Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Here’s some links to some education threads (also containing numerous helpful links)

FReegards

High Schools Fail Thanks To Grade Inflation And Social Promotion
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: December 5, 2001
Author: Vin Suprynowicz

WHY AMERICANS CAN’T READ
Source: Accuracy in Media; Published: December 4, 2001
Author: Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid

The Failing Teacher and the Teachers' Code of Silence
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: December 3, 2001
Author: Glenn Sacks

Time for outrage! Linda Bowles reports latest results in America's public schools
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: November 27, 2001
Author: Linda Bowles

Illiterate in Boston: Samuel Blumenfeld explains U.S.'s ongoing reading problem
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: July 20, 2001
Author:Samuel Blumenfeld

NEA - Let our children go!
Source: WorldNet Daily; Published: June 23. 2001
Author: Linda Harvey

COOKING THE BOOKS AT EDUCATION
Source: Accuracy In Media; Published: June 5, 2001;
Author: Cliff Kincaid

Why Do Schools Play Games With Students' Minds ?
Source: The Detroit News; Published: April 1, 2001
Author: Thomas Sowell

The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
Source: http://home.talkcity.com/LibraryDr/patt/homeschl.htm
Author: John Taylor Gatto

Dumbing down teachers
Source: USNews.com; Published: February 21, 2001
Author: John Leo

Free Republic links to education related articles (thread#8)
Source: Free Republic; Published: 3-20-2001
Author: Various

Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school? {YES!!!}
Source: World Net Daily; Published: May 13, 2001
Author: Geoff Metcalf {Interview}

New Book Explores America's Education Catastrophe
Source: Christian Citizen USA; Published: April 2000
Author: William H. Wild

Deliberately dumbing us down (Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: December 2,1999
Author: Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Could they really have done it on purpose?
Source: THE LIBERTARIAN; Published: 07/28/2000
Author: Vin Suprynowicz

From the Littleton Crisis to Government Control Littleton Crisis to Government Control

The UN Plan for Your Mental Health The UN Plan for Your Mental Health


1 posted on 02/04/2002 5:43:56 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies ]


To: Academia List;Education News;Homeschool;First_Salute;
indexing
2 posted on 02/04/2002 5:45:11 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Stand Watch Listen
Bump
3 posted on 02/04/2002 5:51:04 AM PST by EdReform
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: GrandMoM
Ping
5 posted on 02/04/2002 5:54:23 AM PST by EdReform
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Stand Watch Listen
Reply # 63 in the thread TIME Cover Story: Home Sweet School
6 posted on 02/04/2002 6:10:34 AM PST by EdReform
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Stand Watch Listen; M1991; cdwright; mbb bill; Zoey; kristinn; Rebeckie; Lucky; Sauropod...
Guys, The following comes from a Washington Post {of all places} article about Nancy Grasmicks "MSPAP" test for Maryland children and young adults. The questions are so worded that "correct" answers cannot even be defined by graders. "Key words" found or not found define pass or fail rather than "right" or "wrong" answers. The "length" is the criteria for one "grader's" assessment of pass or fail. What passes for education today is EVIL!! And, Nancy Grasmick's M.S.P.A.P. epitomises that evil. Peace and love, George.

The article at the Post:

Excerpts:
Yet as a scorer for the high-stakes MSPAP last summer, Stevens found herself with little time to read the hundreds of thousands of student essays. Rather, she and other teachers were trained to look for key words. If the students used the words, they would get credit, even if the answer was wrong or made no sense. Answers that were perfectly sound but lacking the key words got a zero.

"We're professionals," said Stevens, a third-grade teacher at Oak View Elementary School in Silver Spring. "Yet when we go in and score, everything we value is thrown out the window."

Stevens and several other Montgomery County teachers have stepped forward in the past few weeks with horror stories about grading the MSPAP. They tell of being pushed to complete as many as 100 test booklets a day and only needing to be accurate 70 percent of the time. They also told of scoring criteria that kept changing midstream with no apparent effort to recheck the earlier scores.............

But Stevens, along with Oak View teachers Shelly Turi and Myrna Schwadron, said they were committed to the test when they signed up to score the MSPAP last summer. After six grueling weeks, though, they lost faith.

"Scoring the test is the complete opposite of what we're told to do in the classroom," said Turi, a third-grade teacher. "I refuse to go back."..............

"One scorer read an average of 90 booklets a day," recalled the grader, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I asked him on a break what his secret was. He said, 'Just look at the length. You don't have to read all of it.' ".................

Teachers were also upset that on math tests, students could end up with the wrong answer but receive credit for using math terms in their answer or explaining how they arrived at their answer.............

"After listening to them, I knew we had a big problem on our hands -- egregious enough that it finally needed to be said aloud," said Salazar, who contacted Weast's staff with the complaints. "If the MSPAPs are not scored the way we're supposed to teach, why even put forth the effort? What's the point?"..............
=====================================

All, And, I would personally add, "If it is the "school" that is being tested, why should students 'put forth the effort'."

PLEASE do SOMETHING!!!! The teachers are standing up. Isn't it about time their "leaders" did??

==========================

SWL, Another, is a Washington Post article about Maryland's "Maryland State Performance Assessment Program. I sent this E-mail to a few folks {lawmakers and newsbreakers} I think{?} are concerned about education. THANKS for this post!!! "It" is ALL about MONEY!! Who gets it and who don't. And, it IS EVIL!! Peace and love, George.

7 posted on 02/04/2002 6:29:05 AM PST by George Frm Br00klyn Park
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Stand Watch Listen
Deliberately dumbing us down (Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"

 Excerpts of the article posted:

Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's new book, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America," is without doubt one of the most important publishing events in the annals of American education in the last hundred years. John Dewey's "School and Society," published in 1899, set American education on its course to socialism. Rudolf Flesch's "Why Johnny Can't Read," published in 1955, informed American parents that there was something terribly wrong with the way the schools were teaching children to read, and my own book, "NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education," published in 1984, explained in great detail how and why the decline in public education was taking place.

But Iserbyt has done what no one else wanted or could do. She has put together the most formidable and practical compilation of documentation describing the well-planned "deliberate dumbing down" of American children by their education system...

Iserbyt decided to compile this book because, as a "resister" to what is going on in American education, she was being constantly told that she was taking things out of context. The book, she writes, "was put together primarily to satisfy my own need to see the various components which led to the dumbing down of the United States of America assembled in chronological order -- in writing. Even I, who had observed these weird activities taking place at all levels of government, was reluctant to accept a malicious intent behind each individual, chronological activity or innovation, unless I could connect it with other, similar activities taking place at other times." ...

And that is what this book does. It connects educators, social engineers, planners, government grants, federal and state agencies, billion-dollar foundations, think tanks, universities, research projects, policy organizations, etc., showing how they have worked together to advance an agenda that will change America from a free republic to a socialist state...


8 posted on 02/04/2002 7:57:31 AM PST by First_Salute
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson