Posted on 09/23/2012 12:43:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
I understand that we are more than $16 Trillion in debt and unemployment has been above eight percent for 43 straight months, but education reform is a moral imperative that cannot wait:
We have a crisis in our schools. This is not a new revelation, but it needs to be stated regardless, particularly at the start of another academic year and at a time when America is struggling to compete in the very fields — math, science, technology — that are defining the global economy. Consider that U.S. high school students graduate with just a 32 percent proficiency rate in math, according to a Harvard study — a figure that puts America behind 31 other countries, including Japan, Korea, Switzerland and Canada.
Wow. The United States spends more on education per pupil than other country on earth, except for Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Norway. And yet, according to the Harvard study cited above, “U.S. high school students graduate with just a 32 percent proficiency rate in math.” This is disgraceful. Sadly, however, it gets worse:
The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.
So how is it possible we are spending massive sums of money on education yet student achievement remains stagnant? Perhaps one reason is because taxpayer dollars are increasingly going to fund teachers’ pension funds -- not educating children. Case in point: As Katie reported last week, the city of Chicago might be a microcosm of all that is wrong with the US public education system. Indeed, according to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, “by 2016 the state will spend more on pension contributions than education funding.” Every thoughtful citizen with an ounce of moral fiber in their bones should be outraged by that statement. Even worse, the average teacher salary in the Windy City is $76,000 – and yet, somehow, the high school graduation rate barely exceeds fifty percent. In short, how can America compete in a global economy if the greatest, most prosperous nation in the world can’t even educate its own citizens?
There is a solution to this crisis. We must increase competition. Period. For instance, even in Chicago -- a city controlled by the teachers unions -- charter schools have created real hope for thousands of American children. The graduation rate in these kinds of schools (which are non-union, by the way), is 76 percent. And these teachers make substantially less money than their unionized counterparts. Do people actually believe this is just a coincidence? When families are given more options -- and teachers are held to higher standards -- everybody benefits. We need to wake up.
I believe if you broke the US statistics up...into states...we’d have twenty states very high up in the competition level with various countries. This attitude of continuing to act like it’s a national problem is a joke. Let’s see the state numbers.
It is a matter of basic grade 5 math that two exponents (debt to GDP) that diverge cannot work.
Has the US ever been a leader in high school math?
you can not go by states against other countries, unless the other countries go by regions in their countries
The American Left needs stupid voters. And the Teacher Unions provide them.
I bet half them countries got bad grammar and the other 80% are so bad at geology they couldn't find Finland on a map of South America.
Not really true. Some of those countries might be more comparable to states based on their size. And some may have complete national control of their schools, vs. our more state-by-state model here.
There are several different kind of rankings of graduation rates at this page about halfway down. I’ll post the high school graduation rates. They appear to be all over the map by liberal/conservative standards. Both California and Texas are almost dead last. None of this is measuring what the kids actually knew when they graduated though.
http://voices.yahoo.com/state-education-rankings-graduation-rates-high-6357074.html
State Education Rankings: High School Graduate or Higher
1. Minnesota (91.2%)
2. Wyoming (90.9%)
3. (tie) Alaska (90.6%); Montana (90.6%)
5. New Hampshire (90.4%)
6. Utah (90.3%)
7. Vermont (90.3%)
8. Iowa (89.7%)
10. Hawaii (89.5%)
11. Washington (89.4%)
12. Maine (89.3%)
13. (tie) Kansas (89.0%); South Dakota (89.0%)
15. (tie) North Dakota (88.9%); Wisconsin (88.9%)
17. Colorado (88.6%)
18. Massachusetts (88.3%)
19. Connecticut (88.2%)
20. Oregon (88.0%)
21. Idaho (87.8%)
22. (tie) Maryland (87.6%); Michigan (87.6%)
24. (te) New Jersey (86.9%); Ohio (86.9%); Pennsylvania (86.9%)
27. Delaware (86.7%)
28. Virginia (85.8%)
29. (tie) Illinois (85.7%); Missouri (85.7%); Indiana(85.7%)
32. Oklahoma (85.0%)
33. Florida (84.9%)
34. New York (84.2%)
35. Nevada (83.8%)
36. Arizona (83.6%)
37. Georgia (83.1%)
38. Rhode Island (83.0%)
39. North Carolina (82.9%)
40. Tennessee (82.4%)
41. South Carolina (82.3%)
42. New Mexico (82.0%)
43. West Virginia (81.4%)
44. Arkansas (81.3%)
45. Alabama (80.9%)
46. Kentucky (80.4%)
47. Louisiana (80.3%)
48. California (80.2%)
49. Texas (79.1%)
50. Mississippi (78.7%)
Better yet, extract the concentrated Democrat parasite nests ("cities") and see what the numbers look like.
” I bet half them countries got bad grammar and the other 80% are so bad at geology they couldn’t find Finland on a map of South America. “
Grammar ? THEM countries ???
Pardon moi ...Just woke up ...Ddidn’t get it first time around ...Got it now .
My gosh, this puts us in thirtyith place or is it
twentyninth, well somewhere near there....
Putting it to use in the real world was a problem for them. They couldn't figure out solutions to problems but could do the math once they were told what to do and how to do it. He called them “automatons”. I thought he might have been exaggerating.
Until I saw a 30-something year-old, mid-level engineer go around to the front of his overheating Toyota. The steam of course caught my attention as I was working on something else. Him spending a long time figuring out how to pop the hood kept me watching to see what would unfold.
Luckily one of the first words I learned was “Bahaya” - means “Danger”. I shouted that at him as he went, with his bare hands, to unscrew the radiator cap where the steam was billowing out!
Soon enough, everyone is going to be stupid.
Now this is just a matter of perspective. We can’t have students proficient in math (or any critical thinking) in the new America based upon feelings, hope and change, and an economy based on handing out “free things.”
If you break these numbers down by demographics, you find something very interesting.
Students of Swedish descent in America outperform Swedes in Sweden.
Students of African descent in America drastically outperform Africans in Africa.
Students of Chinese and Japanese descent in America outperform their counterparts in Asia.
Students of Mexican descent in America outperform their amigos in Mexico.
Notice a pattern?
Much of our performance is related to our large admixture of groups that don’t perform well anywhere on earth.
You said it
bttp
The world of Hope & Change & Redistribution ain’t got no numbers!
Unfortunately, the issue is better correlated with racial demographics. You don’t see nations or states with significant black or Hispanic populations at the top of the rankings.
Going by like-demographic comparisons—American Asian kids to other Asian kids, etc.—there’s not a big difference worldwide.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.