Illiterate in the 4th grade is nothing. I have read articles in the past about illiterate college grads. If memory serves me correctly, the were education majors. Looks like those grads may have gotten jobs in the NYC area.
It’s past time that conservatives take old Chicago Rahm’s advice and “turn a crisis into an opportunity”.
Excuses such as, “BUT, WE WORK!” is come at a high price, like the survival of this nation.
I said months ago, if it’s too dangerous to reopen schools because of a virus that doesn’t affect kids then it will never be safe to do so. Close the public schools, lay off the union teachers, cut school taxes to zero, and let parents figure out how to educate their kids. “Safely”.
There’s a recent news story about a high school senior in Baltimore with a .13 GPA and he’s in the top half of his class.
So of course the moronic radical leftist mayor says they need more money to educate these kids.
Baltimore is currently the third highest spending school district in the entire country.
They have multiple schools where zero students are competent in math and science. Zero.
It won’t matter. Today, a kid of the right color can go all the way through to college and graduate with honors. All he/she has to do is say or write “black lives matter” a few hundred times and all is well. Good grades, scholarships, rosy job outlook. Why even the presidency is possible with the right credentials. Look at the aspirants: michelle O, oprah w, meghan markle.
Where this really hurts is in qualifying people to be airline pilots, surgeons or parachute packers.
And to cap this sad state of affairs, anyone who points out the truth is fired and silenced.
Rochester NY...High school graduation rate...44%. Ain’t that grand. No ask me the demographics.
My coworker’s stepson failed each and every year at LA Unified School District. They passed him, anyway, and he graduated on schedule.
Would it surprise anyone here that inner city public school teachers are illiterate? Seriously, if you have ever had contact with city school teachers you can determine this rather quickly. They are incapable of speaking the American language. That means they do not read and they cannot write. Suburban school teachers are not much better. They are a bunch of leftist air heads that learned how to make bulletin boards college as part of the challenging curriculum of an education major. There is no rigor in K-12 education, unless you can communist indoctrination rigor.
My children and grandchildren were literate by 2 years old..... Reading to them and by them started almost at birth. Part of their nighttime bed ritual was reading and prayers.....
My youngest daughter now 14 was reading the original Nancy Drew series at 4 years old......She is now a freshman in HS and in all AP courses......
This isn’t just a failure by the teachers but also the parents......
.....And yes.....they all read Dr. Suess.....
I read a book a while back about the sorry state of education, published in 2003. Back then, 18 years ago, it saidthat in 2003 about 80% of high school graduates were functionally illiterate, unable to read and write beyond 4th grade level.
Another I just read more recently was about how unions are destroying education. Government run “public” schools were unionized in the late 60’s. Since then the quality of education has gone consistently down. Unions demand higher and higher pay, while pushing through rules that make it impossible to fire inadequate or incompetent teachers, and who suffers? The kids. When I was in high school, this country rated #7 worldwide. A few years later Isaw a news report stating we were #17. When obama was resident we were #28. Now were below #30.
In days gone by, people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison were fully home schooled. Their parents worked the fields all day, with horse drawn plows, chopped firewood with axes, hauled water from the well in buckets, and still found time to teach their kids to read and write, usually using the Bible and what is now considered classic literature for freferences. They went on to form this country and their descendants invented things like tractors to pull the plows and chainsaws to cut the firewood. Even things invented in other countries were invented by people schooled at home. Ben Franlin invented bifocals so he wouldn’t have to change glasses constantly.
Today, I read not long ago about a teacher who sued to get his full paycheck while doing a prison term (5 years I think) for possession of cocaine. And got it. And it was possession of more than enough to sell, not just a gram for personal use. Completely incompetent teachers cannot be fired. And they show up at union meetings to demand higher pay EVERY. TIME.
In florida a few years ago they implemented a school voucher system. If you didn’t like your kids’ school, send them to one you do like and send that school your voucher, that school would get your kid’s share of government funding (taxes).
It was quite successful, in 2 years kids were showing a noticeable improvement in education until it was shot down by a lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed by the teachers union.
Unfortunately, the system was built upon dishonesty. If students earned failing marks and you dared to give them what they had earned, admin came after you. Your performance rating took a hit and you endured repeated administrative reviews of your teaching methods. Teachers quickly learned how to structure their grading to pass kids if they turned in something - anything - that could be assigned points. Grades were boosted through test corrections, open book tests, group projects, etc. I couldn't wait to get out of there. The suburban schools had similar administrative policies, but the overall academic level was higher.
While there are plenty of failings in our educational system, I think the weakest of the students reflect problems at home. Children who have inadequate pre-natal care, are exposed to drugs and alcohol in utero, or have nobody to read to them as toddlers can hardly be expected to perform well in school when they reach the magical age of five.
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