....omg....outspoken CHRISTIANS....

Barry Goldwater also said ""Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." ...so maybe you shouldn't be knocking the "far right wing" so much......

fyi i just found the referenced page to be informative and IF YOU WILL NOTICE it was provided with FOOTNOTES which list the SOURCES from where he got the quotations.....

....many supplied by Dennis Laurence Cuddy, PhD., former Senior Associate of the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION...
....and Charlotte Iserbyt, former Senior Policy Advisor with the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.....

....but maybe you don't believe them either because maybe they are Christians too....

Dennis Laurence Cuddy...the author of 'Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order' and a writer for News With Views.com, a Christian right website?

Charlotte Iserbyt...another NWO nutbag who accuses FDR of conspiring to goad Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor and and is also a writer for News With Views.com, a Christian right website??

 

[Tank]

In l950, American schools were among the best in the world. However, vocal elements within our society demanded that the public schools take on a social engineering role as well as an educational one. Violent disruptions of American education were ordered by the Supreme Court for the purpose of breaking down racial barriers. For 30 years, American schools have diverted enormous resources into forced integration, quotas, and bussing operations. (Few people realize how expensive bussing is. Annual cost may run into tens of billions of dollars. In l990 California alone was spending $500 million per year on integration. Many school districts spend a quarter or more of their budgets on transportation. In Milwaukee alone and in a single school year, 30,000 staff hours were diverted into calculating the race of students to attend the various schools.) The results? Today's students rank at the very bottom worldwide in science and math, some 40% of American adults are functionally illiterate, and standardized test scores have declined steadily for both Whites and Blacks. Today the average White still scores 200 points higher on the combined SAT than the average Black. Americans spend more on education than any other country in the world and have the worst results. Massive White flight to escape racial zoning has reduced the tax base of every major American city. In l983, after nearly two generations of racial experimentation to promote equality, the research arm of the Dept. of Education could not produce a single study that showed Black children were learning appreciably better after desegregation.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I don't think the ideas behind NCLB were all bad, just many problems with implementation and no flexibility for areas with high poverty and the accompanying problems of often bad parenting and lack of enrichment. NCLB also hurt 'good districts' that had well deserved top notch departments of special eduction. The numbers of special needs students in these schools along with the lack of poverty often cause these schools to fall onto the 'watch lists.'

I've yet to see Obama address the problems with NCLB. It's all about waiting for Superman.

Standardized testing in decent schools has little impact towards teaching towards tests. Decent teachers plan and write their lessons to meet the standards to begin with.

E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy
A content-rich pedagogy makes better citizens and smarter kids.
E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009

1. Arne Duncan succinctly summarized the Obama administration’s approach to education reform: “We must build upon what works. We must stop doing what doesn’t work.” Since becoming education secretary, Duncan has launched a $4.3 billion federal “Race to the Top” initiative that encourages states to experiment with various accountability reforms. Yet he has ignored the education thinker is E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

2. The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch’s legacy.

2a. In the new millennium, Massachusetts students have surged upward on the biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—“the nation’s report card,” as education scholars call it. On the 2005 NAEP tests, Massachusetts ranked first in the nation in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and fourth- and eighth-grade math. It then repeated the feat in 2007. No state had ever scored first in both grades and both subjects in a single year—let alone for two consecutive test cycles. On another reliable test, the Trends in International Math and Science Studies, the state’s fourth-graders last year ranked second globally in science and third in math, while the eighth-graders tied for first in science and placed sixth in math. (States can volunteer, as Massachusetts did, to have their students compared with national averages.) The United States as a whole finished tenth.

3. “I came to see that the text alone is not enough,” Hirsch said to me recently at his Charlottesville, Virginia, home. “The unspoken—that is, relevant background knowledge—is absolutely crucial in reading a text.”… he received an endowed professorship and became chairman of the English department at the University of Virginia.[He found that] the reading and writing skills of many incoming students were poor, sure to handicap them in their future academic work. In trying to figure out how to close this “literacy gap,” Hirsch conducted an experiment on reading comprehension, using two groups of college students. Members of the first group possessed broad background knowledge in subjects like history, geography, civics, the arts, and basic science; members of the second, often from disadvantaged homes, lacked such knowledge. The knowledgeable students, it turned out, could far more easily comprehend and analyze difficult college-level texts (both fiction and nonfiction) than their poorly informed brethren could. Hirsch had discovered “a way to measure the variations in reading skill attributable to variations in the relevant background knowledge of audiences.”

 

[chanel]

A new survey of education school professors reveals traditional teacher training institutes are trying, sort of, to adjust, but still resist giving top priority to the hottest topic among young teachers, learning how to manage the kids.

Farkas and Duffet did the survey, "Cracks in the Ivory Tower?", for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, whose introduction to the report noted the difference between the ed professors' relative disinterest in classroom skills and the feverish buying by novice teachers of Doug Lemov's book "Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College." The book is based on close observation of successful inner city teachers. It focuses on the minutia of teaching, like how to handle a student who is refusing to participate or where to stand when students enter the room.

"Parents, voters and taxpayers--and would-be teachers--might well suppose that such tips and tools are exactly what aspiring teachers acquire in our colleges of education and other teacher training programs," the introduction says.

But no, says the survey. Much higher on the ed professors' list of the most essential qualities was making teachers "life-long learners" who are "constantly updating their skills." Eighty-two percent picked that one, close to the 84 percent who gave the same answer when a similar survey was done in 1997. Only 37 percent said creating teachers who maintain discipline and order was absolutely essential, the same percentage that gave that answer in 1997.

Class Struggle - Ed school professors resist teaching practical skills

I remember my first year teaching and a kid told me to suck his dick. When I spoke with my principal about it I said, "That request was not covered at my all girls Catholic college. Any advice?" lol