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chiczaira writes

Quote:

Culture is not amenable to the fixes of funding or smaller class sizes. It must come from the people themselves.

The schools can help but the laws have to change. Teachers need to be able to bounce the disruptive child off to the principal's office and, if the principal can't get through a thick skull, the child needs to be bounced right out of the school so the rest of the kids can learn. I imagine given a choice between a run in with the law for not having their kid in school or taking measures to see that your kid is 'instructed' on how to behave in school, most parents will opt for the latter.

This will take strong legislative and social resolve to keep the ACLU and other litigious-minded people and groups out of the mix so that the schools can set and enforce reasonable rules for attendance, dress, conduct, deportment, and standards and take back control of education again.

As an aside and prime motivator, I would also make a highschool diploma or being age 19 a pre-requisite for obtaining an unrestricted driver's license. Smile

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You are indeed correct. foxfyre, but in today's political and cultural environment, your solutions will not take root.

Case in point. In the Chicago Public Schools today, the Principals, guided of course by thier local boards composed of area parents, some community people and a couple of teachers, must follow the Guidelines laid down by the Super Board Downtown/

Principals must suspend students who engage in specific acts which are declared "must suspend" by the guidelines. As you might be able to guess, these violations are serious ones..striking a teacher..bringing a weapon to school..etc.
In order for a class to operate successfully, it is necessary that any students that is disruptive be removed. I would declare that any student who speaks out repeatedly and usually unconnected with the subject matter at hand, as a severe violator. Present a teacher with a class which contains five or six of these savages and no learning will occur.

Foxfure- I don't know if you are near a high school. If you are interested, go to the school and ask to be able to observe a class. You will usually not be turned away but the administration will probably take you to a class which is atypical in that it is very well disciplined/

When you walk to the class with your escort, try to peek into the windows of the other classes. You may be amazed at the disorder you see.

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Oh I've been in many schools, deal with teenagers on a regular basis, raised two kids of my own; my granddaughter starts highschool next fall. I know very well the conditions in the average public school and I know that's why the overall performance ratings are so abysmal. I never accept that the way things are is the way things have to be however. And I also know when the public gets its back up and becomes concerned enough, elected officials at local, state, and federal levels listen. We've arrived at this point because we've allowed the muddle-headed social activists/engineers to whittle away a little time at sound systems until it was all in a mess. That trend can be reversed and, if we support it, NCLB may just be the catalyst to get the pendulum swinging back the other way.

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Exactly, Foxfyre, and it began in earnest when the social activists charged that the large number of failure rates among some groups of minorities showed that racism had run rampant. I do not know whether you are aware that as long as thirty-five years ago, a drive began to get teachers who "looked more" like the students they were teaching into the classrooms because they "understood" the children and could be more "nurturant".

It is obvious that those changes did no good. Our school systems, especially those in the inner cities are disaster areas.

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Chic writes

Quote:

I do not know whether you are aware that as long as thirty-five years ago, a drive began to get teachers who "looked more" like the students they were teaching into the classrooms because they "understood" the children and could be more "nurturant".

It is obvious that those changes did no good. Our school systems, especially those in the inner cities are disaster areas

No, I guess I missed that one. But it no doubt explains why there is no dress code for teachers anymore. I see the teachers going into the nearby elementary school and also the nearby highschool dressed like hookers and they probably wonder why they don't seem to get respect from the students?

I would hasten to add, however, that there are some excellent teachers in the school system if we would ever get back to the point that the purpose of the schools is to educate, not nurture.

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Here's another one you might have missed, Foxfyre. Years ago, in Chicago( 1977 to be exact) someone in the central office decreed that we had to desegregate the school system even more. What was done?

Well, in a system that had around 470 schools, about 90 White Principals were taken out of their mainly white schools and about 90 Black and Hispanic( there were very few Hispanics at the time who were principals) Principals were taken out of their mainly black and Hispanic schools and THEY SWAPPED SCHOOLS.

Why? For desegration. What happened?

Welll, most of the parents were against this move since they lost the principals they knew.

The system still hasn't recovered.

Lesson- Keep the social planners out of the schools. Let the teachers teach where they are most comfortable.

And as for your comment about HOOKERS, Foxfyre, you are quite correct.

Teachers go into classes wearing tight skirts, low cut blouses, dirty jeans, clogs without stockings and then express alarm if they are not treated with courtesy by the students.

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Oh, please, tell me you guys are putting us on?

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I wish we were Revel. But the public schools are largely a mess and they aren't adequately educating the children and American kids are way behind most other developed countries as a result. It would seem to me that thinking people would welcome and throw their support behind NCLB, offer suggestions for how it could be improved, and demand that the schools actually start educating kids again. The schools are one area that should not be politicized or become another victim to the anti-administration people who care about damaging the president more than they care whether the kids are educated.

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There you go again assuming motives which are not true.

I was referring to the bit about the short skirts and low cut blouses and hookers being a little out there in terms of rationality.

The rest I have not a big desire to get into. My kids are in college now and it will be a long time till my grandbaby goes to public school.

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This will be one of the few times I agee with Fox and chick. US schools are falling behind in teaching our kids in math and science. We used to be number one/uno, but we now place number 17 in the Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest behind teams from Russia and China. America's technology leadership will slip away, and our economy will suffer. NCLB is not doing the job it's supposed to; we're falling behind more every year.

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It's too soon to tell whether we are improving our performance against other countries. I can't find any data later than 2000 and we were doing pretty dismally at that time. The concept behind NCLB is difficult to fault, and the serious testing didn't begin until this year and it will be some time before that data is analyzed and publicized.
http://www.ed.gov/nclb/methods/math/math.html
http://www.reedmartin.com/nochildleftbehindmathfacts.htm

And Revel, maybe you think it's okay for teachers to wear short shorts and tube tops to school, but I'm just way too old fashioned to see that as appropriate or conducive to the education process.

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Cut-and-pasted excerpt (with a little editin' for the sake of clarity-in-present-context) from a reply I made on a similarly themed thread - seems to fit here real well:

[url=http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1264167#1264167]Elsewhere[/url], timber wrote:

... NCLB, far from bein' an "unfunded mandate", has seen historic, unprecedented increases in Federal educational spendin' over the years since its inception, including a 49% increase in total K-12 spendin', $139 million for readin' programs alone (over four times the amount spent in FY 2001), and a 75% increase in special-education fundin'.

Durin' just 3 years of Bush the Greater's first term, Federal K-12 spendin' increased by more than during the entire Clinton Administration and the Democratic Administration preceedin' it, Carter's, combined. From 2001 through 2004, Federal education appropriations increased from $29.4 billion to $55.7 billion. The GAO has concluded that the new requirements actually imposed by NCLB - testin' every child, for example - are relatively inexpensive and are more than adequately offset by federal education dollars. Apart from that, literally $Billions of NCLB funds lie unspent in the coffers of various states, hostage to political wranglin' and fiefdom protection.

From 1960 thru 2000, after-inflation education spendin' more than tripled. A recent Harvard study found that real, inflation-adjusted spendin' increased from $5,900 per pupil in 1982 to over $9,200 in 2000. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that current (2004) U.S. K-12 education spendin' tallies a bit over $10,800 per child.

By 2000 figures, the OECD found the US spent significantly more per K-8 student than any other industrialized nation, includin' 56% more than France, 27% more than Japan, 80% more than the UK, 62% more than Belgium, 62% more than Finland, and a staggerin' 122% more than South Korea. And with all of that, the US was ranked 15th out of 31 in a 2000 OECD study of readin' comprehension, grade-for-grade. The 1999 TIMSS study of 8th-grade science-and-math student achievement found the US, overwhelmingly the most generous spender, able to rank no higher than 19th out 38 nations compared. The picture is similar for secondary education; the US spendin' per-pupil is 40% higher than is the average elsewhere in the industrialized world.

I'm even further outraged by the accountin' gamesmanship enabled through Department of Education regulation, and cherished by the likes of the NEA; excluded from official US calculations of "current-expenditure-per-pupil" are such things as debt service, property acquisition, construction, renovation, and most physical-plant maintenance. The per-pupil spendin' figures you see in your local paper likely represent somethin' on the order of 75% of real education spendin', as an average.

While US Business has worked hard at trimmin' the fat, the US public education system has continued to bloat shamelessly. For example, over the Half Century from 1949 to 1999, the number of non-teachin' staff employed by American schools increased from one per 2.36 teachin' staff to one per 1.09 teachein' staff. In New York City alone, the public-school district employs about 25,000 central-district personnel, managin' district's roughy 1 million students. The Arch Diocese of New York, with an enrollment of around 10% as many pupils, has an admonistrative staff of fewer than 25, while the achievement scores and graduation percentage for students of the Arch Diocese are across-the-board higher than those for the NYC public school system's pupils.

Between 1960 and 2000, the national ratio of teachers to students dropped from 1:26 teacher/students to 1:16.1 teacher/students; today, a teacher instructs about 60% as many students as was the case little more than a generation ago. Over the past couple decades, direct teacher/student daily interface hours have declined from 1980's 4.5 hour national average to 2000's 3.7 hour national average.

Bottom line: under the current system, we spend ever-increasin'ly more overall, with more and more people employed by the system, and more and more spent on stuff unnecessary, ancillary or even irrelevant to education, while our children get less and less education, as amply demonstrated by objective international comparison. It is entirely conceivable we don't spend enough on education. It is undeniable, however, that we get nowhere near the education we already pay for, and that other industrialized nations get far better results with significantly less spendin'-per-pupil. Perhaps we might benefit from greater spendin' on education, but there is absolutely no point spendin' more if we don't spend wisely. It is stupid to pursue a repeatedly failed course of action in expectation of improved result through repetion. Throwin' more money at the current system is stupid. Expectin' the current system to improve on its own is stupid. Wantin' better for our children is not stupid. We can't afford to be doin' stupid things to our children. Its more than high time to stop the stupidity. Our kids aren't stupid. Lets stop sendin' 'em out into the world prepared as though they were ...

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The data you posted disputes the claims that the schools suffer because of inadequate funding for NCLB, Timber. And as we all know, no amount of funding has made a dent in declining proficiency in reading, writing, math, and sciences. So it only makes sense that the increased funding is accompanied by very clear mandates and expectations of verifiable results. The unions and social engineers have consistently resisted any such efforts, but its high time that these reforms are done. And NCLB is a very good start.

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NCLB is wrecking our schools.

It forces even more 'teaching to the test' than ever before.

My mother is an administrator in the Galena Park ISD in Texas. Her ISD is one of the top scoring on the standardized tests and is nationally recognized (or at least state recognized, can't remember) for this fact. And she'll tell ya that the kids coming out of the system are idiots, because 100% of the teachers in the district are told to teach for the test, and that's it.

Our schooling process should be much more encompassing than just teaching for a few specific tests of aptitude; but when that is the measure used to dole out monies, that is the result of the policy. The ones hurt are our children, is the sad part...

Cycloptichorn

On Edit: Of course, these opinions related to me by my mother are Anecdotal and should not be taken as definitive evidence that the same conditions exist elsewhere, though I strongly suspect that they do.

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Your anecdote by your mother is common enough to make it as definitive evidence; increased funding by Bush and Company doesn't come close to 1) enough funding to meet federal mandates, and 2) the mandates themselves are not accomplishing what they're supposed to; improve the educaition of our children. A recent study by Harvard of California schools have shown that more kids are dropping out of school than before Bush took over the white house. Increased spending? That's a laugh. The results says otherwise.

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The actual aptitude tests themselves are in no way indicative of any ability other than the absolutely most basic ability to... pass a certain kind of test.

You know what I believe NCLB really is? It has two functions:

#1, to allow the military unfettered access to your child's records for recruitment purposes. THere is ample evidence of this happening across the country.

#2, to weaken our school systems and garner support for the 'voucher' plan, in order to bring about much more private schooling, which works to the Republican advantage in three ways:

First, privatizing schools brings more money into the private sector, which is the wet dream of all republicans, apparently.

Second, once that is accomplished enough the push can be made to eliminate public schools altogether. Why? To get rid of those troublesome Taxes the rich are forced to pay to educate the poor children, which we all know is anathema to Republicans;

Third and most importantly, private schools will encourage the mixing of religion in with every aspect of teaching, a stated goal of the Republican cause.

None of this is positive for the children in America in the slightest.

Cycloptichorn

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Foxfyre wrote:

It's too soon to tell whether we are improving our performance against other countries. I can't find any data later than 2000 and we were doing pretty dismally at that time. The concept behind NCLB is difficult to fault, and the serious testing didn't begin until this year and it will be some time before that data is analyzed and publicized.
http://www.ed.gov/nclb/methods/math/math.html
http://www.reedmartin.com/nochildleftbehindmathfacts.htm

And Revel, maybe you think it's okay for teachers to wear short shorts and tube tops to school, but I'm just way too old fashioned to see that as appropriate or conducive to the education process.

People wear them everywhere else, but personally I doubt it is even true.

In my opinion this whole thing is just the bush administration and like mined people to create a problem so they can put in a solution.

In a few years the proof will be in the pudding if all these things work. If we are in the same state or worse state, then we will know.

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I found the law contradicted conservative philosophy from the start. Besides, having been a child of the 60s, I remember when left wing students were the ones who cared about education and learning and the righties cared about getting into the correct frat in an era when frats were closing. Haven't seen an intelligent argument for NCLB.

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Timberlandko's post is quite correct. Many have confirmed his point. Funding is not the problem.

The attack on Vouchers reveals a fundamental understanding on what vouchers are and what they will do.

According to Terry M. Moe in his well documented book-'Schools, Vouchers and the American Public", ---"The appeal of private schools is especially strong among parents who are low in income.minority, and live in low performing districts, precisely the parents who are the most disadvantaged now under the current system"

There is, and has been, an effort to tie school achievement to high Socio-Economic levels. This has been put into question by the wonderful achievement of many Asian-American students, some of whom come from homes whose incomes are below the median for the USA.

The culture of the school is the defining factor. Voucher systems can allow for a culture that is strongly inclined toward Achievement by creating Voucher schools which create supportive systems for the children who cannot operate in a regular environment- mainly the severely mentally handicapped and the socially disturbed.

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Quote:

The attack on Vouchers reveals a fundamental understanding on what vouchers are and what they will do.

Yes, I would fully agree with you that the attacks on vouchers DO reveal a fundemental understanding of what vouchers are and what they will do.

Cycloptichorn

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