Posted on 05/24/2016 8:20:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
For far too many years we’ve tried to address the problem of failing educational achievement in America essentially by ignoring it. And by ignoring it, I mean, throwing money at it and hoping it’ll go away. But yet those problems persist. To wit, in the past year, for the first time in U.S. history, the majority of U.S. public school students fall into the category of the economically impoverished. This, despite the fact that spending per pupil in most American school districts is at an all-time high. There’s a gross disconnect here that no one’s talking about, and no one really wants to address.
The challenges with American public education came home to me as I watched my own niece struggling in school. She lives in a rural county of South Carolina that has one of the state’s lowest performing school systems. The usual culprits were to blame; ridiculously large class sizes, and frequent learning disruption by behaviorally challenged students that took away valuable learning time. The schools, despite having adequate funding, were nonetheless poorly managed and under-resourced. It got to the point that my sister and I were desperate to find a better option for my niece.
After several years of struggling against the educational system to no avail, we decided to take matters into our own hands. Fortunately our family had the resources to enroll my niece in educational enrichment programs, to take time with her to make sure she completed her assignments, to find appropriate private tutors – and ultimately to move her into a better school. She is now thriving, and performing above her grade level in all her subjects. My niece is a success story, but those left behind in the failing schools are sadly condemned to an uncertain fate.
So let’s get down to brass tacks. What exactly should we expect of our educational system? What should we not expect? That is quite difficult to answer effectively because most public schools cannot control the quality of students that attend. They have to take whoever shows up and deal with it the best they can. So, increasingly, schools have become an extension of the welfare state. They are expected to feed students who come from impoverished homes. They have to deal with the socio-economic problems that students bring with them – and often find themselves in the position of being behavioral counselors, mental health professionals, and babysitters. A smaller and smaller portion of each school day is spent actually focusing on learning.
And what about the quality of education itself; should schools be primarily focusing on ‘liberal arts’ education, or the hard sciences? We live in a country in which less than half the engineers and scientist were educated in America, and even fewer of those scientist who were born in America are products of the public education system. Companies like Apple and Microsoft are begging the government to expand the H1-B Visa program and similar measures to permit more foreign-trained engineers and scientists to enter the country and stay after they have completed college here. The U.S. continues to fall further and further behind other leading nations in math and the hard sciences.
The answer is clear – we need fewer African and hyphenated American studies majors, and more computer science majors. But our educational system is woefully underprepared to produce students with the requisite math and science skills, the critical thinking skills, to compete in college level engineering and science courses.
Here’s where the gap gets really bad. Students are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars and coming out of school saddled with debt – only to be found working as baristas at Starbucks.
Of course they’ll have a dog-eared copy of Proust or Jane Austen to read during their coffee breaks – at least they can afford those working at a coffee shop – but compete in the global economy, they cannot. There is an unspoken debt crisis among young people who’ve barely lived, haven’t started families or even bought their first home – but are armed with a degree in ‘Feminist Studies.’ They’re in debt to the tune of over $1.2 trillion with nothing to show for it.
What is the solution to this pernicious dilemma? Not the knee-jerk response - ‘throw some money at it.’ This is not a problem that can be solved by money alone. Throwing money at the current educational system will merely add fuel to the flames. What we need is a leaner, meaner, more results-focused educational system. The federal government should get entirely out of funding education that is not related to productive vocations. If colleges want to school their students in the liberal arts, if they think those degrees are so valuable, they should pony up the money themselves. But the government is doing students a grave disservice by putting them into deep debt for education that will not earn a return on the investment of time or money.
Secondly, at the elementary and secondary school levels, kids with demonstrated behavioral problems need to be quickly extracted from learning environments where they interrupt and prevent other students from learning. Parents may not like being told their child is a cancer on the classroom – but that’s what it is. The responsibility for bringing a student to school who knows how to behave must be squarely placed on the parents. Doing this is sure to get their attention – and cause them to become more attentive to their child’s emotional health.
We do not have the luxury of raising another generation of failing children. It’s not being ‘nice’ to them to engage in social promotion only to arrive in the workforce unable compete for well-paying jobs. We have to prioritize effectively, root out the bad apples, and focus our educational resources on developing critical science and engineering skills that will move our nation forward.
Any serious effort to deal with behavior problems will be “racist”.
The American Education system, like many other Liberal run institutions, is not about educating students. It’s first and foremost about employing teachers and feeding the Unions. The second objective is the money. “Education” is a cash cow and low hanging fruit for the government to collect more because it is always “for the children”.
Finally, they need to show some minor improvement (but not too much) so they can point to the affect of their efforts. They do this by constantly changing the way their efforts are scored and/or graded. There is no baseline so we measure against the world in some semi-objective comparison.
Notice that there is never any discussion about how important history is. It is the basis of our constitutional self governance and it doesn’t get “tested”.
Way more than 1/2 of American students are below average.....
I think you got that right.
Exactly - the US Dept of Ed will use the policy of "disparate impact" to hammer any district into compliance with what D/Ed thinks the numbers should be. It happened in Oklahoma City and added to the merry-go-round of carpet-bagging superintendents that have rolled through there in recent years. Meanwhile, classroom teachers are told their "classroom management skills" are deficient when the feral hellions prevent effective instruction to those who want to be there.
This is a surprise? The shift in dollars away from education has been a steady straight line consistent with the raising of poverty entitlements. According to the Weekly Standard, New data compiled by the Senate Budget Committee shows that, last year, the United States spent over $60,000 to support welfare programs per each household that is in poverty. The calculations are based on data from the Census, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Research Services. The liberal side of the house, doesn’t see this as a problem trend because they see this as a way to aid in their continued efforts to keep control of government by dumbing down the capacity of the graduating(?) young adults and by teaching the use of entitlements thus increasing their dependence on the politicians and their dollar eating programs. What you’re seeing now is the accumulation of the effort starting in the 60’s with the invention of programs like AFDC, which finally peaked in the mid 70’s, and food stamps which were invented in 1964 with the food stamp act. So this isn’t a trend, it’s a planned out effort.
red
There’s a chronic problem in education for a couple of simple reasons:
Break up of the family and legitimate family values, and a failure to honor God.
Both Mon and Dad need to take responsibility to create a strong family unit and religious upbringing - all by example, of course.
We landed a man on the moon with chalkboards, textbooks, and slide rules. Money is not the problem, nor has it ever been.
He means that the "adequate funding" provided by Federal, state, and local taxpayers has vanished into political patronage jobs, political patronage contracting/sourcing, and outright theft at every level.
Most of them probably can't read Proust or Jane Austen, either. Many young persons graduating with degrees in the liberal arts (with or without debt) haven't spent their college years studying the great (or even pretty good) works of the Western literary tradition. They've been in leftist indoctrination programs.
Not to mention one of America's problems (among the other thousands of serious problems plaguing us) is that we trivialize evil by reframing with euphemisms.
Homosexuality is "gay." Adultery is an "affair." And psychopathic, antisocial, thug behavior in the classroom (which should be immediately dealt with in the harshest manner possible) is now "behaviorally challenged."
This same subject comes up every two weeks or so on Free Republic.
The responses are also the same.
“They’re teaching worthless subjects and handing out worthless degrees! These kids need more math and science!”
OK. How are we going to get more of them to study math and science?
Are the problems we now face caused because of a lack of math and science education?
If we sat every student down at a desk with a gun at their head and made them study math and science for 18 years, would all of our problems be solved?
This is a conservative site, but it sure seems like all those math and science geniuses are liberal. How many research university department heads are posting here at Free Republic? How many of those whiz kids in the Silicon Valley come here? They know their math and science. But they can’t seem to be able to figure out how to help our nation.
Curriculum and textbook writers are dominated by liberal and even revolutionary thinkers. Read you kids history book, it will stun you.
Students are allowed to behave as they wish without limits. Combined with mainstreaming all students together regardless of capability, skills, aptitude, attitude and mental health has turned the classroom into a cattle pen of behavioral problems.
Parents will sue for any reason anytime. Administrators are scared to death of this. Special Ed IEPs use more educator time that preparing lessons. Every parent thinks their kid is incapable of being a brat.
Administrators are teachers promoted to their highest level of incompetency. Most principals don't have any experience in operating a large business or dealing with suppliers and contractors. Yet they are placed in near complete charge of financial and facility improvements in their school.
School districts are enamored with computer technology. Computers are the classroom babysitting equivalent of the TV or video game at home. Students that understand the technology are deluded into thinking they are educated because they can access files on a computer that provide answers rather than actually derive an answer from knowledge and analysis.
When given money school districts spend it on new buildings, supplemental technology and motivational seminars/lectures for teacher in service meetings. It rarely goes directly to something that benefits student performance. They never spend it on textbooks and teaching resources, supplies or classroom furnishings.
Way too many teachers are the kids who loved being in school and entered the profession so they could stay in a Peter Pan world.
Beware of any teacher that sponsors all the social clubs. They may not be predators but may be so socially underdeveloped that they identify more with the 15 year olds rather than the adults in their life.
I am a retired high school teacher. I taught vocational classes in electronics and I taught physics and intro to engineering. Before that I spent 9 years in the USAF and then 12 years as a quality assurance engineer in General Dynamics on the Tomahawk, M-1 and F-16 programs.
I have certain relatives who have snatched themselves half-bald over the issue. Suddenly in his early twenties the kid decides he wants to study science (I'm thinking "great, at last!") but from high school he has a substandard GPA and no apparent study habits at all. Figures he's taken some junior college courses and he's smart enough to walk right in and put his nose to the grindstone now that he knows what he wants to do.
Yep, he got clobbered. Humiliated.
So the answer to your question, I think, is to place more emphasis on study methodology than we have in the recent past, because the kids are reaching the U with (1) a huge looming debt just to be there, (2) little real focus on what they intend to do for the rest of their lives (no surprise there at age 18), and (3) without the basic study skills to address whatever subject they do finally focus on.
It isn't just the debt issue, it's a matter of preparation, and they're not getting that. Had a long conversation with a young plumber only last evening who was laughing about how much classroom time he had to spend just to get his professional certs. "College would have been easier" was his conclusion. (BTW, he is one heck of a good plumber and he's pulling down some serious coin for such a young feller. No college education doesn't equate to no education.) Bottom line - you can't escape it so they might as well teach it in high school. Less social activism, more skull sweat. They could call the course "This Is How To Study". It wouldn't even have to be a major adjustment.
Is it really the student’s fault?
You paid the plumber to fix a plumbing problem.
The student pays the professor to teach him something.
If the plumber couldn’t fix the plumbing problem, would you pay him?
If the professor can’t teach the student the necessary information, should the student pay him?
My college classes were pathetic. The professors struck a pose and lectured. Pass their test or fail. Need help? “Perhaps you shouldn’t be in college.” Perhaps they shouldn’t be teaching.
Our professors have received a pass for far too long.
Their job is to teach, not pose.
ping
Well, mostly. As you've pointed out, in the right curriculum you can get by without really having to study; ironically that tends to be the "Studies" curricula. Don't try it in Engineering, and that is precisely what our author here is talking about. Sure, we need more engineers and scientists, but we can't start building them in their Freshman year at the U.
And yeah, you're correct about the difference in teaching, which is what my young bud Dusty was talking about. Those professors who practice the no-nonsense approach (and I know a lot of them, too) get terrible online reviews as inflexible hard-asses. They also get excellent students and excellent results.
Play it out to the end.
What would happen if professors were paid only if the student mastered the course?
The professors would scream.
Then, they would develop a pre-test for their class. That way they weed out the students who aren’t prepared. That reduces the number of students and causes the professor’s pay to go down. Oh my.
No pre-test.
The students aren’t prepared and fail and the professor doesn’t get paid. Oh my.
The professor passes all the students.
You make the students prove competency in the subject by passing a standardized test not administered by the professor.
Then you stifle creativity by the professor and students.
Yes, but all would be trained to a standard of competency. Like the countries we worry so much about.
This is a crisis we'd better get a handle on before it's too late -- if it isn't already!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.