Posted on 05/12/2005 12:52:03 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
When the students can't pass mandated testing (even though time is set aside to teach to the test and it can be given many times) schools lose their rating, then students, then money. When it's revealed they can't turn out an acceptable product, teachers' unions suffer and that hits the Democratic Party where they live, cloaked in lies and flush with union money.
When schools get caught fudging the testing numbers, hiding students, allowing huge numbers to drop out and finally resort to cheating, but still are rated as failing, what is left?
Well, it appears grade inflation and bumper stickers can't cure their problems any more, so now they'll just drop core courses and keep on, keeping on.
So how stupid is that?
It may be a cunning way to expand the Democrat base.
Hmmmm?? Looks like the schools in Houston want their children to compete with the illegal aliens for jobs. Pitiful.
I'll be dead when that generation takes over. Thank God.
I'll have to teach them computer science when they get to college. I think I'll go pound my head against wall for a while.
This is fine, just as long as they don't take away the courses teaching kids how to be sodomites and disrespecting their elders.
If they can stuff a cucumber in a condom, give them a diploma! What else does anyone need to know?
Sorry, I'll go take My meds now.
If You want a rude awakening, try to snag a copy of a GED exam. I suspect that My tomcat could pass it, on a bad day.
A smart Kid is wasting valuable time after about 4th grade.
Yes.
These will be the people who need to live with our assistance.
50% (or more) of all states' budgets go toward education ($600 billion a year from all sources).
Much of HISD is made up by the inner city. Schools cry for money and by law are subsidized by other school districts, who in turn have had to raise their property taxes to keep their own schools afloat.
The degeneracy continues. The kids that are lucky enough to beat the killers for hire out of the womb then have to make it out of these opium parlors. Talk about having the deck stacked against you.
Look at the bright side of this: all these people will be out of school much sooner, and at least have some possibility of acquiring some useful skills and learning habits, now that the distractions of forced participation in the official indoctrination regimen are finished.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
An Angry Look At Modern Schooling
The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn and it isn’t supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason’s words, “the control of human behavior.”
Hey! Let me go back to H.S., I may pass this time!
aside from teachers trying to dodge their responsibilities... WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY THINKING?!?!?!?!?
The Houston Chronicle reporter and editorial staff needs to take a course in effective writing.
The No Child Left Behind Act was passed overwhelmingly by the House (381-41) and Senate (87-10), but now liberals see that NCLB expresses essentials of Bush's conservatism. Democratic presidential candidates have denounced it as a ``federal intrusion'' in state and local affairs -- everyone knows how much liberals dislike such intrusions. Howard Dean, that perfect indicator of liberal passions, seemed to think that if tests reveal that many schools are failing their children, then drastic changes must be made to the ... tests.
Yes, the tests can be improved, and schools should have somewhat more latitude regarding disabled students and those whose first language is not English. But many complaints about NCLB are not about marginal or easily adjustable matters.
Teachers unions recoil from accountability and resent evidence that all is not well, or that whatever is wrong cannot be cured by increased funding of current practices. But per-pupil spending, adjusted for inflation, is three times what it was 40 years ago, and the pupil-teacher ratio is 40 percent lower, yet reading scores are essentially unchanged.
Middle-class parents, who are often mistakenly complacent about the quality of their children's schools, dislike having their complacency disturbed. Twenty states denounce NCLB as, among other things, an ``unfunded mandate'' because they will need to spend money to rectify revealed shortcomings. But as they correctly insist, primary and secondary education -- and their shortcomings -- are primarily their responsibility: federal money is just 8 percent of total spending on grades K through 12. Besides, they can escape the NCLB intrusion if they are willing to forgo the federal intrusion they covet -- $24.3 billion that flows from Washington for NCLB.........***
Sweet every other nation on earth is stepping up their math and sciences.. as they realize the tremendous commercial value of those subjects.
Companies aren't outsourcing to save labor costs.. its that America simply isn't graduating enough engineers and scientists.
......The report also recommends that colleges and universities boost their math requirements for education majors. Many schools require no more than a single math course for future teachers. ``It's a vicious cycle,'' Fortmann said. ``People don't learn math very well in school, they avoid math in college, and the cycle continues. What we're hoping to do here is break the cycle.'' .........***
3 F's, they're out: Edison sees teacher shake-up***There are no waiting lists to teach at Edison Senior High. ''We've never been able to attract teachers,'' said Shawn DeNight, Florida's 1995 Teacher of the Year and a longtime Edison stalwart. ``We always just took whoever showed up.''
But after the state gave Edison its third consecutive F grade this summer, district officials made the drastic move of forcing out nearly a third of the school's faculty. DeNight and other veterans were among more than 30 teachers reassigned to other schools. ..............***
And universities are filling their seats and graduate programs with foreign students.
May 12, 2005, 12:13AM
Reform plan would let two principals stay
But up to half of teachers at Yates, Sam Houston may be replaced if it is approved today
By JASON SPENCER Houston Chronicle
The current principals of Sam Houston and Yates high schools would replace up to half their teaching staffs, yet retain control of the struggling campuses under a reform plan expected to win school board approval today.
But Superintendent Abe Saavedra is leaving open the possibility of bringing an outside school operator into Yates for the 2006-07 school year. He will give the Knowledge Is Power Program a year to rally community support for its offer to open charter schools inside Yates and the middle schools that feed into it. Parents could then choose whether their children learn under the direction of traditional Houston Independent School District educators or those hired and managed by the nonprofit group.
"We don't move forward if the community doesn't want it," Saavedra said.
Kashmere, the third Houston Independent School District high school that Saavedra identified in February as being in need of major reform, will have to wait a bit longer to learn its leadership fate. Saavedra said he needs more time to make a recommendation for Kashmere because the school's principal, Stanton Lawrence, recently resigned from the post.
All three high schools have been rated "unacceptable" by the state for consecutive years. Six non-HISD groups initially offered up proposals for the schools, but two of them withdrew from consideration before making presentations to an advisory panel made up of parents, teachers and community leaders.
Trustees representing the areas that include Yates and Kashmere have gone on record saying they would oppose any plan to turn the schools over to outsiders.
Saavedra's recommendation lets him avoid prolonging his fight with those in the Yates and Kashmere community who loudly protested privatizing the schools. But in doing so, he may have started another fight with the teachers union.
"He just picked a labor war," said Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. "What they've had is a series of bad principals in there prior to these principals. They left them there for years, and now it's all the teachers' fault."
The deadline for HISD to notify teachers that their employment contracts won't be renewed passed last month, Fallon said.
"They're getting paid," Fallon said. "They have contracts."
Yates parent Arva Howard, who served on the advisory committee, said she wasn't impressed with KIPP's offer.
"We thought that was the worst one we read," she said. "It was just no substance; grand statements supported by no one but themselves."
KIPP wants to open charter schools on the campuses that feed into Yates beginning with a class of sixth-graders in the 2006-07 school year. A charter school within Yates would open when those sixth-graders become freshmen.
The Houston-based YES College Preparatory Academy has proposed a similar plan for Kashmere, beginning with a class of fifth-graders that same year.
Howard said she favors keeping current Yates Principal George August and contracting with Kaplan K12 Education Services to provide teacher training and college entrance-exam preparation for students.
"This is a proven company versus someone who is trying to become a player," she said.
KIPP has earned a reputation for improving test scores among poor and minority students in elementary and middle school with a program that employs strict discipline and an extended school year that includes weekend classes. KIPP's first high school opened this year with 59 students in southwest Houston.
KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg could not be reached Wednesday for comment.
Sam Houston parent Maria Garcia, who also served on the advisory panel, said she is happy with Saavedra's recommendation.
"Now, we can put our full attention on strengthening and the evolution of Sam Houston High School," she said.
Principal Aida Tello has told Saavedra she wants to replace about 80 teachers, roughly half of Sam Houston's staff, Saavedra said.
"All the employees in the school will apply back for their jobs," Saavedra said. "The principal will decide who will stay."
August has said he plans to replace up to 40 percent of his teachers, Saavedra said.
The school board is scheduled to vote on the proposal today at 3 p.m. at HISD headquarters, 3830 Richmond.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3178407
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