Posted on 11/22/2010, 12:47:55 PM by Kaslin
We, the American public, hold it as an article of faith that those responsible for devising and implementing public policy have our best interests at heart. Our best minds are hard at work, striving to make the world a better place. Our elected officials are dedicated to protecting our freedoms, increasing our prosperity, and securing justice for all.
What, then, is the public to assume when, in spite of the best efforts of our most brilliant thinkers and politicians, freedoms erode, prosperity decreases, and for a great many, justice seems elusive? Surely, sinister forces must be at work.
Let us take for an example the nation’s system of public education. For years, American taxpayers have been sold on a triad of public policy fixes for public education. In order to improve student performance, state and federal governments must dedicate a greater portion of their budgetary dollars to education; class sizes must be reduced, and there must be greater oversight by the federal government. So fervent is the belief in this holy trinity of education, that to even ponder the efficacy of the federal Department of Education is seen as heresy. Any politician who attempts to curb the unrestricted flow of tax dollars to public schools is accused of not wanting to “invest in education.”
And yet, increases in spending have not resulted in a corresponding increase in student achievement. Studies have shown that over the last 50 years, student proficiency in math and English has shown little improvement even as spending and federal government oversight has increased and class size has decreased. Given the brilliance and dedication of our public servants, the failure of significant academic gains to materialize, in spite of billions spent on education, can only be the devil’s work.
And if you are a black man, the devil must, indeed, be working overtime.
Information recently culled from the National Assessment for Educational Progress, based on national math and reading tests given to students in the fourth and eighth grades, revealed some rather disheartening results. According to the New York Times, the report paints a picture for black males that is, “even bleaker than generally known.”
In 2009, math scores for black boys lagged behind those of both Hispanic boys and girls, and black males fell behind white boys by an average of 30 points, which is interpreted as three academic grades. Black males drop out of high school at a rate twice as high as white males and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower. In short, the report shows that black males fall behind academically early on and never regain ground.
These are not students failing because they do not have access to the internet or don’t have Olympic sized swimming pools. The sad fact is that the report demonstrates that middle-class black boys are scoring about as well as poor white boys. These are students who are not proficient in the basics of math and English.
The social cost of this failure is not to be underestimated.
Half of these students will drop out of high school; lacking a high school diploma and being functionally illiterate will qualify them for manual labor, which is steadily in the decline. They will join the ranks of the chronically unemployed; many of these men will make a life hustling on the streets and eventually become involved in the criminal justice system. Criminal records will make these men more unemployable, which will make it even more unlikely that they will have the financial means to support the children they father. It is a hellish cycle that will repeat generation after generation.
Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, says, “There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten.” Ferguson gives voice to something that many of us have long suspected: how well children perform in school depends, to a great extent, on the kind of training they receive in the home.
Battling the dark forces aligned against our children may necessitate the asking of some uncomfortable questions. For instance, is the continued academic under-performance of black boys the result of a failure of the educational system? Or, is the issue rooted in black culture?
Of course, we can always avoid the discomfort of those questions and continue to rely on the original thinking of our best and brightest. In response to the chilling figures presented in the report, the authors have come up with the original idea of urging Congress to “appropriate more money for schools.”
ML/NJ
....anything and everything the federal government gets involved in gets destroyed.
Here’s my idea. We’ll keep the national math and reading tests but instead of dealing with schools, curriculum and teachers, we’ll leave them alone go directly to the parents and kids. If a kid does well on the test his parents will get a financial incentive.
The teachers won’t have to worry about teaching to the test or being punished for having a class that doesn’t want to learn. Parents will push for more after-school learning and a better academic program in the schools. They will also be able to compare their child’s performance with everyone else in the country.
There are two words which explain why: Organized Labor.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha < breathe > hahahahahahahahahah.
One of the stupidest notions bedeviling American education policy (NOT U.S. education policy, which is a hopeless mess) is that most parents a) understand what education is, b) desire such for their children, and c) will support measures to bring it about.
All 3 are demonstrably false.
A bare majority of parents will support (perhaps) false promises and a fake system pretending to educate their children.
The reality is, compulsory education, public or otherwise, is a snare and a delusion.
The only system which could possibly work is a competitive scholarship program where students who desired to progress after grade 5 would compete, with increasingly difficult (but not curved) exams to obtain funding for the next year.
Perhaps there could be an elite exam for the top 1% which would grant four years of funding for competitive high schools.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! That's a good one. I haven't thought that since I was in grade school. Maybe junior high.
If that's true, then it is no wonder that Americans are a bunch of slave sheep getting fat for the slaughter.
Here's my idea. You explain why and how the federal government can do that under the US Constitution.
hint: it can't
Does anyone actually believe that educating people is the purpose of government schools? The purpose of government schools is to dull and dumb-down the minds of the populace so the enlightened marxist leaders can implement the workers’ paradise.
If we actually cared about the kids, we would abolish these government run indoctrination camps immediately.
But, I know, your kid goes to an excellent school, with better than average teachers. And the marxist crap they read all day really has no influence on them that your 15 minutes with them each week can’t counteract.
“The only system which could possibly work is a competitive scholarship program where students who desired to progress after grade 5 would compete, with increasingly difficult (but not curved) exams to obtain funding for the next year.”
That’s very similar to what I was getting at. You are absolutely right. Most parents don’t care about academics. The most important thing for them is for their kids to be ‘normal’ and not much smarter than anyone else. This is sort of like educational socialism. Everyone must be the same.
Yet they can be competitive if they want to. Just look at any Little League game and you will see lots of parents pushing for their kids to win.
Perhaps there could be an elite exam for the top 1% which would grant four years of funding for competitive high schools.
You know, I'm an engineer. I have to learn new stuff constantly. I don't need a bureaucracy or a scholarship program or competitive exams to learn new stuff to do my job. I just do it.
Here's a crazy idea. If you want to be educated or if you want your kids to be educated, YOU do it yourself and you don't rely on some sort of government run bureaucracy to tell you your kid is worthy of learning algebra because he scored well enough on a test.
This sounds a lot like those soul-crushing and dream-stealing school exams in Europe.
Why must we have government involved in education? Why is this a basic assumption? Why can we not try freedom?
“And yet, increases in spending have not resulted in a corresponding increase in student achievement. Studies have shown that over the last 50 years, student proficiency in math and English has shown little improvement even as spending and federal government oversight has increased and class size has decreased.”
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In other news, fifty years ago I was a tall, skinny sixteen year old with a thick head of blond hair, now I am a tall, overly muscled, heavy, white haired, baggy eyed sixty six year old with a thinning head of white hair and a white beard, the past fifty years have shown “little improvement” in my looks even as waist size and federal government oversight has increased and my (censored) size has decreased.
Little improvement my eye, we have college graduates all over this state who couldn’t pass an exam to get INTO high school fifty years ago. They don’t know the history and English that I learned in grade school. The federal government has destroyed public education. When public schools were county schools they were immeasurably superior to what we have now. We have school TEACHERS now who couldn’t pass the high school final exams from 1962!
It is staggering to see how many people really believe that. I think that every parent I've every talked with is grateful for the fact that their child goes to an above average school that has successfully avoided all the problems that those "other" schools have.
“Here’s my idea. You explain why and how the federal government can do that under the US Constitution.”
Article I Section 8
The Congress shall have Power...
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts
Another point: these tests aren’t mandatory. Nobody (schools, teachers, etc) will be punished if they refuse to take the test or do poorly. This isn’t the case with NCLB
I fail to see how giving people tests promotes science and the useful arts. That’s just making busy work for test administrators.
That power usually has been understood as setting up a patent office for people that already made a scientific discovery or useful thing.
Not buying it.
“Here’s a crazy idea. If you want to be educated or if you want your kids to be educated, YOU do it yourself “
They won’t educate themselves but they will vote to tax you for your hard work. That’s really the basic problem.
What about all of the other funding for basic science?
Cut it all. I think that we have seen that it becomes politicized and useless, at best, or harmful anyway. See global warming/climate change research funded by the government.
The test administrators will probably unionize and make $150K per year. Who writes the tests? Why do we not see an inherent danger in having the federal government propose a “national” test that sets standards?
What would be in the test and what would be left out?
Still, it could be, and probably would be, used as a social engineering tool.
Public education is beginning to be a total failure and is getting worse.
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