[Lance Romance]

"The standards movement has taken hold in American schools and continues to enjoy broad support. But there are some troublesome fault lines," said Public Agenda President Deborah Wadsworth.

Heaven forbid teachers be held accountable. Whether they coddle the troublemakers, molest underage boys and girls or just sit back and collect the paycheck, the fact is the Teacher's Union has destroyed the public school system.

I'm not saying all teachers are bad, just a solid majority.

[Lance Romance]

Sorry, forgot to lay some blame on the Dept. of Education who thought teaching "word recognition" and "gender thought" were better ideas than phonics and math.

[ctlpdad]

I feel we should pull a regime elimination on the teachers unions. I HATE TEACHERS UNIONS!

[SamAdams76]

We need more no-nonsense teachers in our schools and they need to be backed up by an equally hard-nosed principal.

Most urban high schools are zoos. If you've ever seen the old sitcom "Welcome Back Kotter," that actually reflects rather accurately how many urban high schools really are (and an increasing amount of suburban schools). The high school I went to in the late 1970s was exactly like that. A few troublemakers constantly disrupting class and making it impossible for the rest of the class to learn. In fact, unruly kids usually encourage the same behavior in others that would otherwise not be exhibited if the troublemakers were dealt with harshly.

I am all for expelling high school students who cannot conform to acceptable standards of behavior as well as minimum academic standards. I don't know why this society is so fixated on everybody getting a high school diploma. In fact, the diploma becomes virtually worthless anyhow if everybody is shuffled through the system regardless of their performance. I say expel the troublemakers. The world needs ditchdiggers and sanitation workers too. And Burger King is always hiring. Just kick the punks out.

[raybbr]

"It says that our young people are looking for positive role models out there."

"This is a true reflection of how the public feels," said Shirley Igo, president of National Parent Teacher Association. "It says that our young people are looking for positive role models out there."

Because the NEA has taken the parents away as role models.

Teachers said lack of parental involvement is a serious problem, with 78 percent of teachers saying too many parents don't know what's going on with their child's education.

Because the NEA and the school beaurocrats have forced parents out of the schools saying that parents don't know what's best for their children.

[Oldie]

Its not that they are "bad", its just that they are incompetent.

It is interesting to observe how decline of primary and high school education in the US parallels the professionalization of education. Schools of education typically attract students with lower high school GPA and lower SAT scores than other schools within our universities, and at the same time GPA upon graduation is much higher for education majors than for graduates from any other field. The reasons for this are rather complex, but the bottom line is that this is all tied to relaxed standards within schools of education. I have been a professor in various American Universities for twenty years now, and I have never even met an education major that I would consider to be a competent student.

[Dahoser]

Reading only the article and not the study nor looking at Public Agenda's, er, agenda, I think the point isn't evasion of teacher accountability, but saying that seriously disruptive kids and "Not my child" parents are huge factors in the problems with education. We know this in these parts, but seems to be a taboo elsewhere. Not only that, but isn't it refreshing that money was not even mentioned?

[apillar]

It burns me up to hear this crap from teachers that they want parents to, "get more involved".

They only want you to be "involved" if you walk lock step with what they and their union want. Go to a PTA or school board meeting and bring up the subject of increased teacher accountability / annual testing of teachers etc. You will find out quickly that they no longer want you to "get more involved" and you'll be lucky if they will even return a phone call

Trust me, I know from experience.

[netmilsmom]

Teachers said lack of parental involvement is a serious problem, with 78 percent of teachers saying too many parents don't know what's going on with their child's education. Only 19 percent said parental involvement is strong in their high school.

---

Define parental involvement. From what I have seen it's only doing all the school work at home so we can discuss how bad war is in the classroom.

[encm(ss)]

"Honor your father and mother" - which is the first commandment with a promise - "that it may go well with you and that you many enjoy long life on the earth." Ephesians 4:26

[TaxPayer2000]

83 percent of teachers said parents who fail to set limits and create structure at home for their kids are a serious problem;

Structure? Involvement?

My daughters school schedule has no structure whatsoever!

mon, tue, & thurs, she gets out at 2:45pm. Wed and Fri she gets out at 2:15pm. every other week there is either a holiday, or a minimum day. Not to mention the 3 month "vacation" as they call it. If a parent does not check the school schedule daily, if not hourly, then the parent has no idea when thier child is at school.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

This study , of course, excludes homeschool teachers. Please see Homeschooling 101 :}.

[two23]

Ill-mannered pupils

Parents who discipline their rude kids, run the risks of a visit from Children & Family Services

demoralized teachers

NEA and Teachers Unions maybe?

uninvolved parents

Many parents have found that getting too involved can have some very negative effects on their childs future in the school, especially if they question the curriculum or text books.

and bureaucracy in public schools are greater worries for Americans than the standards and accountability that occupy policy makers, a new study says

Yes, some parents are concerned about (the socialist agenda), diversity training, tolerance training, guilt-slinging environmental curriculum, re-writing of history, anti-patriotic sentiment, kicking God and the founding fathers out, over prescribing of Ritalin and other drugs, and tests that are 80% touchy-feely pyscho-brainwashing.

[SpinyNorman]

Just another argument for vouchers. I just hope there are places for the parents to send their kids......

And let us not forget the somewhat recent stories of teachers, daring to flunk a non performing student, being reprimanded and forced to pass the student. She eventually resigned rather than do it. The good teachers leave, the rest stay behind, like residue in the bottom of a barrel, too scared to teach properly, or too stupid to know the difference.

[anniegetyourgun]

Government schools = weapons of mass indoctrination. Aiming squarely at our next generation, the Left has ruled its dominion for decades. Now it wonders why the product is so poor and the process so inhuman. They muck up everything they touch and can't admit it.

Public education is a failed experiment and parents should not experiment with their children.

[dawn53]

"It says that our young people are looking for positive role models out there."

And you'll never accomplish this by isolating hundreds of kids with their peers in the same building for 6 or 7 hours everyday.

Homeschooling bump!

This is why people with homeschooled teenagers get amazed remarks from other people about the communication capacity of their kids. The remark usually goes like this, "I had a conversation with your son and I felt like I was talking with another adult."

Or from people he has just met, "I can't get over how your child just sat down and talked to us like he had known us all his life."

Homeschooled kids aren't socialized to their "peers only", and therefore know how to communicate to people of all ages.

[joesnuffy]

we pay property taxes through the nose around here...with no kids in public schools...no accountability by the administrators and no input accepted by those who do the paying..

Close the schools let the parents work out their own education of their own children...
Give them tax credits
With taxes off our backs we could give more to our own churches and let them offer programs
let the giving be voluntary

You Bring them into the world You pay for them - maybe your employer will fund schools for the children of their employees why should your neighbor be forced to (yeah right!)

You can always build more prisons & you can control them there...and they can go to school -to get out of prison they have to pass proficiency tests and demonstrate improved character

[Vicki]

Several years ago my daughter was leaving Jr. High and moving on to her local district H.S. She had been in an honors program and had done very well.

Her junior high honors teacher took me aside and advised me not to let my daughter attend the local district high school. She told me her needs would not be met. I admit I was taken aback by her candor. Late that summer I met with the local high school counselor. I talked about my daughter's need for advanced curriculum, etc. He turned and took a huge book off a shelf. He then explained that this book was used by the colleges to rate high schools. The high school my daughter was to attend had received the lowest rating.

I went home and explained this to my daughter and suggested transferring to a neighboring district high school that had a top rating. My daughter didn't want to leave her friends.

Against my better judgement I sent my daughter to our district high school. What a big mistake! The honors program was a joke and a farce. There was NEVER any homework because there were no books! I kid you not. What few books were available were so full of mold that they were basically unusable. Meanwhile, I saw a change in my daughter. Since she had nothing to do anymore after school and any "honors" classwork she had was so dumbed down that she was left unchallenged she became imerged in the rap cultural that permeated the school.

We got her out of that school and moved her to a neighboring district. It was a little difficult for her at first, but I knew we had made the right choice when she told me that disruptive students were removed from class unlike her other school. I also had to provide transportation every day, but of course that was worked out. The honors program was challenging and she actually had textbooks to work from at home.

I might add that when I met with the high school principal from the first school to get his signature to release her from the school (which he refused) he told me he needed students like my daughter. Right I said to make you look good. He told me that leaving my daughter at his school would give her a "cultural experience". My husband and him almost came to blows.

My daughter is graduating from Reed College next month. She has been accepted to the University of Chicago to work on her Masters. There is no way she would be where she is today if we had left her in her district high school.

Five other honor students pulled out of that school for the same reasons.

[FLAMING DEATH]

Speaking as a teacher, I can tell you that there is much more to what is going on than most people care to understand.

At the school where I teach, our hands are tied. The behaviorally disordered, the ADHD, the mentally impaired, the learning disordered, and just about any other special education students are mixed in with the general population, per federal law. All of this without any training for dealing with them. They are often unruly, disruptive and hostile. Teaching takes a back seat to class control. Furthermore, anyone who tries to exclude these kids from class faces possible legal action from the parents, who choose not to get involved until little Johnny gets picked on by a "mean old teacher".

Generally, these children cannot be suspended. One in our county assaulted a bus driver. He was suspended, but it was overturned, under threat of a lawsuit. I personally have had to endure being cursed at, ignored, addressed disrespectfully, and other such things that disrupt the educational process. It is no wonder that the school system is suffering...the inmates are running the asylum.

Not only that, we are expected (again, by law) to "adapt" lessons within our class to cater to the needs of each and every one of them. In other words, we are supposed to adapt the school to the kid, instead of the kids adapting to the school. Not a good way to introduce kids to responsibility, as all of us know that the world doesn't work this way. At any given time, a teacher might have as many as three different lessons on three different ability levels to three (or even more) groups of students, while simultaneously dealing with the discipline problems that arise from the behavior disordered or other special ed students (or any other students in the class, for that matter). This ensures that no kids ever get the quality of education they deserve. All thanks to people in Washington who haven't a clue about how a school or a classroom works, and have foisted this garbage on us from the warm security of their Capitol Hill offices, where they earn enough money to send their kids to private schools.

I am a very conservative person, and am slowly spreading the gospel of privatization throught the faculty here. I can honestly say that there are very few teachers such as the one you describe; i.e., afraid of accountability. Most favor teacher accountability, but that's not where the problem lies. It lies with federal and state legislators making laws with no basic understanding of education. It lies with rules being made in Washington that have no practical application here. It lies with underfunding (our county wants to open an alternate school, a place where chronic offenders can be sent for a more "structured", or closely supervised schedule). It lies with poor parental attitudes, most of which remain uninvolved until a strict disciplinary action is taken against their child, at which point they might threaten to sue the school or the teacher.

I think those who are overly critical of teachers could probably learn from a trip to their local school to observe, if such is allowed (generally, if you have kids there, you should be more than welcome to accompany them through their classes if you make arrangements beforehand). Like all groups, they are far from perfect, but to blame the problem soley on teachers is to ignore all other problems and therefore bring us no closer to solving them.

If you want to improve the public schools, remove their control from the federal and state governments.

[1Old Pro]

The biggest reason government schools HAVE failed is the teachers unions.