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To save the country, first save the schools
edfrontier.blogspot.com/ ^ | April 18, 2013 | Bruce Deitrick Price

Posted on 04/24/2013 5:04:59 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice

Here's a theme I've been talking about for a few years. The country's intellectual and financial decline is partly due to the mediocrity of the public schools. This decline can be reversed by adopting proven theories and methods. That's a doable project:

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Free The Schools

a simple four-step plan

Our Education Establishment has an 80-year record of praising and protecting bad pedagogies. Enough.

Here is what we need instead, starting now:

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1. REAL READING. That means systematic phonics for several months until children learn to read. That means no Whole Word, no sight-words, no Dolch words, no high-frequency words. These gimmicks are all the same thing and the reason we have 50 million functional illiterates.

2. REAL ARITHMETIC. Schools use sensible, coherent programs such as Saxon Math, Singapore Math, or the like. (They do not use Reform Math in any of its forms-- Everyday Math, Connected Math, TERC.) Children master basic skills, know the multiplication tables, and can find answers. No more spiraling, fuzziness, or dependence on calculators.

3. REAL LEARNING. It’s knowledge-based and fact-filled. Children learn basic information in the fields of Geography, History, Science, Literature, etc. Students advance in a logical way from the simple to the complex--which leads to genuine critical thinking.

4. REAL EDUCATION. It’s academically correct (as opposed to politically correct). The emphasis is on building study skills and scholarly character. Students know a great deal, and know how to learn more. They can do independent work. They understand that precision, rigor, and honesty are the same things.

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FREE THE SCHOOLS

is simply what all good schools have done throughout history and are now doing around the world.

Good education is not rocket science. Get the asinine theories and methods out of the way. Real education will thrive.

We especially need this in the early grades, where lots of children have to play catch-up.

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If you can use or advance this campaign, please do so.

If there are people or groups we should contact, leave info at: Word-Wise, 757-455-5020.

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A short article on what NOT to do: 56: Top 10 Worst Ideas in Education.

A short article on what schools SCHOULD do: “A Bill of Rights for Students 2013”

[both on Improve-Education.org]

YouTube video version of FREE THE SCHOOLS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaT2S4Vep-w

The last straw: my paper in Norfolk just ran an article praising local schools for adopting all the recycled bad ideas from New Math, Reform Math, Constructivism, Cooperative Learning and all the rest. There is nothing new, not one good idea. But this newspaper is all aglow. How can parents defend themselves against this nonsense if the media always aid and abet the Education Establishment?

The short answer is that parents should not expect much help from the school system or local media. Parents need to familiarize themselves with the bogus theories and methods, understand why they don’t work, and know that we can easily do better.

.


TOPICS: Education; Government; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: k12; publicschools; reading; reformmath
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To: cizinec

The problem with vouchers is that if federal dollars now go towards paying for private schools, that lets in government oversight of private schools.


21 posted on 04/24/2013 6:57:32 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: BruceDeitrickPrice

Bruce,

When will you finally give it up?

Government schooling is a socialist entitlement,single payer, compulsory use and funded,monopoly,price fixed GODLESS cartel.

SUCH A MONSTER CAN NOT BE REFORMED!

Give it up. Work toward privatization.


22 posted on 04/24/2013 7:10:48 PM PDT by wintertime
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To: wintertime

you cannot save publik skools from the present condition, they need to be nuked from orbit and replaced by locsl schools run by parents


23 posted on 04/24/2013 7:11:59 PM PDT by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: leaning conservative
What Leaning said. All true. The majority of kids in public schools that I see have no manners, no idea of how to study, no idea of discipline necessary to concentrate on excelling in their courses, and want instant gratification without any work necessary. And hey, they know their RIGHTS.

They disrupt classes where there ARE kids who want to learn. Far too much money has to be shunted into behavioral problem students who are a result of drug-ridden mothers or improper socialization.

My heart goes out to the sweet kids who just want a normal school experience and want to learn. They are harassed by the thugs and made to feel like kiss-ups.

24 posted on 04/24/2013 7:15:25 PM PDT by EinNYC
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To: EinNYC

Your last line is so true. I see it all the time. The smart, well behaved kids who pretty much are left alone because the teacher is so busy dealing w/ just absolutely out of control behaviors. (It’s not like the old days where there were a handful of “bad” kids IN THE WHOLE SCHOOL. Now if you have a handful of well behaved kids you are lucky. It is completely out of control)

If you’re not in the school system you have no idea. It is just crazy & it is the good kids who suffer.


25 posted on 04/25/2013 3:20:38 AM PDT by leaning conservative (snow coming, school cancelled, yayyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: GeronL
Even if socialist entitlement school districts were the size of a suburban subdivision or the size of a city block they would still be a compulsory and socialist mess. Within 50 to 100 years they would again metastasize back to monster we have today.

Solution: privatization

26 posted on 04/25/2013 4:27:00 AM PDT by wintertime
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To: leaning conservative
It's even worse after 12 nightmare years under Bloomberg. Because of his zeal to get rid of older more expensive (and TENURED) teachers, he had his administrator minions actively solicit and encourage students to write false accusations against their teachers. Great character development approach; appeal to the basest elements in their nature to project blame for their own lack of effort onto their teachers. Don't do homework, openly brag you don't study for tests, don't bother to turn in report or projects. Fail. Then write up Mr. Johnson, accuse him of touching you inappropriately (the language in their accusations is so obviously NOT their own and is just as obviously coached) so he gets reassigned to non-classroom duties, brought up on charges and possibly terminated.

Even if he is exonerated, NOTHING happens to the lying students and Mr. Johnson loses his position at the school, gets put into the Absentee Teacher Reserve. This group of now nearly 1500 teachers get weekly assignments at a different school each week, filling in for absent teachers. These are teachers who were falsely accused of stuff by students and teachers whose school was closed (mostly after having been deliberately starved of resources to ensure its failure).

Quite often (and completely against the contract), if there are no teachers absent, they are put to watching bathrooms in the hall or given cafeteria duty. They are severed from doing the thing they love, they trained for, they dedicated many years perfecting on the word of a lying or multiple lying students.

And it's no coincidence that the vast majority of teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve are over 50. This is how Bloomberg wants to get rid of expensive teachers who have tenure and replace them with newbies at half the price, rarely granting them tenure. I haven't heard of any over-50 teacher getting any teaching position they interview for. It's always a fresh-out-of-school newbie. And the newbies leave after 2-3 years and not getting tenure, and never acquire mastery. And Bloomberg won't have to pay pensions. That's his BUSINESS plan. Unfortunately, you are dealing with KIDS, not widgets.

Having been granted this kind of power over their teachers by this Nazi Bloomberg, you can just imagine the kind of brazen attitude now seen (and formerly rarely seen) in the majority of NYC students. "F___ you bitch, I gonna get you fired!" is what you frequently hear instead of the answer to the question you just asked.

That's a great learning environment, huh?

27 posted on 04/25/2013 4:31:32 AM PDT by EinNYC
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To: leaning conservative; EinNYC

In the movie ,”Waiting for Superman” it was pointed out that bad neighborhoods don’t make the schools bad . It is the schools that make the neighborhood bad!

Well.....if generations of children are indoctrinated in socialist entitlement,godless, and compulsory government schools what do we expect will happen? We will raise up generations of godless and befuddled people who worship government as their redeemer an savior. Nothing good can come from that, only oceans of social pathology.

And....I challenge every government teacher to consider what they might be doing. Are government teachers really helping children, or are they actively upholding and establishing a godless and corrupt socialist system of indoctrination that hurts children and our nation?


28 posted on 04/25/2013 4:42:17 AM PDT by wintertime
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To: wintertime
I am not G-dless, nor do I believe in socialist entitlement or corruption. I have always tried to be a good moral example for my students. I never allowed immoral behavior in the classroom. There are plenty of teachers like that in NYC schools. They are by no means a minority. It is the corrupt POLITICIANS and ADMINISTRATORS currying favor with those politicians who debase the school system.

"Waiting for Superman" was a vicious piece of anti-teacher propaganda occupying the same ecological niche as "The Protocols of Zion". It was certainly not based in fact.

29 posted on 04/25/2013 7:24:59 AM PDT by EinNYC
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To: EinNYC
The government schools are godless in their worldview. Students attending godless government schools will learn to think and reason godlessly. They must just to coverage in the godless classroom.

I know nothing about your specific religious worldview. If you say you are not godless, then I believe you.

if teachers, who believe in God attempt to sneak in a God centered worldview into their classrooms, they risk teaching that those who believe in God are sneaky.

30 posted on 04/25/2013 12:19:45 PM PDT by wintertime
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To: EinNYC
The word is cooperate,not coverage.

I'm using my husbands new I Pad.the keyboard is clunky.

31 posted on 04/25/2013 12:46:28 PM PDT by wintertime
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To: Aevery_Freeman

“Wow! Are we lucky to have you.”

I’m lucky to be where I’m at. I teach in a quiet corner of the US where we still say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, our students are not allowed to have saggy pants, we have a fine ROTC unit, a couple of armed cops to serve as school resource officers, and kids carrying Bibles are not an unusual sight. I don’t make the Yankee union teachers make, but money isn’t what its all about anyway.


32 posted on 04/25/2013 5:32:45 PM PDT by GenXteacher (You have chosen dishonor to avoid war; you shall have war also.)
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To: GenXteacher

That should be “what the Yankee union teachers make.”


33 posted on 04/25/2013 5:33:44 PM PDT by GenXteacher (You have chosen dishonor to avoid war; you shall have war also.)
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To: wintertime

I agree 100%


34 posted on 04/25/2013 8:51:15 PM PDT by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: EinNYC

RE: “It’s even worse after 12 nightmare years under Bloomberg.”

This is a particularly sad comment. (I’ve been myself thinking that Bloomberg is a fascist— those comments about how we have to re-interpret the Constitution— and should be impeached on that grounds.)

By all means, tells us more about Arne Duncan. I never trusted him because he was friends with Bill Ayers and Obama. I didn’t like the way they pushed Race to the Top and Common Core. What’s the inside on Duncan?


35 posted on 04/26/2013 11:49:47 AM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice (education reform)
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