Posted on 03/01/2017 4:16:56 AM PST by Kaslin
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement, "The president's decision to ask Betsy DeVos to run the Department of Education should offend every single American man, woman, and child who has benefitted from the public education system in this country." Expressing similar sentiments, Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond said, "I expect that Mrs. DeVos will have an incredibly harmful impact on public education and on black communities nationwide." Those and many other criticisms of Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos could be dismissed as simply political posturing if we did not have an educational system that is mostly mediocre and is in advanced decay for most black students.
According to The Nation's Report Card, only 37 percent of 12th-graders were proficient in reading in 2015, and just 25 percent were proficient in math. For black students, achievement levels were a disgrace. Nationally, 17 percent of black students scored proficient in reading, and 7 percent scored proficient in math. In some cities, such as Detroit, black academic proficiency is worse; among eighth-graders, only 4 percent were proficient in math, and only 7 percent were proficient in reading.
The nation's high-school graduation rate rose again in the 2014-15 school year, reaching a record high as more than 83 percent of students earned a diploma on time. Educators see this as some kind of achievement and congratulate themselves. The tragedy is that high-school graduation has little relevance to achievement.
In 2014-15, graduation rates at District of Columbia Public Schools, just as they did nationally, climbed to an all-time high. At H.D. Woodson High School, 76 percent of students graduated on time; however, just 1 percent met math standards on national standardized tests linked to the Common Core academic standards. Just 4 percent met the reading standards.
The low black academic achievement is not restricted to high-school graduates of D.C. schools. The average black high-school graduate has the academic achievement level of a white seventh or eighth-grader. As such, it stands as unambiguous evidence that high schools confer diplomas attesting that students can read, write and compute at a 12th-grade level when in fact they cannot. That means they have received fraudulent high-school diplomas. There are many factors that affect education that educators cannot control. But they have total control over the issuance of a diploma.
Educators often complain that there's not enough money. Census Bureau data show that as early as 2009-10, Washington, D.C. spent $29,409 per pupil. Starker proof that there's little relationship between spending and academic proficiency is in the case of Detroit's public schools. In 2009-10, the nation's elementary and secondary public school systems spent an average of $10,615 per pupil. According to the Census Bureau, Detroit schools spent $12,801 per pupil. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy claims that Detroit actually spent $15,570 per pupil that year. There's not much payoff for education dollars. The National Institute for Literacy found that 47 percent of the city's adults are "functionally illiterate." The Nation's Report Card reports that Detroit students score the lowest among the nation's big-city schools, and Washington is not far behind.
I'd ask Sen. Schumer how it would be possible for Secretary of Education DeVos to make education any worse than it is for many Americans. I'd suggest to Rep. Richmond that if the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan were the Secretary of Education and wanted to sabotage black academic achievement, he couldn't find a better method for doing so than keeping our public school system as it is. Many black politicians and educators would never have their own children attend the rotten, dangerous schools that are so much a part of our big cities. Many black parents, captured by these schools, would like to get their children out. But that's not in the interest of the education establishment, which wants a monopoly on education. Black politicians and academics are the establishment's facilitators. That explains their hostility to Betsy DeVos. She would like to give more parents a choice.
Obviously a DemocRATic graduate of our DemocRATic school system.
If Americans went to a store on the other side of town to buy milk, eggs and bread, because the store closest to them sold sour milk, rotten eggs, and moldy bread, and they were told that they had to buy their milk, eggs and bread in the store closest to them, they would rebel, or find a way around it. So why do we put up with the same rational with regard to our children’s education?
I graduated in 1965... one year ahead of New Math and the teachers unions.
Well ahead of Carter and the Department of Indoctrination.
Back when teachers were of “The Greatest Generation” and carried the Torch of Knowledge.
Our Mississippi teachers carried the Board of Education as well. We behaved ourselves or else and got it again at home.
I remind the youngsters of today that the products of 1940s and 50s public education put man on the moon with slide rules.
They have no clue what a slide is.
I'd ask Sen. Schumer how much the teacher's union donated to his campaign.
And she is a teacher, I’m betting.
Most interesting thing is these nitwit protesters don’t seem to understand they can keep their children in public school if they wish, it is just that others will have a choice to choose another venue if they wish. Although most of the sour old ladies in the picture must either be teachers or grandmothers... to old to be parents.
Did Upchuck Schumer and his family attend public schools? . Did the Obama monkeys attend public school?
Because 'we' are either union members, 5th generation Democrats or are racist (white or black racists).
The rest of us are outraged by "the Tyranny of Low Expectations" used to control the "mind-numbed robots".
No child left behind didn’t leave a single child behind. It left ALL of them behind.
W should be ashamed of his signature project and the abject failure it created and then Obama, I’d say should be ashamed, but that creature has no shame, so no problem for him.
Devos is our first real chance to fix the mess since Reagan was the President.
The annalogy almost works, except that the residents are stocking the shelves in their neighborhood store with sour milk, rotten eggs, and moldy bread.
I believe many hard working, successful people became “educated” in spite of the public schools and exposure to “educators”.
When my son was about 12, I showed him how to use my old slide rule. He spent all afternoon trying to get it to goof up. He ended with, "That's cool."
Enter, discussion of exponentials and logarithms.
I have been saying this for years. People think that if the kids in their schools are doing well that it’s because they have great schools. It’s far more likely that they have great kids and great parents.
I do a lot of tutoring and I am appalled at how poorly the kids are being taught. The reason they are succeeding is because so many parents are getting tutors or teaching the kids themselves or because the kids are learning on their own. Yes, there are some good teachers, but mostly average to poor teachers. And all the teachers are burdened with a huge bureaucracy which does more to obstruct learning than to help it.
“No child left behind” really means “No child gets ahead.”
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