Posted on 09/06/2008 11:28:51 AM PDT by reaganaut1
[O]ne issue still divides [Democrats]: education. It is a surprising fault line, perhaps, given the party’s long dominance on the issue. Voters consistently say they trust the Democrats over the Republicans on education, by a wide margin. But the split in the party is real, deep and intense, and it shows no signs of healing any time soon.
On one side are the members of the two huge teachers’ unions and the many parents who support them. To them, the big problem in public education is No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s signature education law. Teachers have many complaints about the law: it encourages “teaching to the test” at the expense of art, music and other electives, they say; it blames teachers, especially those in inner-city schools, for the poor performance of disadvantaged children; and it demands better results without providing educators with the resources they need.
On the other side are the party’s self-defined “education reformers.” Members of this group — a loose coalition of mayors and superintendents, charter-school proponents and civil rights advocates — actually admire the accountability provisions in No Child Left Behind, although they often criticize the law’s implementation. They point instead to a bigger, more systemic crisis. These reformers describe the underperformance of the country’s schoolchildren, and especially of poor minorities, as a national crisis that demands a drastic overhaul of the way schools are run. In order to get better teachers into failing classrooms, they support performance bonuses, less protection for low-performing teachers, alternative certification programs to attract young, ambitious teachers and flexible contracts that could allow for longer school days and an extended school year. The unions see these proposals as attacks on their members’ job security — which, in many ways, they are.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The "new and growing movement of researchers and advocates" think the War on Poverty failed only because we did not try hard enough. The proposed '“conveyor belt” of social programs, beginning with Baby College' will be enormously expensive.
Taxes, especially "progressive" Federal income taxes, fall disproportionately on upper middle class and upper class families. Many upper middle class families limit the number of children they have for financial reason, especially the cost of college. Taxing the heck out of those families, making it impossible for them to afford more children, while subsidizing the incompetent, encouraging them to have more children, will have disastrous consequences, educationally and otherwise.
Why is Bush taking all the heat for failed schools with low quality teachers? Wasn’t No Child Left Behind Teddy Kennedy’s baby? Bush’s biggest fault was to try to placate people like Kennedy.
Isn’t interesting how the left’s unintended consequences work in their favor of creating broader foundations for expanded socialism.
And the pro-public school crowd will be cheering all the way! Can’t get rind of it, can never fix it, because the originating idea of public schools IS to create SOCIALISTS.
Freedom will be destroyed by the slow continued march of the socialists. And many will help them to hold up a failed system.
Ping
I have friends who are convinced NCLB is Bush's doing and that whatever problems it may or may not have are his doing. I bought it until recently when I learned Miller and Kennedy are the authors. I also realized that the "outcomes-based" approach is also used in lots of other professions, including nursing and medicine. But it only gets really controversial in education, it seems.
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This is a long article, but worth reading and thinking about it all.
I don't necessarily agree with the prescriptions for change, but I do agree that it's going to be very difficult for schools alone to solve the problems of underperforming inner-city and rural schools - there are cultural factors involved as well.
The article can, I think, be summarized by this quote: “Poor children grow into poor adults because they are never able, either at home or at school, to acquire the abilities and resources they need to compete in a high-tech service-driven economy — and Heckman emphasizes that those necessary skills are both cognitive (the ability to read and compute) and noncognitive (the ability to stick to a schedule, to delay gratification and to shake off disappointments). The good news, Heckman says, is that specific interventions in the lives of poor children can diminish that skill gap — as long as those interventions begin early (ideally in infancy) and continue throughout childhood.”
So the debate is not whether the state should intervene more in the lives of families, but when. And it looks like we’ve got our answer: from infancy.
Socialism at it’s purest.
The whole public education system is a scam...a huge pyramid scheme (PERPETRATED BY TEACHER/ADMINSTRATOR UNIONS AND THEIR ENABLERS IN POLITICS) which involves the exchange of money (OUR TAXES) primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, without any product or service being delivered. (FAILED EDUCATION)
You said a mouthful. I am not sure why schools are supposed to be the savior of the systemic problems of our culture. Everything from thug-rap; not snitching even on murderers; parental apathy; the fact that a number of single parents are more focused on “finding a partner” even if it means a roulette wheel of people they bring in and out of their children’s lives that they largely ignore their children; the impact of other music, movies, and television; the liberal media’s slamming of America and on and on and on. The schools are only a microcosm of what is happening in the larger sphere. Time for people to WAKE UP.
FWIW, my friend teaches in an inner city elementary school; she has students come in that have only had a Red Bull for breakfast. Not to mention 1/3 of her students have a disability of some kind; FAS, Dyslexia, hearing/eye problems; PTSD; ADHS; and the list goes on.
Oops, that’s supposed to be ADHD, not ADHS. Of course, I guess it could be a syndrome as easily as a disorder.
School Reform - give the good teachers a big raise and fire the bad ones.
But not necessarily in the lives of all families.
I am a bit torn. As the article points out, without intervention of some sort, these families and children will create more-of-the-same - and they have higher birthrates than "we" do.
The debate I suppose is whether it is the government's place to intervene -- or must we intervene for self-preservation? What are the options?
I bet many of the students have very poor attendance and a high rate of tardies, too.
One of the things Obama makes sense about is his criticism of the teacher’s union and the schools. Of course, finding a cure is not as easy as joining the chorus of complainers.
But it is refreshing to see a Democratic candidate who is not a pure lap dog to the powerful unions that support an outdated seniority system for teacher’s pay. If we are a meritocracy, then we should start with the schools. I agree with the post that says pay good teacher’s more and get rid of the bad teachers. Job secutity is nice, but it does lead to a certain mediocrity that is not present in many of the fastest paced jobs in this country.
I like the idea of kids getting on the job training in career exploration, and this can and does lead to people moving into these careers. They still need a good general education because people do not stay in the same career all their lives and they need to learn how to be flexible and develop new ideas and new talents.
He sure has you fooled!
“But not necessarily in the lives of all families”
Every large government program that intrudes into our lives started as something to help (or correct) the few. There seems to be no mechanism that stops the growth of government programs once they begin.
“As the article points out, without intervention of some sort, these families and children will create more-of-the-same - and they have higher birthrates than “we” do.”
And who decides who those are that need this “benevolent” attention? The NEA? The DNC? If we base it on family birthrate, then I guess the full quiver families will be first to be forced to accept this kind assistance. Mormon and Catholic families will shortly follow.
Curious situation that you mention.
I have a student this year, who is fairly well off, but squints like mad to read the board.
I asked this student where their glasses were, the reply:
“At the house. I don’t like to wear them.”
So, you mention the disabilities and such, and they do exist, but when you have parents that could care less, there is only so much you can do as a teacher. Besides, if a parent does not care to make their kids wear their glasses (or in another case, refused to buy glasses because they were too expensive and the parents got along fine without them) the idea of sending these kids to a private school and/or home educating them is not going to happen.
I have no problem being held accountable as a teacher. I like to think that I hold myself highly accountable as well, but I have a real problem being held accountable for a kid with an IQ of less than 70 and being expected to get them to perform at the same level as the valedictorian, which is what NCLB expects.
Again, what do you see as the options?
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