Posted on 03/16/2007 7:06:14 PM PDT by summer
SAN FRANCISCO, March 15 — A scathing 18-month evaluation of California’s public schools has concluded that the state’s educational system is “broken,” crippled by a complex bureaucracy, flawed teacher policies and misspent school money, leaving it in need of sweeping reforms that could cost billions of dollars.
The report, a compilation of 22 university studies titled “Getting Down to Facts,” was released in two parts on Wednesday and Thursday. The long-awaited report, requested by a bipartisan group of state educators and legislators in 2005, cost $3 million and evaluated why California’s 6.8 million school-age students have lagged behind children in almost all other states.
“The structural problems are so deep-seated,” a summary of the report said, “that more funding and small, incremental interventions are unlikely to make a difference unless matched with a commitment to wholesale reform.”
The report, financed by private nonprofit foundations and coordinated by investigators at the Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice at Stanford University, revealed “deeply flawed” problems in both the management and financing of the schools.
Among the findings were these: state financial policies so “complex and irrational” that they thwart school and district efforts to educate and school data systems that are poor and ineffective, making it impossible for districts to share vital information. ; the state suffers from “regulationitis,” a condition that has schools paralyzed by rules and buried in paperwork...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
From the "project" website:
PROJECT SUPPORTERS
This independent research project was made possible by grants from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, and The Stuart Foundation.
Then there's the little second generation hoodlums in my class who, this very day, right in front of me, simply folded their arms, put down their heads, and went to sleep on top of the test. I woke them up, urged them to do their best, and they smiled apologetically, nodded... and put their heads down again. I sent them to the counselor and she urged them to do their best and sent them back. They put their heads down again. I ... just... have to find a different job!
And in other breaking news: The sun will set in the West tomorrow.
I am shocked it takes a 3 million dollar bribe to make us think they are trying to find the answer.
No, I am not shocked. Outraged is more like it. I am tired of these crooks stealing our money. Like everytime the dimwits think they have some power; they spend or steal our hard earned tax dollars on silly hearings that never amount too much of anything except to point out how big they can lie.
Forget their being able to read, write or do arithmetic. . . can they install condoms? Sad, sad state of affairs but not new. They said the schools were terrible thirty years ago when I lived there. Anyone who's thinking of moving and putting children in these schools should seriously reconsider. . . but then, the only successful education these days seems to be home schooling.
The real answer is simply to get rid of the public schools altogether. Just give every kid a 10K voucher and in two years California will have the best schools in the world.
I've been saying for years that kids should have a 100% option about attending at all once they learn the basics of reading, writing and some arithmatic, say around age 14. Those who don't want to learn just take up space anyway so they might as well be in front of the TV at home. This would cut costs and allow kids who want to learn have an environment of being with other motivated kids. NEA would freak, of course, at the reduced need for government-indoctrination-workers.
Sucky government schools? That never happens /sarcasm
I'd be willing to conduct the next study for 1/3rd the cost.
Thank a Union for great results in education and manufacturing.
Your sleeping hoodlum will sleep throughout his life, and be content. You are there for the ONE or two students who are listening, who will learn from you and will go out and make the world different.
I tutor some kids who are in the inner-city schools. Good kids, disgusted by this very thing. I hear the most outrageous things -- one, who does her homework, is threatened by others: "We will hurt you if you don't give us your homework to copy." Another is disgusted because one kid insists on disrupting the class and the teacher does nothing.
Look for the ALIVE students; take them aside; mentor them with all you have in you. THIS is the reason you are there.
Good advice. Thank you!
I knew this in 1967, when a 16 y/o white female neighbor couldn't make change for a dollar!!!
Where do I contact someone to get my money for figuring this out??
Speak to your Union about that policy. They were first and foremost in fighting against reform of this under prop. 87, suing, along with the ACLU, to strike those provisions. They were successful.
That's what happens when funding is based on warm butts in seats coming in and not quality of results going out.
Knowing why it happened doesn't help much right now.
I haven't read the article yet, and don't have time to read it before I leave for church this morning, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't say anything about the misplaced priorities of state legislators of distributing condoms and inviting children to announce they are homosexual.
As did I. And the 1st thing we did every semester was to make book covers for the textbooks because they were used books 95% of the time. Other than field trips, why is so much money required?
But similar policies are happening right now. Nothing is ever going to change in the NEA, until the members who are disgusted by it seize it away from the political leftist hacks. Until you do, realize that "Barbara Kerr" is the face of your profession, and be prepared to see parents who care walk away from a hopeless situation, leaving you to cope with the uncaring dregs warming seats in your classroom.
IMNSHO, the sooner the union and the LAUSD catastrophically crash and burn, the better. My kids are safely out of the system that was slowly destroying their intellect, curiosity, love of learning, and future. Knowing their future competition is LAUSD educated, their future is brighter by the day.
To this day I consider it sacrilege to write in a book!
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