[RobRoy]

A quote from the site:

The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

You have got to go to the link and root around in this thing. My wife and I said that if we were a young couple with school aged children, there is no way we would expose them to a US public school. Well, we're passing this on to all of our children for our grandchildren. This needs to go VIRAL.

Here are a couiple of screen samples from a video and QA section:

[ClearCase_guy]

We will need to drastically cut expenses in many areas (Defense, Health, etc.) Education is certainly one of these areas. Some communities spend $20,000 per pupil each year, and get almost nothing for it.

If citizens start realizing that good quality education can be delivered virtually for free, they will vote to defund government schools. And we will all be better off.

[RWGinger]

At first I thought this was the system owned by Turkish muslims that are teaching hate of our freedoms
but a quick search showed this is a good simple but workable system that does NOT indoctrinate ideologies.

Yes Khan Academy deserves attention

[kickonly88]

Thanks for posting this! Our soon to be 5 year old son starts school this year but our school district only has 767 students. Me and my wife will definitely check this out.

[Puppage]

It's Official: Public Schools are Obsolete

Well, sure...but only for learning.

As for advancing the liberal agenda, nothing beats it.

[wastedyears]

I saw math and a graph and I just died a little bit inside.

Something like this probably would’ve worked for me in the mid-90s. As it stands now, my math skills are pretty substandard.

[13Sisters76]

The American people should have, finally, made the public education system “obsolete” when we fell behind the Slovak Republic in math and science skills. Keeping the American people as dumb as possible is all part of the agenda. A true study of American history creates patriots, and we can’t have that now, can we?

Dewey said it- you can’t make good socialists out of individuals. And you can’t create critically thinking individuals if you mean to create a socialist utopia.

The American people will get what they demand. We SHOULD be demanding that the DOE be abolished immediately, that the fed get the hell out of education, and that the schools be returned to the hands of parents and teachers, controlled locally.

[fieldmarshaldj]

"Knowledge is Good"

[taxcontrol]

I have thought for some time now that it would be very possible to create a system of software that would run on either PCs or game consoles that would load one of the following modules:

Student
Parent
Instructor
Management

The Student module would then load an education module that would then teach a particular subject. For example 1st grade spelling, 5th grade science, US History, Algebra 1, etc. These instruction modules would be available for download from a web page similar to Ebay or Amazon. Students/Parents would be able to review, comment on and purchase the modules that work best for their children. You could even have religious studies or ethics classis as well. Individuals who make greate education videos / modules would then be compensated accordingly.

The Parent Modules would focus on providing help to the parent. Homework drills, study guides, other assistance as needed. Likewise, the free market approach could be used to allow parents the option of purchasing the modules their students needed

The Instructor Module would be targeted to the job currently held by teachers in the classroom. It would allow them to have an electronic grade book, attendance, etc

The Management Module would be targeted to the job performed by the school district for things like maintaining records, hiring, etc

Lastly, to determine where each student was and what education was needed, a test would be taken annual for each student at the start of the school year. The tests would identify the current level for each class and provide guidance for the next level of education to be taken. The tests could be administered by the local school / district or by private firm like Prometric or Silvan.

Individuals transfering from different school districts would not need to worry about their records as they could just take the placemnt tests and start with the appropriate class.

Feds would set the requirements for federal recognition and acceptance of Associate, Bacholers, Masters and PHD degrees for hiring into the Federal government. Colleges are then free to set their entrance requirements. States set the standard for their awarding of the HS Diploma and or equivilant

[Pete]

As homeschoolers for the past 11 years, we have found excellent online classes for our older children. For high school, we have found that, for us, homeschool mean home-directed. My 14 year old will take three online classes next year, each one hand picked.

[vikingd00d]

MIT's OpenCourseWare is good too.

[martin_fierro]

[ExTxMarine]

As it has been stated, some school districts spend $20+K per student by erecting these Taj-Mahal/Lincoln Memorial/Parthenon school houses and Administrative buildings.

The school districts could actually save money if they simply issued a computer to every kid, a wireless internet card and the Khan Academy website!

The kids would be better trained, their skill sets would GREATLY rise and the liberal diatribe of the day would be avoided!

I have said it before and I will say it again! This should be the future of ALL training in America! We could sell most of the buildings! Think of the cost savings:
Salaries: teacher, janitors, lunch ladies, administrators, etc...
Books: printings, shipping, storage, etc...
Buildings: maintenance, utilities, etc...
Food: instead of providing breakfast, lunch AND DINNER to 70% of the kids in the school, the PARENTS could use their WIC/Food Stamps to provide their own kids with - I don’t know, maybe - FOOD!

If we did this as an “accredited” solution, without all the state/government BS associated with homeschooling, we could easily save 60-70% off our current school costs!

I have been using Khan Academy to help my daughter keep up and move ahead with her math skills! She absolutely LOVES the site!

[Da Coyote]

It would be interesting to see SAT scores differentiated by public vs private schools.

We already know what happens when we differentiate by public vs home-schooled children. Heh.

Anyone child “educated” by someone possessing only an “education” degree is most probably not educated at all. ‘Twould be analogous to GM “managers” trying to teach mechanical engineering. Or to anyone in the West Wing trying to teach anything about business...or engineering....or morality...or....or....

[Third Person]

As homeschoolers of three children, my wife and I have been using KA for the last couple of years. It is a great supplement for all sorts of topics.

Khan is refreshingly balanced on a number of hot button issues... it's not your usual agenda driven NEA DNC propaganda.

For a real eye-opener, take a look at Khan's breakdown of the banking system, TARP, and the Geither plan!

Highly recommended for all.

[umgud]

If we cut public education funding to zero tomorrow, those students who want an education will still find a way to obtain one (with caring parents help).

If we expand public ed funding a thousandfold tomorrow, those students who don’t want an education, still won’t get one.

If gov’t won’t kill public ed, we’ll do it for them.

[Golden Gate]

IBTV!



In Before The VIRAL!

[redhead]

For people who have a limited (or, no) access to the internet, here is the Robinson Curriculum. It is all on disks. I haven't priced it recently, but I wish I had seen it when my kids were in school.

[Mach9]

The math & science MAY be okay, but I wanted an idea of the ideology so I went straight to the French Revolution. The version here is exactly what the French (and the communists) would have us believe. “Sal” or whoever’s teaching doesn’t bother to mention that the claims about Marie Antoinette’s grain-stockpile were false, that the peasants who attacked Versailles purportedly to steal the nonexisent grain destroyed every bit of the palace they could reach and killed or captured for later killing anyone—servants as well as nobility—they encountered.

Aside from his description of the problem, which included a veiled claim that the clergy had too much power, I believe his percentages of the three estates are also way off. Point.five percent of the population were clergy? when 1.5% is nobility? I don’t think so. Parish priests alone would outnumber the nobility, and that doesn’t include the hundreds of monasteries and cathedral staffs throughout the country.

His comparison of The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to the Declaration of Independence was downright insulting. God is never mentioned in his spiel, and because of that, Godlessness also goes unmentioned.

Most obvious of all, however, is the same old same-old: class warfare and its absolute justification.

I can’t wait to see what he says about the Reign of Terror . . .

[TexasBeth]

A teacher recommended this site to us this year. My daughter took high school algebra in 8th grade. We were struggling to help her. This web site saved us. It helped so much with homework. She was her class Valedictorian this year.

[shove_it]

Check out the Communism segment in the history module :

http://www.khanacademy.org/video/communism?playlist=History

You may want to seek another source for this topic.