School boards are fighting back against high stakes testing

There's the problem, right there. This isn't about MY kid. This is about that all kids deserve what your demographic gets.

My son goes to an "excellent" school. The parents pitch in to pay the gym teacher and the music teacher and the parents completely run the art program so that we can afford to keep the librarian. This school is probably one of the top three well funded schools in the state and they still can't afford those things if it weren't for the school foundation.

Even then, the only thing that is really valued is reading and math. History? Forget it. Science? Ha! Civics? They don't even know what that is.

I graduated from public school in 1978. When Mo started school I was absolutely appalled at what school has become.

I wasn't saying that all kids don't deserve a great education. They should. But all kids have never gotten a good education in the US (or perhaps in any country).

I am simply pointing out that there are three separate issues here. There are the needs of society (i.e. an educated workforce and prepared citizens), then there are the needs of the upper and middle classes and the needs of the disadvantaged classes.

Our education system today does well at providing for societal needs and for the needs of upper and middle class families. It does poor at providing for the needs of disadvantaged families. But this is nothing new, the US in history did a poor job at educating disadvantaged communities.

The problems faced by people in disadvantaged communities in the US are deeper than education.

I think this underscores the YOUR kid, MY kid thing very well:

Fiery! What's his solution, though? Stronger unions or higher property taxes...or both?

(Thought of you when I saw this cartoon the other day)...

So, basically, you are admitting that this is a problem with demographics and parental involvement, not an issue with teaching or standardized testing.

"Admitting"? What? When did I become a defendant?

The US has a class problem. People in wealthy areas have enough resources to raise and educate children. People in poor areas are lacking in education resources (and more). Of course this is complicated by race and other social issues.

I am proposing that outside of this problem, the US public education system works very well. Kids from upper middle class families living in well-to-do communities receive a great education in US public schools. And, our society is getting well-educated, confident and innovative citizens from US public schools.

I am not suggesting that class differences in the US isn't a real problem or an important problem.

Yeah. I'll drink to that. I think. Just as soon as I figure out what that means in English.

Maybe this will help Lustig...

1. Muddy is to discussion as _____ is to ______?
a) fish : bicycle
b) elect : president
c) lie : pizza
d) eat : cake

oh, I think you're still muddying the issues. Whatever the issues are and whatever you mean by that sad, overtired metaphor. Your contributions to this thread have virtually nothing to do with Boomerang's original post or the intent and purpose of this thread.

I doubt kids in 2012 are any smarter than kids in 1812. The question is how educated they are.

One of the most striking aspects of Ken Burns' Civil War series was the literacy displayed by the soldiers on either side in their letter to their families, and loved ones.

We know that, at least in the North, the educated sons of the rich could buy their way out of the war and yet the quality of the writing by Northern soldiers was as striking as that of your opponents.

Of course, the series was a piece of drama and not scholarship. It doesn't prove anything about the relative levels of education between then and now, and yet most of the people who I have discussed this with had a similar reaction. Maybe we were all equally manipulated.

My experience in the business world though suggests to me that the kids graduating from college (as exemplified by those who applied for employment with my companies) at the time the series was first aired (1990) couldn't even come close to writing as well as whomever wrote the letters Burns featured.

Here again, this proves very little. Burns obviously was looking for the most eloquent letters and a far greater percentage of kids graduated from college in 1990 than in any year before the civil war.

However, fast forward 18 years to 2008 when, employed by a company, I was searching for a recent college graduate to fill a slot in our management development program.

I interviewed 18 different kids before finding one.

Believe me, based on their ability to not only write, but even speak, you would never have guessed that they had graduated from High School let alone college.

All but the person I selected were less educated than the majority of candidates I rejected in the 90's.

This is hardly scientific proof either and I'm sure that all sorts of statistics can be trotted out to support either side of the coin, but I would suggest that it is foolhardy to argue that our kids are not being as well educated as they were in the past.

I've do doubt that there are economic classes of kids who don't receive the same educational opportunities as others, but when the kids in the more privileged classes are less educated than their predecessors it's clear we have a problem.

That problem is

1) Kids are not being taught what they need to know

2) Poor teachers can survive their incompetence much longer than most other occupations and the impact of their incompetence is arguably greater than most other occupations.

The first problem is due in large measure to the increasing politicization of education and the free hand the educational elite have had in forming curricula.

The disastrous rejection of phonics in favor of Whole Language resulted in at least a generation of kids with what can only be described as institutionally imposed semi-illiteracy.

That is but one example.

As for teachers, how can we accept how long an incompetent teacher is permitted to perform poorly?

With each year of poor performance, the education of 20 to 30 of our kids is retarded. Building blocks for continued education are missed and unless parents provide what the teacher should have, the kids are educationally crippled going forward.

Teaching is so important that I have no problem with paying them more if that's what it takes to attract and retain the best. However, the system has to be reformed so that the incompetent ones are quickly flushed, and the only competent ones are not as well rewarded as the superior ones.

Simply raising teacher salaries will only mean that the one who never should have gotten the job in the first place will make more money than the parents of the students they fail
.

Can you say "selection bias?"

This obvious flaw brought to you by a discussion of intelligence and education.

So... you interviewed 17 liberals before you found a recent college grad who claimed to be a Republican?

Thank you for your opinion Lustig, and for your contributions to this thread.

Once again you selected a sentence out of context, and completely ignored the totality of what I have written, that allows you to respond in a way you think is clever.

Your retorts so predictably follow this intellectually dishonest line that it's become boring to respond to them.

I suspect that when I don't respond to equally pathetic arguments in the future you will declare victory.

Be my guest.

Finn and/or Lustig. Would either of you like to explain this graph.

I was more amused that you admitted up front that it was due to selection bias, but then still tried to use it to support your thesis.

I have to assume that since you were able to identify that the letters were biased in favor those that are highly literate, then including them in your "argument" can only be a case of deliberate deception.

As usual, you show your true colors.

Yeah right.

Easy.

Educational attainment is not the same as level of knowledge.

OK then, maybe your problem is that you should be looking for employees without a high school diploma.

Myself, I think there are alot of factors that have contributed to and perhaps resulted in a general lowering of educational standards and (if not attainment) in the past twenty years.

You might want to point your fingers at the teachers Finn - I've noticed they seem to be a favorite target of yours- but I'd also point out that teachers who are forty and/or younger today graduated (in the US) after 1990 when methods of scholarship and choices about how to spend one's free time were vastly changed by availability of the internet.

And I see it in my own children. So whereas when my peers and I were given an assignment on a specific writer for instance, we'd ride our bikes to the library and check out all that writer's books and perhaps a biography or autobiography to read to research and experience that writer fully, students since 1990 or thereabouts can sample a few articles on google , copy and paste a few good bits and you know...voila...there's a paper on that writer.

This doesn't mean that everyone doesn't have the OPPORTUNITY to do it thoroughly and learn more; libraries and books still exist-but my question is : how many people really do or even really would begin to think about doing it the old fashioned way - especially those who haven't even had the old fashioned way taught or modelled for them because they're being taught and encouraged or influenced by teachers AND PARENTS (I might add) who came up the new way instead of the old way?

I remember the last US public school teaching job I had in 2004 - I was collaborating with the math teachers trying to help kids with documented learning disabilities get through algebra and geometry and I worked in two different classrooms with two different teachers - both in their mid-twenties, both highly articulate and likeable people, both well-intentioned and motivated teachers- yet one stood at the front of the class and actually TAUGHT and engaged, interacted and encouraged participation from the class while the other wrote the assignment on the board, passed out a worksheet and sat fiddling at his computer at his desk while I walked around the room answering all the questions the kids had.

Yes, things have changed. I used to use my free time to read and write because there was no internet and only four or five channels on the tv. Now kids can play poker, video games, view pornography (I was reading that that's the newest worry - these prepubscent kids are apparently getting addicted to pornography at the age of like NINE or something) instead of doing their homework and reading John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men'.

Scholarship is sliding down the tubes because there are too many other distractions.

I think that's the biggest reason for the change in how educated one is today as compared to how educated one typically was in the past. Scholarship used to take effort and time - now it's just a few minutes in google.

Who should we blame that on?