Posted on 07/06/2007 11:46:50 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
After the eight Democratic presidential candidates agreed in their latest debate that public education is woefully underfunded, they all got into cars and drove through Washington, D.C., where teachers are relatively well paid, per pupil spending is through the roof and the schools are among the very worst in the nation, says Richard Cohen in the Miami Herald.
They all seemed to be missing the point, says Cohen:
-- Not a one of them even whispered a mild word of outrage about a public school system that spends $13,000 per child -- third highest among big-city school systems -- and produces pupils who score among the lowest in just about every category.
-- Further, not a single candidate offered anything remotely close to a call for real reform; instead, saying if only more money was allocated to these woe-is-me school systems, things would right themselves overnight.
The problem is not just underfunding, says Cohen. Nor is it racial segregation, as the candidates also decried. Despite their outrage at the recent Supreme Court ruling, the reality is that it has almost no application to the big-city school systems because most of these systems are overwhelmingly black or Hispanic:
-- Washington, D.C., has about 65,000 black students and about 3,500 whites.
-- Los Angeles has about one million Hispanic students and 285,000 whites.
-- Philadelphia has about 180,00 nonwhite students and 30,000 whites.
-- New York's borough of the Bronx has about 200,000 black or Hispanic students and nearly as many Asian/Pacific Islanders as whites (9,000).
Insofar as the Democratic presidential candidates talked about public school education and in so far as they mentioned the Supreme Court decision, they largely mouthed Democratic orthodoxy, says Cohen. But to the kid in the classroom or a parent bucking the bureaucracy, the rhetoric must have only sounded like hot air.
Source: Richard Cohen, "Expensive Illiterates," Miami Herald, July 5, 2007.
I can’t remember the make-up of my high school when I was there. Though it was diverse. It was fairly evenly spread out between everybody.
This should have been posted a few hours later when more people could respond. Education is a hot topic, and Democrat ignorance on the subject really makes me sizzle.
So much information, so little time.
yitbos
the problem is the teachers are NOT qualified. they are taught liberal values and not taught how to teach. they think the kids will learn reading by osmosis and keep telling parents to READ to the kids and the kids will get it.
I have been around the school district since 1990 with my kids and the amount of students that cannot read in grammar school levels is phenomenal.
I agree. I find that kids today feel it is more important to have self esteem than a proper education. I work in a lab and we get students from the local colleges to do their clinical rotations. I find it amazing that they passed their general studies courses because they can’t even conjugate a verb properly. They do,however, have no problem criticizing their lab instructors for not grading them to “their” expectations.
Let's see ---- ($13,000 per child) x (23 children per classroom) = $299,000 per class. If the teacher is paid $70,000/yr, that leaves $229,000 to be spent for administration, books, utilities, janitorial. Where does the rest of that money go????
In the middle and high schools in our our local public school districts there are more teachers not in the classroom during the day than there are teachers in class. Teachers average 3 class periods per day, and yet they still clamor for more teachers and the teachers whine about being overworked and underpaid.
The goals of increasing spending on one problem in the community might be noble, but should be realistic in terms of success and impact without other actions to improve the whole community, not just the part inside the school building for part of the day.
That is not necessarily true.They know exactly what is wrong with public education. That is the reason they send their children to private schools and colleges.
Peter Drucker, in his book “The New Realities”, has pointed out the two greatest faults of the education system: The removal of values and not preparing students for the world they will step into.
The big problems with public schools in particular are:
nonacademic curriculum starting in 1st grade
low expectations
illiterate teachers
too much overhead/administration
psychological “health” emphasis instead of academic merit
no discipline
Other than those things, the schools are just fine. /s
In our school district they announced with glee that two principals were promoted to administrative positions under the superintendent- which brings the total to three men who’s job it is to coordinate with the other district principals (nearly 30). So, it takes the Superintendent, 3 administrative positions, an Asst. Superintendent to manage 30 advanced degreed and highly paid professionals? This would kill any real business. With glee they also didn’t put the new cost to the taxpayers.
It is getting pathetic how they just layer it on with no thought as to how hard one has to work to pay for this. It’s all about job creation for the unionized mentality.
look, until we stop lieing about education ,kids are doomed to failure
1. get competition
2.make the teachers pass the tests necessary to qualify to teach the kids
here in Phoenix we have the Aimes test....a must pass must take test to get outta high school.....
three years ago all teachers here had to take that Aimes test..............wanna guess the mean average score ????
a 52 was the average......from our teachers
now a four year old knows that water in the gas will not start the lawn mower
Of course most Democrats can’t personally relate to the poor condition of some of our public schools because they went to private schools and likewise are sending their own children to them.
You’ve hit the nail on the head- the Democrats have to keep peolple dependent on the government for their own job security.
The suspension of reality is what the Democrats are all about, but this really puts a point on it.
For the utopian elites, reality is totally relative. They recognize few — if any — ABSOLUTES.
GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS THEN AND NOW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0lR1KQq2-U
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