Posted on 10/12/2010 9:20:47 AM PDT by Michael van der Galien
It is news to no one that our educational system sucks. American students are consistently out-performed by students in other countries year after year.
Why?
Liberals, progressives, socialists, communists, “compassionate” conservatives (i.e., neocons, RINOs, liberal Republicans) , teacher unions, and other leftist groups would like you to believe that it is some combination of bad schools, teachers, and financing. The solution, as they see it, is to engage in a game of Three Card Monty where students are shuffled from schools that are “failing” them, to schools that will allow them to “succeed” –as though success is a magical elixir of brick, mortar, and fairy dust that is present in some schools and absent in others.
In our leftist-controlled educational system, the onus of responsibility for academic achievement rests primarily with the teacher and not the student. Thus, teachers in Houston can actually be fired if their students perform poorly on standardized tests. Such policies have the effect of putting the student in charge of the classroom, holding the teacher hostage to student performance on a test. Implicit in this new “accountability” is the notion that teachers, at least in Houston, are not sufficiently motivated to teach their students what they need to know. Threatening teachers with loss of their jobs if their students do not achieve some arbitrary standard of success while simultaneously coddling disruptive, lazy, and otherwise apathetic students is a surefire recipe for disaster. Despite Hollywood’s best efforts to convey otherwise, teachers are not miracle workers. I have known and worked with many teachers throughout my professional life, and very few could have been catagorized as “bad” teachers.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
Has a teacher ever been fired for poor test scores?
I mean, I know that's my I can't read...
Here is why our students are failing:
1) Political correctness, “one size fits all” schooling. It undermines the students who want to get ahead and are actually better in some subjects than others, but forces them to be held back in a position of inferiority and underachievement.
2) Bullying. School is now just a holding pen for the juvenile delinquents and future criminals of our society. Students who are chronically harrassed can’t study well and it’s pathetic that students actually have to take karate courses in order to avoid future bullying. Zero tolerance enables the criminal filth to avoid the natural repercussions of their actions.
3) Culture. The US does not celebrate academic achievement the way that Asian cultures do. The US has the nasty habit of celebrating it’s athletes and entertainers, not our students who get good grades and stay out of trouble. We celebrate thugs and pigs.
I’m glad teacher accountability is questioned here. I know there are bad teachers out there, but I have students who simply do not come to school. Those students usually fail the OGT, yet the state wants me held accountable. Here is my conspiracy theory: This is another attempt by big gov to make parents less important. Big gov has already convinced many Americans that children don’t need both a father and a mother, and this policy is another way to make parents irrelevant. Kind of like the greenie weenie agenda that encourages children to tell their parents what light bulbs to buy.
I will be homeschooling my son, by the way. I read THE WELL TRAINED MIND this summer, and the authors basically repeated what I have been saying for years. Get back to the basics, forget acceptance, tolerance, bullying, GLAD, etc. sessions and teach kids how to read!
The Real Reason Why Johnny Can’t Read?
His Teachers Can’t Read.
The federal government provides education standards that are more concerned with being politically correct than they are pertinent. For example, the Federal Government under Clinton developed new national academic standards. They removed references to the First Continental Congress in order to make room in the curriculum for diversity studies.
The federal and state government require handicapped students and students who barely speak English to be mainstreamed with others students. The result is that the teacher spends 80% of her time on students with behavioral problems or who can't read English instead of teaching.
Other countries don't have extended summer vacations and their kids go to school on weekdays and half days on Saturday. Parents and Teachers in the US don't want to make this sacrifice.
You could write a book on the problems with our school system. Every time the government steps in to fix it, they create more problems.
You nailed it. Very concise analysis.
For ignoring and by inference, tacitly/actively supporting the “Get Rich or Die Trying” mentality.
Add to that systematic rejection of assaults on teachers by students and making schools on occasion 75% baby-sitting functions.
Teachers don’t get fired they get relocated,see union.
Response: Actually there are several reasons:(a) Low intellectual capacity of more than 1/2 of the students;(b) the educational system exists to provide jobs and that is its primary mission;(c) literacy is not really necessary for most of the population i.e. push the little symbol on the cash register at the hamburger joint and all the work is done for the worker.
Simple, because Johnny wasn’t home schooled.
Home Schooling ... The “New Old School”.
And promoted to worthless supervisory jobs.
The school systems are top heavy with 'educators' that justify their existence by dreaming up new ways of teaching.
Their thinking is the tried and true methods of the 50s and 60s and prior are passe'.
My kids were subjected to New Math in the 70s. What a joke.
My point is not that there are a lot of bad teachers that need to be fired, it is that, human nature being what it is, some people will do whatever they can get away with. If they thought they might be fired, they might 'straighten up'.
Teachers become teachers because of June,July,August.
The problem is that that applies to teachers, too.
Woo sez we caint reed? I wuz reedin wen I wuz in thu thurd tyme I wuz in fith graid.
You make excellent points here. To expand on the “delinquents”, classes are often taught down to them as opposed to up to the higher achievers. It is more desirable to have a group of smart students get perfect grades without being challenged than to have poor performing students fail.
And your “one size fits all” statement hits the mark. Many students who excel in one or more subjects yet struggle in others are held back from reaching their potential in the subjects they are talented in because they don’t have the overall grade point averages to get into your better schools and programs.
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