Posted on 11/26/2006 3:40:47 AM PST by shrinkermd
...But there was good news, the president concluded: Im proud to report the achievement gap between white kids and minority students is closing... United States.
This contention that the achievement gap is on its way to the dustbin of history is one that Bush and Spellings have expressed frequently in the past year. And the gap better be closing: the law is coming up on its fifth anniversary. In just seven more years, if the promise of No Child Left Behind is going to be kept, the performances of white and black students have to be indistinguishable.
But despite the glowing reports from the White House and the Education Department, the most recent iteration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test of fourth- and eighth-grade students commonly referred to as the nations report card, is not reassuring. In 2002, when No Child Left Behind went into effect, 13 percent of the nations black eighth-grade students were proficient in reading, the assessments standard measure of grade-level competence. By 2005 (the latest data), that number had dropped to 12 percent. (Reading proficiency among white eighth-grade students dropped to 39 percent, from 41 percent.) The gap between economic classes isnt disappearing, either: in 2002, 17 percent of poor eighth-grade students...in reading; in 2005, that number fell to 15 percent...
The most promising indications...could be found in the fourth-grade math results, in which the percentage of poor students at the proficient level jumped to 19 percent in 2005, from 8 percent in 2000; for black students, the number jumped to 13 percent, from 5 percent. This was a significant increase, but it was still far short of the proficiency figure for white students, which rose to 47 percent in 2005, and it was a long way from 100 percent....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It's more than that. Even students who hate school say they are going to college. They all say they going to college because "smart" students go to college and "stupid" ones don't, so they want to look smart -- or maybe they don't want to portray themselves as stupid.
As one who works in the area of adult education, I see the results of poor scholastic preparation in the job training programs I develop for industry that desires to hire and train in today's low unemployment. Programs include screening tests to identify those most likely to succeed within the established training protocol at the best cost. Even though the tasks are mostly manual (think welding as an example), the ability to do basic math and geometry is missing in a great many potential employees and must be addressed in the training program.
I especially appreciate your posts and commentary on education as being exactly on point as to what I experience on a regular basis in my job. I would like to understand how you would approach a solution to this comment in your post #1:
"an educational effort that includes pre-John Dewey direct moral tuition"
I ask this given the aversion to linkage of the moral to the spiritual within the government schools today.
Actually it was Canute giving a lesson to his courtiers and syncophants.
They'll probably all major in education.
Most school district budgets that I've seen maintain two separate accounts: The 'operating budget', paid with annual tax income, generally doesn't include the 'infrastructure costs', paid with long-term bond measures.
Doing this understates the true total cost but does make some sense from an accounting perspective. You still own the building for many years after you've pi$$ed away each year's operating budget.
Thanks for the reply -- I am in agreement with your thesis and proposed methods. I note that you also understand that the toughest part of your plan is:
"IMHO what is missing in many inner city children are concepts of what is right and wrong."
Schools cannot overcome in 6-7 hours per day the environment the child experiences from birth. But, I also believe that a start must be made somewhere rather than just throwing up our hands in disgust and giving them over to their base nature.
Here is one possible solution to the resistance to the values education needed: http://www.characterfirst.com/
This is being used at the secondary level in the vocational/technical school where I work. It has varying levels of success but at least establishes the conversation.
That is why I mentioned the capital cost, which might amount to several hundred dollars per month per student.
Thank you.
Translation: jobs are leaving the cities, and the high-IQ professionals are leaving with them, which drags down the mean IQ of the population that remains
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