A Shocking Tour of K-12 Today

Some of my articles generate lots of comments from angry parents who had to fight with an unresponsive school system year after year. People not familiar with how bad K-12 has become might find these comments both revealing and scary. They tell the truth about K-12, a truth-in-the-trenches you won’t find in our media. (Sad to say, our media seem to feel it’s their job to wrap academic decline in a protective silence. Shhhh, Don’t Disturb The Saboteurs!)

“I had the Sisters of Mercy. Everyone read at least at grade level and most far above. We were tested annually. One five-foot-tall Nun controlled 40+ Bronx kids because she knew that she had our parents’ support.” Street Wise

“Dominican sisters, with a first grade class of 85 kids, one sister. We all learned, and were taught cursive writing (in addition to all the other subjects cited by R) by second grade. Writing in ink with a fountain pen began in third grade…..A kindergarten teacher complained that my child’s excellent reading ability was age-inappropriate and it was HER job to teach, not mine. My child was ahead of the class, and the teacher said this made her job harder.” Lorilu

“I was going through some old family documents and came across some postal money order receipts dated c. 1920. I couldn’t believe the beauty of the postal clerk’s handwriting on a simple receipt. A simple postal clerk in, of all places, West Virginia.” SFLBIB

“My son came home with lists of sight words. I taught him how to sound them out phonetically instead of memorizing them off flashcards like his teacher recommended. Of course, he started sounding out words in class as well. His teacher asked me about it and I told her that I wanted him to be able to read all words, not just the ones the district wanted him to. She talked about him ‘getting ahead’ of other students as if it were a bad thing. Fortunately, this teacher went out on maternity leave soon after.” gillyo

“Can’t have him getting ahead. That would be unfair to the lazy students. I remember my daughter having equations with two unknowns in math. They were teaching some bizarre method of guessing at the answers and adjusting based on how far off the answers came. I taught her how to solve simultaneous equations and get the answer directly. She thought it was much easier than the goofiness they taught. The teacher wouldn’t let her use the proper method, because it wasn’t in her book.” Mannie

“As others have commented, my wife and I had to save our son in second grade from his teacher who had a PhD in Reading. With phonics in hand we were soon reading The Hobbit together. All parents have to make sure their children can read BEFORE they go to any school.” Star Tripper

“The Fed Department of Education saw how beneficial it was for democrats to keep blacks illiterate in poor schools, so they’re using the same system to dumb down the white kids in the suburbs. They use many different patented names, like ‘Common Core’ or ‘Equality of Education’….Don’t let anyone tell you that teachers and administrators don’t know how damaging this is to your children, because they all do, every…single…day your child spends being indoctrinated, rather than educated.” AppraisHer

“I actually complained about an A my son received for a writing assignment in 7th grade. I told his teacher that my 4th grade teacher would have given me a “D” on the same paper in 1968. She was amazed as no parent had ever complained about an A before. I told the principal that that’s a big part of the problem. Just give kids an A and the parents will shut up.” gillyo

“When my kids entered kindergarten, sight words were being taught through a program called Writing to Read. I was aghast. My mother who taught phonics to her kids almost had a heart attack. My kids were taught at home and then sent to school to appease the government. My daughter innocently told her government owned teacher that ‘you people are just trying to hold me back.’ I was called into the school to discuss the incident. From that day on the teachers knew to back off of my kids. Soon after they were in private schools….at the expense of summer vacations. It was the right thing to do.” dianecee

“I sat through one math class where the students were being taught 3 different ways to complete a problem and the focus was more on ‘here are the three ways we can solve this’ rather than focusing on one method and then using the other two with any child who could not learn to complete the problem 3 different ways. Again, let’s confuse the heck out of them.” Rikka7

“You are absolutely right, Bruce. It’s like the teachers discussing Common Core math standards at a parent/teacher conference saying that if a child writes down that 4 + 4 = 5, if they can explain how they come to that conclusion then the answer is correct. What lunacy!” JRR7

“I remember my sons proudly showing me their sentences or stories, that had horrendous grammar, punctuation and spelling errors, and were marked 100% or A. To quote the teachers, ‘We grade on content.’ So sorry for my children, they got their kudos from me for content, them had to sit down and make the corrections. I never bothered trying to educate ‘educators,’ because I was just a HS grad. But I did ensure that my children were taught, by me, the things that would help them become functioning adults.” Whattheheck70

“This just hit the college level. University of Washington’s Tacoma Writing Center has instituted this ethic into their writing instruction…I can’t believe this is real.” DB

K-12 is a mess, it’s a teacher’s pay factory thanks to the unions. Educating kids? Well that’s not the priority.

Scholl reform should be a top national priority. I just hope that Trump talks this in year 5 and on. It’s definitely a 2nd term issue as parents and teachers will freak out. Teacher’s because their gravy train will disappear, parents because of the fear of the unknown - a better education for their kids.

Vouchers, merit pay, choice, charter schools have proven to slow. I’d start with making tuition to a private school tax deductible on your Federal taxes.

I would extend the tax deduction to all taxpayers.

If a citizen wanted to donate to a private school scholarship fund or to sponsor an individual child, ( even a non-relative), this should be his option.

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