Every year for the last4 or 5 I have posted on the whole crap that the media is pushing….the Education Nation……it is a myth perpetrated to confuse and misinform…..the simplest explanation I can give…….the media will hold up a couple of successes but fail to mention the numerous failures of the carter school program….charter schools…..your children are at the mercy of a lottery…..do you know the odds of winning a lottery? Let us say that the odds are better that you will be struck by lightening twice while standing in a parking lot on a clear day…..
By now many have heard about the scandal in Atlanta…..leaders of a school district are being indicted for changing grades of students to get more money from the government…….
Teachers in Atlanta were so used to changing students’ answers on standardized tests that they gathered for “erasure” parties and prepared answer keys on plastic transparencies to make the cheating easier. One teacher told investigators that she feared retaliation if she didn’t participate, saying the district was “run like the mob.” At least 178 teachers and principals — including ex-schools chief Beverly L. Hall — have been implicated in the scandal, which was first brought to light by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Hall was indicted March 29, 2013, on conspiracy and related charges.
Remember a couple of years ago the media was all a twitter (no pun intended) about the job some woman was doing in Washington, DC………she was held above all others because she was doing a fine job (which was a charter school)……
There’s still no conclusive evidence of cheating at a Washington, D.C., school that gained federal accolades—and monetary bonuses—for its high performance on tests. But a USA Today investigation found that student test sheets had unusually high numbers of wrong answers that had been erased and replaced with right ones. Testing experts said the odds that these erasures occurred purely by chance were smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball grand prize in the lottery. (District officials say teachers trained students in testing techniques that may have led to more erasures.) The school’s former “poster boy” principal recently resigned from his position as a superintendent. Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of D.C. schools who touted the school’s success, has resisted answering questions.
And there is Texas….it is always Texas…….
When the Dallas Morning News analyzed test results across Texas, it found hundreds of schools with test scores that had jumped and dropped in suspicious ways. The newspaper identified low-income schools with students at one grade level who struggled with basic skills—and students in the next grade who received nearly perfect scores or outperformed the state’s most elite districts.
One elementary school’s students scored so well that Oprah Winfrey featured it on a special about schools that “defy the odds.” But a teacher said her high-scoring students could barely write their own names, and when the same students went on to middle school, their scores plummeted. The state ultimately decided to investigate at least 700 schools. But for more than 600, the “investigation” consisted of simply asking schools to fill out a survey about their testing procedures. Taking many schools at their word, the state declared that the vast majority were innocent despite further evidence that some schools cleared of wrongdoing had actually cheated.
Can we stop this crap? The charter school is education by bingo machine. we hear the politicians tell the nation just how important education is to the country and then when the smell dissipates they cut funding and some even want to eliminate the education oversight……
Be honest! Education means NOTHING! It is a campaign slogan that gets votes from morons with the IQ of their hat size…….no amount of crap reporting will change the fact the the education in this country is in the toilet and our leaders have control of the flush lever…….
You can’t expect much out of Texas schools when you have the dominant political Party in this red state work to prevent the use of critical thinking and where the likes of Joe McCarthy are elevated in history and people like Thomas Jefferson are demoted by the Texas School Board Commission
Mississippi is trying to catch up with Texas……a sad educational system….
As long as the government is in charge of education this is the results you will continue to get.
I disagree….as long as profit is the motivator we will continue to have a crappy system….
Then why do “profit” motivated private schools out perform government schools?
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/markets-vs-monopolies-education-global-review-evidence
I do not think they out perform as a rule….we can always find one to focus on like the Rhees program in DC and find out it is a con…..
http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/the-pros-and-cons-of-charter/
I think there is plenty of evidence, even from your link, that it is a rule that private schools out perform government schools.
I did like the one con that the article pointed to for charter schools: “Charter schools have an unfair advantage when competing against district public schools since they tend to be smaller and free from regulations.” Who would have guessed that less government interferance would allow educators to do a better job.
FL, charter schools are a lottery, so a child’s educational fate is a guy with a bingo machine…….sorry again but regs are needed or you will have junk taught and it is not the teachers fault….there is a reason Southern schools underperformed……there needs to be standardized schooling……that way every person in the system gets the same education…..without it we have revisionists writing garbage and the end result is ….rampant stupidity…..
Not all private schools are charter schools. I agree that there are flaws in the charter school system, but it is a good start to fixing the education system that we have.
I also agree that some regulations are needed, but nearly as many as we currently have. I know this will set of the leftys but… there is no need for a federal department of education. Regulations can be handled on a state basis, the Federal DoE is a redundant waste of money. In fact, our standing in a world education ranking has dropped nearly every year since the create of the DoE.
“that way every person in the system gets the same education” That is a uptoian dream that can not happen. Kids learn differently and if that is not allowed to be accounted for then those students will be left behind. Because of standardized schooling and the federal carrot of funding to adhere to it (i.e. Race to the top) schools only teach to pass the standards and not to actually educate the students.
If givernment mandated standardized schooling was the solution why are we loosing the education battle at a faster rate in direct proportion to the amount of government intervention in to the educational process?
And that is why qwe have such a lame education system….the states…..there are about 7500 different school districts with no common agenda….
we are losing because education is not a priority……and because of that there is little progress being made and even fewer funds….
We did better before the Department of Education and schools are only getting worst the more government gets involved.
“we are losing because education is not a priority”, it is for my family and my conservative friends. As parents we take a personal interest in making sure our children are properly educated. It is the more liberal families I know that drop their kids off to a school and leave up to the school to educate their children, without being involved at all.
This is what government has trained generations of Americans to do. “Don’t worry about educating your children, we know whats best for them. Remember, it takes a federal village to raise your child for you so you can go to work and be a good consumer”.
If government standardized schooling is the answer, why has it failed? “No Child Left Behind” was a failure and now “Race to the Top” is a failure.
Fl, I hear a lot about it being important….but none of it registers when you look at what is being done in DC…..
A good question…..it has failed because it is about memorization not education…..and all recent education policies are failures because it is reform not change……there is a difference……
“but none of it registers when you look at what is being done in DC” Well, look at who controls Washington? Big business politicians (both GOP and DNC) that want a nation of indebted consumers.
“it has failed because it is about memorization not education”, that is all government standards require. If government standards have caused this why would you believe more government standards would change that?
I agree change it! But getting rid of the DOE and letting states control everything will be disastrous at best…..education is a campaign slogan to get votes and quickly abandoned once elected……
We can debate this forever….but until education becomes more than a vague promise it will continue to suck….
I agree with you that until we make a major change to government education it will continue to suck. Unfortunatly you and I will not be in a position to make that change on a national level, I wish we could. Thats why I work with my local school board to effect those children in my neighborhood and that effects the education of my own children.
I think you and I both agree that education should be where we focus the most and in reality is dismissed the easiest. It is sad that that will never change with the system we currently have.
I could go into a diatribe of why education is not that important…but that would lead to an ideological debate and we would both lose some sleep…LOL