Posted on 08/30/2006 8:18:34 AM PDT by george76
This week's back-to-school ads offer amazing bargains on lightweight backpacks and nifty school supplies.
All those businesses scramble to offer us good stuff at low prices.
It's amazing what competition does for consumers. The power to say no to one business and yes to another is awesome.
Too bad we don't apply that idea to schools themselves.
Education bureaucrats and teachers unions are against it. They insist they must dictate where kids go to school, what they study, and when.
When I went on TV to say that it's a myth that a government monopoly can educate kids effectively, hundreds of union teachers demonstrated outside my office ...
The teachers union didn't like my "government monopoly" comment, but even the late Albert Shanker, once president of the American Federation of Teachers, admitted that our schools are virtual monopolies of the state -- run pretty much like Cuban and North Korean schools.
He said, "It's time to admit that the public education system operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve. It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."
When a government monopoly limits competition, we can't know what ideas would bloom if competition were allowed.
Surveys show that most American parents are satisfied with their kids' public schools, but that's only because they don't know what their kids might have had!
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Homeschooled students blow past their public-school counterparts in terms of achievement...
Denver talk-show host Mike Rosen interviewed yesterday a public school social studies teacher (I missed his name) who admitted (after considerable effort to avoid answering) that he doesn't teach his students that America is the best country in the world. He said he wants his students to think and decide for themselves. It became clear that he himself doesn't think America is all that great. How many of these anti-Americans are tainting the minds of our children in public schools?
SAT scores take a hit
New longer test gets blame as results yield biggest dip in 31 years
By JUSTIN POPE, Associated Press
First published: Wednesday, August 30, 2006
The high school class of 2006 got stuck with a new, longer version of the SAT and didn't fare well on it. Average reading and math scores fell a total of seven points -- the sharpest decline in 31 years.
Experts agreed the dip in combined math and critical reading scores on the college entrance exam was related to the new version of the test -- but differed as to how. The updated exam, with a new writing section, also features more advanced math questions and replaces analogies with more reading comprehension.
Average reading scores fell from 508 to 503 and math scores fell from 520 to 518, the College Board announced Tuesday, with the changes hurting boys more than girls.
Boys' reading scores fell eight points, while girls' dropped just three. And girls scored 11 points better than boys on the new writing section. Boys' and girls' math score fell two points each to 536 and 502, respectively.
In New York, the latest SAT scores offered good news and bad news.
The bad news was that scores for reading and math fell since last year, and were lower than the national average. The good news: they didn't drop as much as they did in the nation as a whole.
Overall, New Yorkers averaged 493 on the Critical Reading section, previously known as Verbal. That's down four points, compared to the national drop of five points. They did better in math, averaging 510, a one-point drop, compared to two points nationally.
Still, New York continued to lag the nation on its actual scores, by 10 points on Critical Reading and eight points on math.
New York educators have long said the state does comparatively poorly because a higher percentage of students here take the exam. In New York, 88 percent of high school students took the test, although that was down from 92 percent in 2005.
The College Board, which owns the exam, downplayed the national drop, saying it amounts to a fraction of one question per exam. The board's explanation: fewer students took the exam a second time, which typically raises combined math and reading scores 30 points. Of the 1.5 million test-takers, 47 percent took the exam only once, up from 44 percent a year ago.
The College Board also insisted fatigue wasn't to blame. The new exam has been expanded from three hours to three hours 45 minutes, and can take more than a full morning counting prep time and breaks. Some parents and fair-testing advocates predicted the longer exam would cause scores to decline, but the College Board said its research showed no drop-off in student performance as the test goes on.
Still, the results will spark debate over whether the College Board -- also facing criticism over 4,000 incorrectly scored exams last year -- was able to deliver a new test that is comparable to the old one.
The new scores also stand out because just two weeks ago the rival ACT exam reported its biggest score increase in 20 years.
"It does show how meaningless the test is as a measure of educational quality, that technical changes in the test can significantly alter the (scores)," said Bob Schaeffer, an SAT critic and public education director of the group FairTest. "It's the test, not the education, that's being measured."
Christine Parker, executive director of high school program development at test-prep company Princeton Review, said the College Board has always called even small increases important, so it's surprising to see it downplaying the decline.
"This is just the latest in a long line of bad news," she said. "They're in a very defensive posture."
The results were not a surprise in the academic community. The College Board had previously indicated scores would be down this year after numerous colleges began reporting the trend.
Average reading scores for black students rose 1 point from 433 to 434, while math scores fell two points from 431 to 429.
The College Board lists three categories for Hispanic students. Scores for Mexican-Americans rose three points overall, Puerto Ricans' fell two points and scores of students who identified themselves as "Other Hispanic" fell 11 points.
Girls' average overall score of 1506 out of a possible 2400 remains 26 points below boys' average, but the addition of the writing section and changes in the reading section helped them narrow the gap. Parker said the shift in emphasis from vocabulary to reading comprehension favored girls.
Many colleges said they would continue to accept scores from the old SAT as the new exam was rolled out.
That prompted some students to take the test early in their junior year and not to try the new exam. Some also waited to take the exam until later in their senior year -- perhaps to have more time to prepare -- which may have precluded them from retesting.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The evidence is that private schools educate the kids better at a fraction of the cost.
I believe one CA school district spends enough per child to hire a private tutor for each one.
Actually, the teacher's unions would probably support that as long as the tutor for each little boy was a gay man and the tutor for each little girl was a lesbian woman.
And, of course, no Christan tutors.
Shalom.
"How many of these anti-Americans are tainting the minds of our children in public schools ?"
It is likely a huge number.
That's why you and your neighbors have got to push for a school voucher system !!!
As the California Teachers and leftwing politicians have dumbed down Californians the past 3 decades, we have gone from a conservative state to a liberal state.
Vouchers, vouchers, vouchers!
Either that or eliminate public funding of "education" altogether.
Stossel talks about homeschooling in this article:
>>>> "The monopoly fails so many kids that more than a million parents now make big sacrifices to homeschool their kids. Two percent of school-aged kids are homeschooled now. If parents weren't taxed to pay for lousy government schools, more might teach their kids at home." <<<<
This ping list is for the "other" articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. If you want on/off this list, please freepmail me. The main Homeschool Ping List by DaveLoneRanger handles the homeschool-specific articles.
Thanks for the ping!
Replacing a horrible government controlled system with an even worse, complete takeover of private education, is not the fix we need.
Government schools need to be abolished. Vouchers are poison.
People need to stop using public schools. They can do it via homeschooling, religious schools, private academies, free schools, or who knows how else. But the Public School system is incapable of any real reform.
Totally disagree.However since we're not able to put the voucher system to the test I guess people like you can make any negative statements you want about it. By the way no one myself included said we have to have a COMPLETE takeover by private education. I happen to believe a properly run voucher system could compliment the public education system and maybe give public education a little competition something it definitly could use !!!
Unionized government jobs/employees are the very least worried about competition of any form of employment.
Strings are government control.
Government control of private schools is the inevitable conclusion.
Government takeover of private schools, like I said. I never claimed you said it.
Government schools need to be privatized, not private schools "governmentized".
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