Posted on 04/21/2004 3:02:46 PM PDT by BurkesLaw
"All men by nature desire to know," said Aristotle. Either Aristotle was wrong, or public education is failing to awaken the academic desires of American students.
According to a new Manhattan Institute for Policy Research study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, only 32 percent of recent high school graduates were qualified to attend a four-year college. In addition, the report showed that the high school graduation rate remains depressingly low at only 70 percent.
For years, American education experts have been alarmed at the growing inability of public school students and graduates to compete academically with peers in other industrialized democratic countries. As Charles Sykes wrote in his revolutionary 1990s book, Dumbing Down our Kids: Why America's Children Feel Good about Themselves but Can't Read, Write, or Add , "When the very best American students -- the top one percent -- are measured against the best students of other countries, America's best and brightest finished at the bottom."
While Sykes may have exaggerated the problem, it is true that America's students are average at best.
According to the most recent academic comparison study by the Program for International Student Assessment, of students in 32 developed countries, 14 countries score higher than the U.S. in reading, 13 have better results in science, and 17 score above America in mathematics.
It isn't as though American students aren't scoring first places any more. A survey by the Princeton Testing Service shows that American students rank highest amongst industrialized democracies for amount of time spent watching videos in class. And William Moloney, chairman of the Washington, D.C. based Education Leaders Council -- a coalition of reform minded political and educational leaders -- writes that American students feel better about their math skills that any other country in the free world, while Korean students (who feel worst about their math skills) outscore everyone else in math.
The characteristics of self-esteem-obsessed, video-watching schools are manifested in the frustrations of America's higher education system. According to the Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia, more than 40 percent of recent Washington State high school graduates attending community college enrolled in remedial courses to prepare them for college-level work. But a public-school system that transfers responsibility for learning basic knowledge to higher education isn't giving taxpayers and parents a return for their money. More damaging, the failure of elementary schools to prepare students for their future hurts America economically, socially, and intellectually.
Over the past century, public education has devolved from the classical approach of character plus basics (reading, writing, arithmetic, respect, and responsibility), to skills, to psychological-social engineering....
(Excerpt) Read more at iconoclast.ca ...
Catholic schools pay teachers in the area of $25-30k/year, and the students perform well in comparison to government schools. That leaves between $35-40k per classroom for other costs.
Teacher salaries constitute 85-90% of the typical government school budget.
But why do Catholic school teachers work for $25,000/year- so that they can teach kids whose parents care enough to pay for their education, not riff-raff. Vouchers would allow anyone to go to those schools, where price works to include those students who are not serious. Second of all, every teacher is not going to be willing to work for $25,000 after paying for college and a master's degree.
California School Administrators Coping With Questions:
Five Basic Responses:
"Respond only:...Flat answers prompt more questions, and 'yes' and 'no' answers mean that you are a victim of their questions, playing on their field."
"Respond and insert: Answer and elaborate with information not directly called for...this will establish you as the expert."
"Insert and respond: Preface your answer with reflections or information. Set the stage. This is a great way to break bad news."
"Insert only: If you're not going to answer the question, then you'd better make the content of your alternative good."
"Ignore: Go on as if the question was never asked."
Just float the voucher amount until some school is willing to pick them up. This process could be administered by the local school board.
Also, many behavior problems are school-induced. I'd be concerned about any student who wasn't angry or frustrated. I know I was. I still am.
Doesn't this smack of totalitarianism? We're talking about living, breathing human beings here. It gives me the creeps.
According to New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, last year’s rise in the city’s reading scores was a result, at least in part, of competition between public and private schools. Last year, the School Choice Scholarships Foundation, a private voucher program, allowed Giuliani to accept Roman Catholic Cardinal John O’Connor’s 1996 offer to educate some of the students from the city’s worst public schools. (See “New Private Voucher Program to Serve 1,000 NY City Children,” School Reform News, March 1997.)“I think the public school system is being challenged to do better,” Giuliani told the New York Times. “That is exactly what we should do with it, not accept it the way it is.”
Actually, Cardinal O'Connor offered to take the worst-performing 5% of students in government schools:
New York City's John Cardinal O'Connor offered to enroll 5 percent of the city's most difficult to educate students in parochial schools; Mayor Rudolph Giuliani accepted the offer, originally floating the prospect of using vouchers to fund the transfers. (The money must now come from private sources.) New York's effort would be far from unique: Nationwide, more than 100,000 "difficult to educate" students--young people with physical handicaps, learning disabilities, emotional troubles, or involvement with the juvenile-justice system--are already enrolled in private secular and religious schools at taxpayer expense.The teacher unions and NY school administration fought the proposal tooth and nail. Warm bodies represent money and power. Period.Schools of Thought
Reason Magazine (1997)
"When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."Albert Shanker, former president
American Federation of Teachers (1985)
I used to be active in the ed reform movement, and know many today who are, so I can use all the anecdotes I can get. You can pass them along privately if you like, but folks here might like to hear them too.
I already spend 1 to 2 hours a night tutoring them after school each night, but I guess I just consider that part of being a parent. My idea of homeschooling is that they are out of the public and private schools entirely. I'm not 100% on board with what is being taught in several of the local 'Christian Academies" either. I don't have the kind of money it would take to hire a tutor for 8 or 9 hours. So I am for the moment trapped, however; once they reach Junior High, I hope to be able to pull them out of that cesspool called public Middle School.
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