“Fifth graders in Taipei, Taiwan spend an average of 13 hours a week on homework....” Where are their parents while all this studying is going on? I bet they are with their children. Nothing we do to solve our public education mess will work until parents become part of the process. How is it parents can watch their children go through thirteen-fourteen years of public school without noticing how little the kids learn? Parents aren’t responsible for their children’s education. That is left up to the public schools, and when the kids come home with homework, ...well, that’s between them and their teachers. Sorry, tutoring centers might help a few kids. Most school districts have access to numerous tutoring programs that are funded by federal and state grants. Most kids don’t want to be bothered with them, and most parents don’t care. The more Hispanic parents don’t care, and the more they let their children get caught up in the race wars trip, the more Hispanic children will drop out. The same goes for white kids, black kids and even yellow kids.
I sincerely doubt that!
Parents haven't destroyed the Public School System -- The Teacher's Unions and politicians pandering to special interests have done far more to destroyed the system.
The biggest problem, as I see it - is with the children who make up the approx. 70% born to unwed mothers and the untold number belonging to non English speaking and for the most part illiterate or uneducated illegal immigrants...
I doubt "parental involvement" is what is need in these cases.
What is NEEDED is an educational regimen taught in ENGLISH in a DISCIPLINED ENVIRONMENT, where disrupters are expelled and failures are FAILED until they get it..
Reducing the "bar" to allow the lowest common denominator to succeed - teaching courses to convey "self esteem" and pandering to bilingual demands has effectively taken our schools out of the education business and into the childcare and warehousing business.
It is hard to become a lawyer like on TV if you’ve dropped out of high school to become a construction worker. It’s not possible to become a doctor like on ER if you haven’t learned to read or to speak English.
Yet stating such when someone says there aren’t enough Hispanic professionals is racist. If it mattered, they’d drag their kids back to school and keep them there.