Posted on 10/01/2005 9:08:24 AM PDT by pabianice
"...The reviewer's error only shows how successful the public education cartel has been in misleading the public [about how awful big city public education has become]..."
At the other end of the scale, dropout rates have actually increased since 1990, rising to 30 percent of all seventeen-year-olds. Among African Americans the dropout rate is running somewhere between 50 and 60 percent, a sad fact that remains one of the best-kept secrets in American education. Because few people know the facts, in a recently issued book, Michael Dyson scolds Bill Cosby for (accurately) lamenting the fact that only about half of African Americans graduate from high school. Dyson “corrected” him, saying the dropout rate is only 17 percent, an inaccuracy that earned Dyson warm praise from a New York Times book reviewer.
The reviewer's error only shows how successful the public education cartel has been in misleading the public. To hide actual dropout rates, most school districts report as dropouts only those who entered the year as seniors but did not remain in school until the end of that year. All other dropouts over the preceding three years—and all the summers in between, when most dropping out actually occurs—are statistically ignored.
The U.S. Department of Education has long been complicit in fostering that misperception. To his credit, Russ Whitehurst, head of the department's Institute of Education Sciences, is now actively working to remedy the situation, as are the nation's governors, who are now embarked on a Herculean effort to develop a multistate common definition and gauge of high school completion.
Getting the facts right will be a start. But we then need to do something about it.
We currently base our high school policies on two contradictory assumptions: (1)that adolescents are responsible enough that they can choose their own curriculum from the shopping mall of choices available;( 2) that adolescents should not be held responsible for their performances. Testing expectations should be minimal, and graduation requirements should be easily achievable.
No wonder the United States is desperately searching for ways to import talent from abroad. If we are to regain our educational strength in a world where other nations are passing us by, we need to hold students responsible for more than just selecting the courses they want to take. To graduate from high school, students should be expected to pass, at as high a level as they can, a challenging, substantive examination in a variety of subjects that allow them to demonstrate—to colleges and employers—just how accomplished they are. The Advanced Placement Test is a good beginning, but until more than 9 percent of all public school students take that test, it will not have a broad impact.
—Paul E. Peterson
Paul Peterson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education. Peterson is also the editor in chief of Education Next and the director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University.
Marijuana couldn't possibly have a thing to do with it either.
Tune in, turn on, drop out...
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(Hint: it isn't 100).
Please leave the stupidity on the stupid guy thread and not pollute someone else's fine attempt at discourse.
Take your own advice bootcamp...
Whose Dad?
That's the dirty little secret to keep the test scores up. By law, schools have to show improvement every year. One student is enough to bring the test scores down for the entire school. Can you imagine if you have 150 of them in an over-crowded school? Guess who goes. That the true legacy of No Child Left Behind and state testing.
We need more vo-tech high schools. Our young people need to learn how to make a living.
In our town of 1000, there are about 80 kids per grade in a school district that covers a large area. There are ag-tech and ag-business classes, and FFA is real big. This is in a school so small that there aren't even guarantees that all the AP courses will be offered in a given year. There are also some other classes that are supposed to prepare students for entry-level positions. The graduation rate is very high, and the students are very smart.
"We need more vo-tech high schools. Our young people need to learn how to make a living."
I couldn't agree more. Our son is currently attending The Herzing Institute for an electronics/computer degree. He should be totally employable within two years' time. Our Madison Area Technical College sometimes has a two year waiting list for some courses. Our part of the USA goes begging for nurses and X-ray techs and those to work with the elderly and it just gets worse every year as our aging population grows.
I'd encourage any parent to encourage their own kid to go into the trades versus a liberal arts education.
Not all of us are born, or even become, Leaders. The world needs Worker Bees and there's nothing wrong with being a Worker Bee. My "Blue Collar Life" has been very satisfying, TYVM! ;)
"Not all of us are born, or even become, Leaders. The world needs Worker Bees and there's nothing wrong with being a Worker Bee. My "Blue Collar Life" has been very satisfying, TYVM! ;)"
Who is to say that highly trained blue collar workers can't become leaders. As the liberal arts curriculum in many colleges goes the way of political correctness, the blue collar worker may end up being better educated than most liberal arts students. At least in most cases, the blue collar worker will be better paid.
"Who is to say that highly trained blue collar workers can't become leaders."
Oops! Please don't misunderstand me. I WAS a leader in the Army for a long time. Squad Leader. Section Sergeant. Platoon Sergeant. First Sergeant. And I groomed others coming up behind me for the exact same opportunitues. Some could handle them, others could not. *Shrugs*
I think just about anyone with the drive and the right personality can be a fine leader of (wo)men, no matter what their educational level. And I agree with you on the "better paid" part, too! :)
Las Vegas schools have to be among the nation's worst. We learned the other day that children in primary schools are not permitted to go to the toilet unless a teacher accompanies them and only at break time. In Jr high and high school, gang violence reigns and no one is safe. Learning cannot and does not happen in that climate of fear. Drugs are sold in schools and buyers are the kids. Their generation is toast and will become criminals, drug pushers, addicts and will doubtless die early. Sad, but true.
Nor alcohol. Do you have a point (other than the one on the top of your head)?
Hereby lies the scam: keep the kids in special education for the money, then when all the heads are counted, get rid of them one by one. The school district gets to keep the money for the rest of the year, the child does not get educated because he/she has been kicked or harassed out, and the test scores are essentially, artifically inflated because the at-risk and special education students are no longer there to affect the test scores.
I can tell you, I know a high-school principal who said to the counseling staff, "if they're 16 and special education get rid of them. They lower our test scores." Mandatory attendance ends at age 16 and the school district is no longer required to educate those students. Technically, Federal law says they are to be educated until the age of 21, but that rarely happens. The student, and/or his/her parent has usually had enough of the harassments by the administration at that point and find alternatives to educate their children (i.e. night school, homeschool, GED etc.)
As for the rest, they're simply not getting the education they deserve. Also, some kids are brilliant but just don't do well on tests. It has become stressful and nervewracking. Testing is only a small part of how well a student is actually progressing, however the results count as if it was 100% of the score. The education system simply does not figure in other factors. There is simply no room for anything less then perfection in an all-too-human environment.
Under "No Child Left Behind", all resources are focused on the bottom 25%. A school which has too many low-performers not meeting minimum standards will be failed. A school which has its low-performers meeting minimum standards, yet does nothing to help its most talented students achieve their full potential is judged a "good" school.
The total focus of administrators will be on passing the standards, by any means necessary
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