Tag: Educational Policies

The Future Of Education?

Every year the media goes batshit crazy with education….they have endless shows and talks on the subject…..and each time we hear that the future of American education is charter schools….personally, I think it is a cope out by those who hate the idea of a public education…..but of course they trot out their paid consultants, think tanks, to do some creative writing to support their position….we hear about the highly successful school in NYC or the one in New Orleans…..but are these institutions the real future?

USAToday did a piece on two separate reports on charter schools……

• Compared with students in regular schools, children attending charter schools perform no better in reading and worse in math, according to a Department of Education study of 150 charters.

• Not so, according to a report from Harvard researcher Caroline Hoxby, who weighed results from charter schools in 36 states and found those students ahead in both reading and math.

What looks like conflicting research, though, is actually a matter of measuring the wrong things. Lumping all charter schools together is mostly useless. Charter schools range from experiments aimed at rescuing dropouts to programs providing performing arts students a school to sing or dance at. What’s to compare?

Parents considering charter schools need better advice than these apples-to-oranges studies. A better guide comes from independent education researchers who say the most successful charters:

The most talked about characteristic is the….INNOVATION……but take a closer look….

Often, what’s innovative about charter schools is not new teaching techniques but how the schools are run. The founders of the five Green Dot charter schools in Los Angeles organized a teachers union and pushed decision-making, including hiring, to the classroom level. That attracts talented teachers and raises salaries — the payoff from using half as many administrators as traditional Los Angeles schools.

The studies lumping charters together point to a problem: Not all charters are successful, and far too many low-performing charters are allowed to continue operating. Instead, mediocre learning results should be grounds for shutting some charters down.

Once again when the nation chooses to have the “education” discussion maybe they will focus on education and not some pie in the sky crap that is only as successful as its weakest linbk…and there are numerous weak links….

Our education is in deep do-do and the best we can do is a system controlled by a lottery…….explain just how this will make everything alright….I am sure that some millionaire somewhere will tell us this is the answer…….there are answers….but they are NOT found in the charter school BS!

Solutions For Higher Education

Have you checked out what it will cost to send your kid to college?  It is out of sight today and by tomorrow only millionaires will be able to afford a higher education for their children.  If you buy into the conversation about education being the savior of our nation, then how will the average person go about getting a university degree without having to give up their first born male?  How can your child get a better education without being in debt for the first 20 years of their adult life?  Are there any descent ideas on this problem?

Well, first of all, there are a couple of good ideas to help everyone get a higher education….and these are?

From an article in the Economist magazine…..

…..cost-cutting strategies were as follows. First, separate the funding of teaching and research. Research is a public good, he reasoned, but there is no reason why undergraduates should pay for it. Second, increase the student-teacher ratio. Business and law schools achieve good results with big classes. Why not other colleges? Mr Fried thinks that universities will be able to mix some small classes with big ones even if they have fewer teachers. Third, eliminate or consolidate programmes that attract few students. Fourth, puncture administrative bloat. The cost of administration per student soared by 61% in real terms between 1993 and 2007. Private research universities spend $7,000 a year per student on “administrative support”: not only deans and department heads but also psychologists, counsellors, human-resources implementation managers and so on. That is more than the entire cost of educating a student under Mr Fried’s scheme.

there are other ideas……..Shai Reshef, an educational entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist, is pioneering an even more radical idea. His University of the People offers free higher education (not counting the few hundred dollars it costs to process applications and mark exams), pitching itself to poor people in America and the rest of the world. The university does this by exploiting three resources: the goodwill of academic volunteers who want to help the poor, the availability of free “courseware” on the internet and the power of social networking. Some 2,000 academic volunteers have designed the courses and given the university some credibility. Tutors direct the students, who so far number 1,000 or so and hail from around the world, to the online courses. They also help to organise them into study groups, and then supervise from afar, dropping in on discussions and marking tests.

Sometimes when academics grouse that there is “never enough money”, they are justified—big science costs big bucks. But higher education is nevertheless marred by inefficiencies and skewed incentives. Students pay to be taught, but their professors are rewarded almost entirely for research. Mr Fried’s calculations suggest that one can slash costs without sacrificing much that students value. Mr Reshef’s experiment may fail, but there is no doubt that universities need more experimenters. The cost of tuition cannot forever rise faster than students’ ability to pay. Industries that cease to offer value for money sooner or later get shaken up. American universities are ripe for shaking.

There are always answers to the problems and education is NO different….the problem is NO one wants to assert themselves into the conversation for fear of reprisals….this is why we have the media making up slogans and doing features but offering NO doable answers to the problem…..anyone can point out the problem but finding solutions that do not favor one part of society over another is NOT that easy…..and next there needs to be the will to make education better……

In today’s country….there is NO will!

Without that will….there is NO future!

The Education Nation?

What moron came up with that tag?

For about a month now, the companies of NBC have been pushing a bunch of stories about the education in the US……mostly about what is being done properly….which is a good thing…but they seldom touch on what is being done wrong……the cuts in education, the politicians that hate education, the pure BS coming from the president and his group of liars……with these guys in charge there is NO education nation, just a nation of minimum wage earners….why?  The country and the education system has FAILED the people!

The “special” that the networks do to promote a better understanding of education and the policies has FAILED and is a waste of time.  Why?  No one gives a sh*t!  It is far more important for Americans to worry about who gets married or who has an abortion or even how many guns you want to buy and while you are jerking off with minor crap the country is dying!

Even if all the economic schemes work well this country is still doomed to mediocrity because the most important thing, especially at election time,  is education….and yet we turn a blind eye at all the cuts to that system….as long as you put little social desires above the only thing that could possibly save this country, then the country is truly DOOMED!

Until we Americans learn how to get involved and demand our rights and needs we will be marginalized and the scum that is ruining this country will be able to function freely…….we need to react the way the Chileans have…..

From an article written be Luis Arce…….

Some 120,000 students, teachers and members of other unions marched on Thursday, June 30, in Chile to defend public education and oppose the proliferation of private, for-profit schools and universities.The demonstrators charge that the poorest youth are concentrated in public schools, where they receive an inferior education. The students are demanding that all Chileans be given the right to a higher education and that the government provide the necessary scholarships.

We Americans need to act as the Chileans…..we need to get involved…..we need to have massive protests, especially in Washington and in the offices of the thieves we have running this country……STOP!  All the talk is doing NOTHING to make the US number one……without education we will revert to the days of the 1770’s….rich guys and indentured servants……

Without education…the US has NO future!

Your move!

Charter Schools: The Future

For the last couple years the media and many politicians have been pushing the concept of charter schools as the future and the program that prepares our children for college and then to retake our place in the industrial world that we have let slip through our grubby little fingers…….

Charter schools….that program where children are accepted to special schools that run differently than traditional public schools……it is a LOTTO!  The future of your child is in the hands of Bozo the Clown with a bingo machine……

Charter schools….the attempt to eliminate teacher’s tenure, attempt to break the back of the teachers union…all in the name of your children and education…..

But all the news and all the visitations have shown that the charter schools are a ripping success….at least according to the media and those pushing a lotto schooling for the kids…..but what is the real news about charter schools?

Let us look at those in New York since these are the ones that the media focuses the most heavily on…in a report issued by the Department of Education…….

the graduation rate in 2009, the last year for which figures are public, was 77%. But only 41% of high-school students were prepared for a career or college, the state said. The state defines students as college- and career-ready if they score at least an 80 on the state’s math Regents exam and at least a 75 on the English Regents exam. New York students receive a high-school diploma if they achieve a score of at least 65 on Regents tests.The state education department said that in New York City, only 23% of graduating high-school students meet the college- and career-ready standard, compared with a graduation rate of 65% among general-education students.

There was bad news for charter schools as well. Of the 49 percent of students who graduated from a charter school, just 10 percent were college- and career-ready, according to the report.

So, the hip new program is NOT…I repeat…..Is NOT, the glowing success that it is painted as being….the god-like charter schools NO more prepare grads for college than regular public schools…..PLEASE!  Stop the lies!  Find a real solution for a real problem……quit putting band-aids on gunshot wounds……

Education: The Only Future!

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Education

I wish Americans would hurry along and finally and totally be tired of the education merry-go-round…..The Pres gives it lip service…the Repubs have a plan….the media reports on it endlessly….and this is a thing that has gone on and on for 50 years or so ….and what do we have in return?  The 34th most successful education system in the world…..now there is something for the pigs in Washington to be proud of…all their hard work (that is sarcasm) has really paid off in 50 years…….

New York has been a corner stone of ed reform with the success of their charter schools….but wait it is so important that…..

Funding to New York’s schools and Medicaid program would get slashed under a budget unveiled by newly installed Gov. Andrew Cuomo Tuesday.Seeking to close a $10 billion budget deficit, Cuomo is proposing reducing school aid by $1.5 billion and Medicaid by $982 million.

So much for the importance of education……

But what about the truth……the truth is that if the Repubs get their way on education….then your children’s future will depend on a coupon book or the educational lotto…..where the future depends on a moron and a bingo ball machine…..now there is MORE to be proud of…….

But what about the American people?  Where do they stand on education?

In a recent Gallup poll on where should cuts be made in federal spending…the top place was Defense and further down the poll was education…..at the bottom….where 32% said that education should be cut….it was at the bottom of the list….good news, right?

Think about it…people!  That is about 1 in 3 that would cut education….or about 33% of the people…..in other terms…if there are 300 million Americans….then 100 million would cut education……NOW!  Does that sound like a country that is too concerned about improving the educational standards of the country?

This in a country that still is afraid to teach evolution in some areas…..from an article ……

Our data show that these teachers understandably want to avoid controversy. Often they have not taken a course in evolution and they lack confidence in their ability to defend it. Their strategies for avoiding controversy are varied, but three were especially common and each has the effect of undermining science. Some teach evolutionary biology as though it only applies to molecular biology—completely ignoring macroevolution of species. At best, this approach sacrifices a rich understanding of the diversity of species. At worst it lends credence to the creationist claim that there is no evidence for one species giving rise to others.

Others defend the teaching of evolution as a necessary evil, using state examination requirements as a convenient means to disassociate themselves from the very material they are expected to teach. These examinations have only been recently introduced in most states. Yet, many teachers told us that they tell students that it does not matter if they really “believe” in evolution, so long as they know it for the test. One Michigan teacher tells students that they need to understand evolution because the biology curriculum “is organized as if evolution is true”.

The president is concerned….the Repubs are concerned….the media is concerned….the people are concerned……but absolutely NOTHING proves that concerned.  The faux concern for education in the US is one of the most laughable positions of either party…….We may have a lot to look forward to in the future…..but a better educated child is NOT…repeat…NOT one of those things!

Education: Our Bright Future

Today the boys and gals are back to work, all 3 days a week, that is, Washington will be a buzz of health reform, cap and trade, investigations and, you guessed it…..education.

The smug egocentric media is all a tither with a week or two a year pushing the pros of the education system…their biggy is the “charter school” experiment that is having some good results…..however, the truth is that it is a lottery and we are betting on the roll of a white bingo ball…sounds like an excellent plan for our children’s future…..wouldn’t you say?

The first humorous thing is the the media types that are so gung-ho send their children to private schools and none of the stuff they are championed concerns them…..they spend time telling us the good things that the country is doing and the practices that we should continue….once again, the problem is …..we have this moments every year and every year our educational system gets worse….but this year with this Congress everything will be better…..(pause here for raucous laughter)……..

The president will do his part…….

President Obama is ready to turn education reform into the new priority for his administration and will outline his goals during the State of the Union address. “But trouble signs are already emerging,” reports the Associated Press. There has been lots of talk in Washington lately about how education might offer the White House the best chance for bipartisan legislation, but a number of issues could end up derailing the efforts. Democrats want a full overhaul of No Child Left Behind and insist it has to be done this year, before the 2012 campaign takes over the political agenda. Republicans, on the other hand, favor an incremental approach and insist they will not approve any new spending.  “I like the piecemeal approach,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California. “If you do it in bite-size pieces, you can tell what needs to be tweaked as you go.”

Once again the education in this country will be NOT as important as it should be…..and just as usual our children will pay the price of a DO NOTHING government……

One For The Books

I would like to speak on one of Info Ink’s favorite whackos-in-residence, one Michele Bachmann, Rep. from the great state of Minnesota…it seems that with the new Congress, the 112th to be exact, Ms Bachmann wants to bring in experts to teach the Constitution to lawmakers…..

Any Fox News fan will tell you that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is one of Fox’s favorite members of Congress. To Special Report anchor Bret Baier, she’s “[a]ttractive, energetic, a GOP headliner.” To Fox Business host Andrew Napolitano, she’s a “well-known expert on the Constitution.” To Glenn Beck, she’s “one of the good guys,” and according to him, we “need more people like” her in office.

To other members of Congress, Bachmann is also the founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, and Bachmann has said that in this role, she plans to start holding classes on the Constitution for members of Congress.While Napolitano was guest-hosting the October 12 edition of Glenn Beck, Bachmann said to him: “I’m asking experts from around the country to come in every week and teach our constitutional principles. And Judge, I’ll ask you right now on national TV if you’ll come in and be one of our experts and lead our members of Congress in these principles.” She continued, “I’m serious about this, because we have to make sure that they know what it is that we’re swearing to uphold”:

Under normal circumstances I would be all in favor of anyone learning more about the Constitution and how it works and what it says……B U T!

My question now is….should not the people that we elect to govern already have knowledge of the Constitution and how it works?  If people are elected to govern in our name,  should they already have a working knowledge of the document?

If not, why would we vote for someone+ that does not know the major document of governance in the US?

Ms Bachmann is NOT doing much to restore confidence in our elected officials if they do NOT know the Constitution……This is the most idiotic piece of crap ever uttered by someone that claims to be an expert on the Constitution about her fellow representatives…..if these wealthy people do not know the Constitution then who will they be governing the country for?  You already know that answer….even if you do not want to face the truth…..a hint…..IT IS NOT YOU!

The Education Nation?

We are in the midst of a week long look at our educational standards and programs….every president and politician that I can recall from the earliest days of my political meanderings has said the same thing…over and over and over…….that children are our future….that education will preserve the middle class….on and on……and what has been done with all the rhetoric?  Not a damn thing!  We are 25th or so in the world as far as education goes…….

So when Obama and his minions get on the tube and spout their diatribes about the need for education…they are doing NOTHING that has not been done in the past……what do they want to do?  Well, as best as I can say…they want to reform the educational system in the US…..the key word there is REFORM….the word means NOTHING!  We have been reforming education for decades and what has it got us?  Bush did it….Clinton did it….Bush II did it….they all have done it……so far what have they accomplished?  Just making the bad situation worse…..it appears that NONE of these people truly want to change the education system……

Look at the Obama initiatives…the Race To The Top…reform and it will be crapped on as soon as another prez takes over…the same with Bush’s No Child Left Behind…..crap!  These programs stress retention in the children, not comprehension…and then there are the “Charter schools”  that everyone in the media is so damn proud of…they are a lottery…so your child’s education is in the hands of some idiot with a bingo machine…is this what you want for your children?  And each presidency has trotted out its Sec. of Education over and over and has told the American people that all would get better….guess what?  It was a piece of crap 25 years ago and it is a piece of crap NOW!

People, let us be honest….if you want to make the US educational system better and I mean much better….then forget reform and look for real change…it may take a generation but it will be worth it if the children are truly the focus of this issue.

I know I have bitched a lot….but what is the answer…..IMO, Finland…they have the number one education system in the world…..

First of all, “there is a near absence of poverty,” says Julie Walker, a board member of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Walker visited Finland, along with Sweden and Denmark, with a delegation from the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) in late 2007. “They have socialized medicine and much more educational funding,” she adds. For residents, school lunches are free, preschool is free, college is free. “Children come to school ready to learn. They come to school healthy. That’s not a problem the United States has solved yet.”

The second reason is all students’ fluency with languages. Most students know three languages: Finnish, Swedish, and English.“They are way ahead of the game on the language side,” says the National School Boards Association’s Ann Flynn, who made the trip with CoSN. “Nearly every student can communicate in English as well as in their native tongue.

”Although Finnish children don’t start formal schooling until the age of 7, by the end of their first year, they all know how to read and write, says Bryan Luizzi, principal of Brookfield High School in Connecticut. Luizzi visited the country this year with a Connecticut contingent from Education Connection.

The third reason is the degree of respect and trust teachers are given in Finland. Walker compared it to the status that doctors enjoy in the United States.

One of the reasons for that reverence is how hard it is to become a teacher in Finland. Only one of eight applicants to teacher education programs is accepted; each teacher has a master’s degree.

Salaries are roughly comparable, and in total Finland spends about $1,200 less per student than the United States’ $8,700 per-pupil average.

The key to the success of Finland is a long term plan….not some lame ass reform that can be overturned by the next person to sit of the WH throne…..there are NO short-term fixes for education…either you are in in it all the way or you continue the pathetic pace that the US has today.  American politicians are NOT prepared to do what is necessary to make America strong…..as long as they (politicians) get their paycheck and their “donations” they are willing to screw the children out of their education…..and people ignore and continue their carelessness…and you are surprised that we are not number one……
“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”   Gilbert Chesterton

What are we leaving the next generation?

Is Education Under Attack?

The news is just horrible!  Education is taking it in the…….ear.  Students are graduating as idiots,  teachers are being attacked on all sides, and the money is drying up, both nationally and locally.

Recently I read a report of a town in Oklahoma where 16% of the seniors could NOT name the first president of the US……another report when asking a honor student to name the 49th and 50th state….and the answer was Hawaii and Puerto Rico…..and in ALL states the budgets for schools is stretched thin, to the point of one state looking at the possibility of a 4 day school week……

Speaking before an audience of business executives at the US Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Obama hailed the decision to fire the entire teaching and support staff at Central Falls High after they rejected demands to work extra hours without pay.

He defended such measures as critical to implementing the national strategy of Education Secretary Arne Duncan to deal with 5,000 of the nation’s “lowest performing” schools, overwhelmingly located in the most impoverished areas of the country. In order to qualify for federal funding, school districts have the option of closing a school outright, handing it over to a charter school or school management company, imposing a longer school day and other attacks on teachers, or firing the staff and rehiring only half back.

This anti-education agenda is being expanded by Obama. His administration is dedicated to carrying through the long sought program of the Republican right to gut the public schools and make decent education a privilege of the wealthy, rather than a right of all.

In order to pay for the Wall Street bailout, the administration is presiding over massive cuts in public school systems across the country, along with reductions in other vitally needed social services.

It is precisely the egalitarian aspect of public education that has long been the target of the most right-wing political forces, including free market economist Milton Friedman, who denounced the public schools as a “socialist enterprise” run by the teachers’ unions. Their repeated efforts to introduce a class-based education system, however, were rebuffed time and again by the population, which Friedman denounced for its “collectivist outlook.”

Education, one of the so-called “give a ways”, is one that the country cannot afford to destroy or underfund….the country needs an educated population….business needs it, science needs it and most of all POLITICS definitely needs it.

Education Reform?

As always, there is a plan to reform the educational system in the US…there always a plan….and as of yet there has been limited success…..it all looks good on paper but the students are the ones the suffer later in life…..I know, how can that be?

If Obama and the so called experts are right then education is the key to a better life for Americans….and is the answer to stopping the slide of our industrial base…..that is if they are correct….but how will they guarantee a better educational system?

President Barack Obama pledged early on to make improving America’s schools a priority, and changes he is proposing this week signal a much-needed overhaul of the nearly decade-old No Child Left Behind Act. Rather than doling out federal education aid based on the poverty level in a school district, as has been the practice for years, the Obama administration intends to distribute aid based on school systems’ willingness to reform.

Nick Anderson of the WaPo writes;

As legions of schools nationwide fall short of academic targets, the Obama administration proposed Monday to toss out the pass-fail measure that for 15 years has been the bedrock of the school accountability system and replace it with an index that would reward educators who prepare students for college and careers.

The shift, if approved by Congress, would force a wholesale rethinking of school testing standards eight years after enactment of the No Child Left Behind law put a spotlight on disparities in achievement among groups of students.

The changes would reach far into the classroom, potentially affecting how teachers prepare for annual state tests, which students get extra help and what subjects are taught.

Mr. Obama wants to preserve the overall goals of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, especially the idea that all students, regardless of their race or background or where they go to school, should be expected to succeed. But he also recognizes that the way some elements of the law have been implemented – such as the requirement to make “adequate yearly progress” – has diverted education policy toward a numbers game that is overly reliant on test scores, which may or may not provide an accurate measure of how well students are learning.

Under the current system, bad schools can escape with few sanctions, while those that are forced to reconstitute themselves often get very little support to do so. And the lack of nuance in the testing system can make a chronically failing school appear nearly indistinguishable from a high-achieving school that simply is having a bad year.

Okay with all that said I want to voice a concern of mine…….for years of lecturing and talking with students I have seen an amazing thing happening…..what, Professor?……students as a whole are dumber than a rotten turnip……recently students did not know who the first prez of the US was….or just where Afghanistan was located on a map…….or the Law of Diminishing returns…..or even how the US budget process was approached….my point is something is sadly missing in the education of American kids….

The problem as I see it….the kids retain info longer enough to take a test and then it is forgotten……we have a comprehension problem….students do not comprehend the subjects they are taught….they retain it to take tests and make the grade so school can get its pat on the back and its Fed funds…..sorry that is NOT teaching kids….that is programming them!

As always, they will blame the teachers for any problems that reforms face……it is always the teachers fault…..that is because there are so many “bad” teachers  (this is sarcasm)……..it is more like another attempt to break the hold of teacher’s unions….the kids suffer from really poor education just to break a union……

The whole test score thing is just bullsh*t……a way to educate kids needs to be found….they have had enough programming……absurdity has long been the reaction to education……all plans as they are now have been a failure at educating the kids….but they keep using the same failed process over and over…it is like they do not want the kids to have adequate knowledge