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Gee, who do you put your trust in? |
Posted on 03/08/2006 4:32:16 AM PST by beaureguard
Teachers unions are mad at me. The New York State United Teachers demands I apologize for my "gutter level" journalism, "an irresponsible assault on public school students and teachers." This is because I hosted an ABC News TV special titled "Stupid in America," which pointed out:
-- American fourth graders do well on international tests, but by high school, Americans have fallen behind kids in most other countries.
-- The constant refrain that "public schools need more money" is nonsense. Many countries that spend significantly less on education do better than we do. School spending in America (adjusted for inflation) has more than tripled over the past 30 years, but national test scores are flat. The average per-pupil cost today is an astonishing $10,000 per student -- $200,000 per classroom! Think about how many teachers you could hire, and how much better you could do with that amount of money.
-- Most American parents give their kids' schools an A or B grade, but that's only because, without market competition, they don't know what they might have had. The educators who conduct the international tests say that most of the countries that do best are those that give school managers autonomy, and give parents and students the right to choose their schools. Competition forces private and public schools to improve.
-- There is little K-12 education competition in America because public schools are a government monopoly. Monopolies rarely innovate, and union-dominated monopolies, burdened with contracts filled with a hundred pages of suffocating rules, are worse. The head of New York City's schools told me that the union's rules "reward mediocrity."
All that angered the unions. But when they criticize my "bias and ignorance," I don't hear them refute the points listed above. They don't refute them because they can't. It's just a fact that rules that insist an energetic, hard-working teacher who makes learning fun must be paid exactly the same as a lazy, incompetent teacher are rules that promote mediocrity.
Ironically, before I did "Stupid in America," the New York teachers union wanted to give me an award. The United Federation of Teachers' Social Studies Conference wrote: "Our organization, ATSS/UFT, would be proud to present you with the Hubert H. Humphrey Humanitarian Award for the outstanding work which you have done for social causes. ... Your development and generous sponsorship of In the Classroom Media provide students with the opportunity to enhance their civics education. This is the highest award that we can give to an individual. Past honorees have included Mario Cuomo, Shirley Chisholm, Charles Schumer, Dolores Huerta, Major Owens, Charles Rangel ... "
Wow! Chuck Schumer, Charlie Rangel and me! Alas, after my education special aired, they decided not to give me the award. Apparently my work with In the Classroom Media -- which provides teachers with videos about the free market -- only helps kids as long as I stay away from the "social cause" most relevant to them: their education.
Instead, teachers' unions announced that Wednesday (3/8), they will hold demonstrations against me and ABC in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, and elsewhere. One police permit suggests the crowd outside my office will number 750-1,000 people. It should be interesting.
"We want to make sure that ABC hears the voices of incredibly hard-working teachers," says the union website, quoting New York City's UFT President Randi Weingarten. "The network needs to hear how unfair and biased those of you in the trenches believe their broadcast to have been."
I'm sorry that union teachers are mad at me. But when it comes to the union-dominated monopoly, the facts are inescapable. Many kids are miserable in bad schools. If they are not rich enough to move, or to pay for private school, they are trapped.
It doesn't have to be that way. We know what works: choice. That's what's brought Americans better computers, phones, movies, music, supermarkets -- most everything we have. Schoolchildren deserve the joyous benefits of market competition too.
Unions say, "education of the children is too important to be left to the vagaries of the market." The opposite is true. Education is too important to be left to the calcified union/government monopoly.
I bet they really wouldn't like the article I read the other day holding the NEA's feet to the fire for the rampant pedophilia within their ranks.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
If you've got a link, I'd love to read that.
Hurray for John Stossel!
Anyone have links to data rich sites comparing and analyzing student achievement?
Since these kinds of claims are everywhere, seems to me as a global economy our growth must be lagging behind, or stagnating, or else we're importing many of those finely educated foreign students to keep pace.
A Stossel article is always a must read for me!
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Gee, who do you put your trust in? |
IMO theres nothing wrong with any of this. Those who work hard and are interested move ahead. Those who arent, find their own level.
Imposing a japanese style suicidal curriculum on students will not help America.
NEA directed, Union controlled public education does not help America either.
As for suicidal curriculum, what's your data on that? Are there more suicides in Japan from their curriculum and education process than there are student shooting-murders in the US from the pervert led socially reprobate style of education taught in US public schools?
Here's a tidbit from my state that I caught yesterday.
www.news14charlotte.com/content/ local_news/?ArID=114742&SecID=2
Judge threatens to shut down schools
Updated: 3/4/2006 1:05 PM
By: News 14 Carolina
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A Superior Court judge wrote to North Carolina’s education leaders Friday, and he told them that low-performing high schools won’t open next year unless they meet certain criteria.
The consequence applies to high schools that have had poor test scores for the past five years -- high schools where less than 56 percent of students were at grade level. Judge Howard Manning said those schools will be allowed to open only if there is a new management or a valid plan under way.
When it comes to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, four schools are at risk. But Frances Haithcock, the school system’s interim superintendent, said Garinger, E.E. Waddell, West Charlotte and West Mecklenburg high schools won’t be shut down because the state has been involved with reconstituting them.
"There will be schools available,” Haithcock said. “I feel very hopeful that the state won’t even have to do anything other that what it’s doing right now. We are continuing to work the plan that we think and we're very optimistic about having the ability to move these schools.”
School board member Kaye McGarry believes Manning’s letter, which was sent to the state superintendent and the state board of education chairman, is a call to action.
“I think Judge Manning has been screaming at us to change and we have been resisting that and resisting it and resisting it,” she said. “I’m hoping with this and the task force that perhaps we may get some movement here.”
Manning also mentioned he was pleased to see CMS had set substantial target goals for student achievement and also created 9th-grade academies. He supported the findings from the CMS task force as well.
He wrapped up his letter saying that after five years of low performance, the grace period has run out.
According to 2005 tests scores, West Charlotte was the lowest-performing high school with a 36 percent composite score. Garinger had 42 percent, West Mecklenburg had 47 percent and E.E. Waddell had 48 percent.
Web Journalist: Lindsay Varner
What article? I would be interested to read it. It is something I always suspected but have not seen adressed.
I watched Stossel's special and it was very good, however, there will be no improvement in the education of American children until the American family re-stablizes.
If the teachers are mediocre then their students will be mediocre...it is the law of the top. Some of my best teachers came from the old school..they didn't take your crap or your excuses. They made you toe the line and do the work. I had one teacher who also taught my father. She was a math teacher. I also had her for homeroom and study hall....I always had my homework done (we couldn't got to the library without showing her our completed assignments) and I actually learned math in her classroom. But then she had a stroke and we got another teacher named Mr Lemon...his idea of teaching was to give 2 questions at the beginning of the period...you either passed or failed...oh an actually teaching the stuff before testing on it...? NOT A CHANCE...the rest of the time he spent telling the boys dirty jokes in the front of the classroom. It was the first "F" I ever got. He never taught anything. The next marking period we got a real teacher (because of all the complaints by parents) who actually taught math...I took my "F" to an "A+".
I think competition between schools is a great idea...it will keep the teachers and administrators sharp...and I believe innovation will only enhance the education of our kids. My kid sometimes astonishes me with some of the stuff she has "learned" so I let her read Free Republic and her social studies grades have soared...she is pulling 100 average this marking period alone.
It may be too late by the time my child is out of school to be able to benefit from a reformed educational system...so I do the best I can by speaking to her about things and issues of the day.
You're right. In suburban schools where there is an intact nuclear family and parents are involved in their children's education, students excel. The problem lies primarily in urban areas where children do not have family support and involvement in their lives and their role models are not their parents, but the newest, raunchiest rapper thug on the scene.
It's difficult for teachers to be miracle workers when a child's personal life is in shambles. Doesn't mean teachers can't be held more accountable, just that they can't perform miracles.
Stossel's great.
I'm sorry, I don't remember the name of the article, but I think I saw it here yesterday.
I have no doubt that some of the trouble we see in the education of kids does come from poor family structure. However, hardly a day goes by that I don't encounter a kid fresh out of high school who simply does not grasp the most basic concepts of math and science. It simply isn't being taught, IMO.
A close friend of mine is the music teacher at the local high school. He and many other teachers he works with send their kids to private school. That kinda says it all, doesn't it?
bump
What they seem unaware of is that the resentment is growing to undo that barely passed Constitutional provision that has effectively crippled the state and prevented addressing the deterioration of all truly necessary state infrastructure. Wait until that resentment is converted to action... their heads will explode.
Typical political response from an organization that is NOT interested in educating children.
We import many foreign students in math and science fields...
The NEA is one of the most pernicious, mendacious, undermining organizations in the country today, and just about owns the Democratic Party.
Imagine being in the same catagory as Mario Cuomo, Chuckie Schumer, and Charlie Rangle............good thing they refused to give him their "stupid" award. Encouraging article.
VOUCHERS!
Whereas I agree that the worst of the problem exists in impoverished urban areas, it must be noted that it always has. What has created the problem that we have now is that the traditionally more stable suburban areas are not stable anymore. In the mid-to-late 80s, it was the suburban moms who entered the workforce en masse that tipped the balance. Just because the homes in the suburbs look nicer doesn't mean the kids are receiving anymore attention there than they are in urban areas.
In New Orleans, I new several far-left progressive types that sent their kids to private Catholic schools instead of public schools...New Orleans schools were downright violent.
I used to whip their a$$es in debates about school vouchers and the teachers' union...(The had the nerve to disapprove of school vouchers while refusing to send their own kids to the broken down hell-holes that the city reffered to as "schools.")
In Northern Virginia where I now live, the suburban public schools are very good (indeed, great). Most mom's work. Not sure if your theory holds water.
If i knew there was going to be a 1000 union teachers outside my office, i would hang a banner on the side of the building.
Then i could get a picture of them together under the sign "Slackers Unite!"
I agree, but why do we have to spend hundreds of billions a year on education? Why do we have to endure calls for even more money? If they would just teach the kids the three Rs and leave out all the social engineering, we'd be a lot better off.
Excellent sourcing ... shouldn't be too hard to find.
I disagree...we need to educate children (including my own). As Stossel points out, the schools are not making the grade due to issues other than funding. If we tweak the system (i.e. break the union/state run monopoly) the results will be very good....
The conclusion is that mom and dad do OK with their kids, but once they're handed over to the teacher's union, their standardized test scores fall off the charts. That's in spite of the US spending more money on education than any country on the planet.
In addition to the Asian countries, we also get beaten by: Belgium, Netherlands, Canada, England, Australia, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Hungary and Finland.
Click on TIMSS for the gory details.
Those who are gifted are held back mercilessly by a system which seeks to mainstream the barely educable and will not separate students by ability, in alleged protection of their self esteem. The lowest common denominator prevails.
Before the self esteem crusade, students were separated in to groups based on demonstrated ability and the 'faster' groups learned far more, as each group moved at its own pace.
Our local church based schools give a far superior education at a fraction of the per pupil cost of the public schools (less than half the cost).
ping
Listening to the idiotic rants of the Colorado high school teacher in a supossed "class" recorded by one of his students, it is little wonder why by the time our kids get to high school their test scores drop.
In this 2003 report in re: Virginia schools,
"An examination of State data over the last five years suggests that as many as one in four Virginia students may not have graduated from high school within four years. In some divisions, it appears that this may be 40 percent or more of the students."
The sign would have to say, "Slakers UNTIE."
This one from the Grand Island Independent comes a bit closer to what I'm looking for.
Christensen challenges educators to reform high schools Nebraska education commissioner speaks candidly to educators at Grand Island conference
Nebraska Education Commissioner Doug Christensen warned educators Tuesday that unless public high schools are drastically reformed by 2014, "they will be lost to privatization."
[. . .]
He predicted public high schools will face increasing competition from charter schools, vouchers and business-run schools.
[. . .]
"In Colorado, they are planning five newly developed communities with housing and infrastructure," Christensen said. "They are gated communities and include their own schools."
He said high schools can only do what they are designed to do and nothing more. The problem is, high schools have not changed their basic design since the 1920s
[. . .]
In Nebraska, high schools are doing the best job ever of educating the top third of students, Christensen said.
Nebraska has the top ACT scores in the nation, it is in the top 10 in scores in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and its students are scoring at 80 percent proficiency on state standards, he said.
If Nebraska were considered a country instead of a state, it would be second only to Singapore in student achievement.
Singapore has a population of about 4.2 million people. Twenty percent of those are under age 15. The average household income is $34,500. Nebraska has a population of about 7.2 million people. Twenty percent of their population is under age 15. The median household income is $34,900.
The article suggests some useful questions, I think.
Of Nebraska's 90,000 high school kids, 13,000 are Latino, with many of the Latino students also English language learners. Thirty-five thousand kids are poor, 10,000 students have disabilities and 10,000 are mobile, which means they start the year in one school and finish in another.
There are 25,000 minority students, a classification that has a correlation to poverty and mobility.
Noting that certainly not all minority students come from poor households, Nebraska still has what, about 25 percent of their students poor, with disabilities or in mobile transition? What is Singapore's contrasting comparison, I wonder? Who does Singapore educate? Who do they test?
What is the structure of their (equivalent) high schools?
Christensen said the restructured high school should perhaps be concentric circles, with students at the center, with teachers in the next circle supporting student learning, principals in the next circle supporting teachers and school boards supporting the principal.
The "fatal flaw" for high schools is time, Christensen said. Students are not all going to learn at the same pace and at the same chronological age.
That is especially true for foreign-born students, who need to learn English, or who may have had a total of two years of education in their home country before entering high school.
[. . .]
The new model of education should be student outcomes, with progress shown by demonstration of proficiency, he said. Outcomes, though, depend on opportunities.
People cannot declare that American students will become first in the world in math and science without providing new opportunities for higher-level math and science courses, Christensen said
Plenty in this article to suggest Stossel, or anyone else making similar or opposing claims, ought to be looked at closely before buying whole hog into competitive education. The challenge is to find someplace warehousing publicly available online data that includes practical comparisons between and within countries and states. Rather a time intensive project, I would think.
I started to take a brush-up math for teachers class last summer -- promoted by the Dept of Education/ State of California. Part of the requirements for MATH teachers in this state. There were even guys with PhDs in math required to take these classes!!
It was taught by a woman who had majored in DRAMA!! Who taught that 'there are all sorts of ways to get the right answer.' The math people were up in arms -- 'math is logical and black-and-white.' Well, not in California, evidently.
This is the teachers' unions, imho, controlling classroom theories. It makes it really hard to get in the system from outside. And it makes it hard for parents to help the kids, if they are being taught in 'the new way.'
My homeschooled son wanted to go to school in 4th grade. We chose a little, relaxed school. His teacher told me -- 'We no longer do long division the way you taught your son.' I said, "Well, it works well, and that is really all you need -- a tool that works."
I would disagree. My wife is Japanese and has volunteered to do tutoring for FCAT testing here. She is appaulled by the lack of discipline and the very low, almost rudimentary, material being taught in schools here. Some people in the U.S. protest rote learning, but it works. When she first came to the U.S. as a high school exchange student, the math that was being taught was elementary school material in Japan. She also saw that there was more emphasis on extra-cirricular activities like sports and band and academics tooks a back seat. I tend to agree with that. If schools need money, they need to drop the extras and invest in their core objectives. If a business didn't focus on their primary mission, they'd go under. If schools can't focus on their core mission, they just ask for more money instead of prioritizing their resources.
I watched a clip of students in another country (possibly on "Around the world in 80 seconds"), the other day. It showed elementary school students sitting on rugs on the dirt. Each student had a small blackboard and two pieces of chalk. The students were given a sentence. The children wrote the sentence on the left side of the blackboard with their left hands in one language and on the right side with their right hands in another language - at the same time. They learn six languages. Amazing what kids can learn if they want to.
So--in order to say that they are hard working, they will skip school during the week and go stand on a street corner?
I taught Title 1 Math. It is a federally funded program in which I was supposed to give extra help, tutoring, etc to students that were not special ed, but falling behind in their test scores. It seems like an easy job. Then the government put so many regulations on what I wasn't allowed to do, it made it nearly impossible to do anything. I worked in the classroom with other teachers.
1. I WAS NOT allowed to present new material, only review, I was not allowed to do anything the regular teacher did not want me to do. Teachers are very territorial. One teacher would not let me do anything. I was trying to help one of my students with some problems he missed on a test, in a whisper, crouched down at his desk. The regular teacher called on the student I was helping and yelled at him for not paying attention!
2. I was not allowed to remove the students from the room for a small group setting. It might hurt their esteem. I was not allowed to remove them from the room suring recess, even just once a week.
3. I did have a certain amount of money to spend on each room and begged teachers to let me get stuff for their rooms. They didn't take me up on it.
How do you catch kids up if you aren't allowed to work with the kids during any other time than math class and the teacher doen't let you talk? Even when I talked to the higher ups, they said, sorry, it's the best you can do...At least in the junior high, kids would come to my room during study hall. Of course, schedules are so packed, they only get 1 study hall for a 12 week period during the year.
You think that, until you compare the performance of northern Virginia-area kids to the performance of European kids.
My kids are in the Montgomery County, Maryland schools, just across the river from NVA and consistently ranked among the best in the nation. They're on the honor roll. But they and their cohort can't hold a candle to the knowledge of European children who have the benefits of school choice, as Stossel's show demonstrated.
Even my high-school age daughter realized that after a recent trip to Europe.
Apparently the ultimate school choice, homeschooling, was edited out of his report. Too bad. So many people are worried that they can't homeschool, but more can than realize it. It's NOT rocket science in the elementary grades, and by the time the kids get to high school, there are tutors, or colleges that will allow kids to attend classes, or in some locations, co-op classes they could attend. There are almost unlimited online resources available for education at all levels!
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