Posted on 02/15/2011 4:29:04 AM PST by Kaslin
Former first lady Barbara Bush said on Greta Van Susteren's "On the Record" this past week: "We've got a real problem in public schools. ... This is a national crisis. It's as bad as anything in our country."
When Van Susteren was pointing out from Bush's own op-ed piece that "Texas (is) 36th in the nation in high-school graduates (and) 3.8 million Texans don't have a high-school diploma," Bush said, "No more, you're killing us."
Bush was commendably protecting Texas pride as she told Van Susteren not to cite any further degrading statistics about the state of Lone Star education, though she herself references it in her op-ed piece:
--Texas ranks 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.
--Texas ranks 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.
Such low verbal and literacy scores make it even more unbelievable that just this past week, some of the state's educational administrators joined the feds in seeking to mandate Arabic classes for Texas children. No joke!
The Arabic studies program -- funded by a five-year, $1.3 million Foreign Language Assistance Program federal grant -- was to begin this semester at Cross Timbers Intermediate School and then spread to neighboring schools in the Mansfield Independent School District.
Thank God for the parental passions and patriot fires of the almost 200 parents who showed up at a meeting last week to question the wisdom of school officials. They are fighting in their own personal education Alamo and presently have the upper hand. For the moment, the school district has backed off plans for its Arabic studies program.
With 14 percent of American adults (32 million) incapable of reading a newspaper or instructions on a prescription bottle, don't you think federal monies could be put to better use by helping Americans learn to read and write English?
I appreciate Bush's non-politically correct stance on the primacy of English in America, which she echoed to Van Susteren: "I'm against English as a second language. My great-grandmother came here as a German. She didn't have someone give her English as a second language. She learned it in three months. It's survival. And you see it in schools all around now where you're allowed to speak English only, and you sink or swim. And they swim, because they're immigrants from all different countries. I've seen a school in Boston where they asked me to read, and I said, 'Read? They all speak 80 different languages.' But in three months, they learned English."
What Bush and I (and others in this educational reform movement) are essentially calling all of us to do is fight in a local education Alamo! To square off and fight against all the negative forces that besiege our children and impede their proper education. You don't have to have kids to engage in this culture war; you only have to be concerned about their future -- America's future.
It is people like the 200 parents helping to overturn that Texas school district's decision to mandate classes on Arabic who are showing the way. They prove another point Bush made to Van Susteren: "I don't think government can do everything at all. Parents, grandparents, neighbors, churches, everybody ... we've got to get ourselves geared up and not be lazy parents and not be lazy neighbors, but we've got to help children."
The only way to get America and its educational system back on track is to take back the primary role of parenting from teachers and other societal guardians (including Big Brother government). That also includes our not expecting those who lead Sunday schools to be the primary spiritual teachers of our children, rather owning that area of their maturation, as well.
What U.S. educational reform entails is that we all find a place in the battle. It might mean that you join an influential group that makes decisions in your local schools or pressures those who do.
What I'm saying is this: Be proactive. Don't wait for first lady Michelle Obama to correct your children's school diet before you do something about it. Ensure that civic organizations in your area, including tea party groups and churches, are activists for your public schools. Call parishioners out of the pews and into school community outreach.
My wife, Gena, and I are fighting for the next generation, and our life mission is to take physical education up a notch in public schools by offering our KickStart Kids program. For years, we also have supported The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, and we encourage you to do the same by going to its official website, at http://www.BarbaraBushFoundation.com.
It all comes down to one question every citizen in our country must answer: Are you spectating or fighting for America's children in your local education Alamo?
How are students going to do well in the SATs if they can’t speak English? If you take those out of the calculation where would Texas rank?
Barbara Bush is only interested in education because she is working to sell more of Neil’s computer crap to school districts. Don’t be fooled. She isn’t a meek little old grandma, she and most of her family are in it for the money.
I spent 21 years in Texas public education as a teacher and administrator. Texas school districts are all independent entities - that’s why there’s an “I” in their acronyms, so state-wide stats are misleading as there is not state school system. I am not arguing there should be. A education “map” would reveal that the stats are skewed by the Rio Grande Valley, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and El Paso where all the usual urban school problems exist along with the cultural pressures in some Hispanic communities for boys to get jobs and for girls to become mothers.
Also, no teacher unions enjoy collective bargaining rights or the right to strike in Texas - that’s a good thing!
Salaries mean nothing without the context of cost of living. Texas is an easy state to live in economically so the dollar goes a lot farther for housing, taxes and essentials.
Not almost...
Went in to a WalMart 5 years ago not far from the Galleria in Houston. I was looking for bottled water. I stopped 3 separate employees to ask where the bottled water was and not one of them could understand me. And don't get me started on drive through fast food... The menu's should be in Spanish
Actually, very few American schools ever fully adopted Dewey’s ideas. But in fact, some of his ideas work very well for some types of students in some types of learning situations. The big problem facing U.S. schooling today is our continuing effort to have a one-size-fits-all policy for all schools and all students. NCLB is not only largely a failure, but has had a negative impact on many schools and students.
Bottom line? More choice, vouchers, charter schools, and less federal meddling.
I tell you what—I do NOT want to see America sacrifice its basic ideas about schooling just to raise test scores to South Korean levels. As other’s have pointed out, our students compare fairly well, once you control for race, nationality, socioeconomic status, etc.
Though there are aspects of Asian schooling that are admirable, Asian youth pay a tremendous price for many of them. For example, the only kids in Taiwan who play Little League baseball are those for whom it has already been determined that academic learning would be largely a waste of time. There are no serious school music or drama performances in most Asian schools. Very little in the way of art. No after-school soccer, etc.
Liberalism is killing the country
EXACTLY...her NWO boys did everything possible to keep the border open and adopt these precious pets that have bankrupted states and destroyed our schools. When I heard her on TV on this topic...I thought I was going to blow a valve. SOMEBODY NEEDS TO GIVE BIG-MOUTH BABS A WAKE-UP CALL!
My Master's degree is in instructional design and educational technology. It is not the schools that adopt Dewey's ideas. It is the curriculum designers and the text book writers. It happens way before it gets to the schools. All the schools can do is decided between one Dewey-inspired textbook or another Dewey-inspired textbook.
This is why I agree completely with your conclusion that home schooling, vouchers and independent charter schools that use independent, individually chosen source materials and curricula are extremely important.
And the original intent of getting control of education away from the Feds and unions and back to the communities and parents is essential, too. That's where they'll start teaching real reading with phonics and real mathematics with multiplication tables, etc... the way some of us learned as late as the 60s before "New Math" killed off a lot of learning.
BINGO
One of the reasons for this is that Texas has such a high participation level in the SAT; not the only factor, but a large one. Students who unlikely or never will attend college are encouraged to take the test.
Please visit Stop the Magnet. 2012 ballot measure for City of Houston. E-Verify mandate.Also visit the FB page. I have lots of articles posted there.
www.stopthemagnet.com
Houston Independent School District will only hire teachers with education credentials. Meanwhile in Texas there are a lot of retired engineers who would jump at the opportunity to teach math and science subjects. These are accomplished engineers, many still with current P.E. licenses. Nope, teaching degrees only.
- End the bi-lingual crap in the schools. It cheats the English-speaking kids when teachers have to adjust curricula to the lowest common denominator.
Minneapolis just got a new schools superindendent, a Somali immigrant. He came to this country, built a few businesses, and got active in the school board. He was being interviewed on Chris Baker’s radio program, when he was asked about bilingual education. His response was that the emphasis will be on English. English is the language to succeed in this country and is the language of global business. I was surprised to hear this. Minneapolis? Liberal Multi-Culty Hell?
Chris Baker is no longer on the air, tends to be politically incorrect (and has none of the Minnesota passive aggressive BS).
Remember also that Spanish books are written in the urbane syntax of Mexico City and other Latin America metropolis’, not in the country “Mexican” of the mestizos they push our way. In addition we’ve seen tribal Indians come up here who cannot speak fluent Spanish, even in country context.
Occasionally? Surely, you jest. In most metro districts, they are at least a msjor contributing factor. In some, they are an absolute majority.
The major problems in education are the same in Texas as elsewhere.
1) Bloated bureaucracies: Houston’s HISD has 2.6 OTHER employees for every classroom teacher. FIX: fire at least 70% of the non-teaching staff.
2) Lack of discipline: kids can cuss their teacher out, hit others, and they get a “ticket”. Those who disobey the rules are put in “special education” classes, which are warehouses for rotten little creeps. FIX: ramp up suspensions and expulsions. Send the ones who don’t want to learn to reform school.
3) Lack of parental involvement: many parents do nothing to aid their kid’s education, like making them do their homework - or speak English. FIX: deport ALL illegals AND their anchor babies. Make welfare mommas do volunteer work at the school. Encourage parents to support their kids. Let kids who want to quit school (and whose parents agree) quit.
Last but way too often put first, get rid of incompetent teachers and principals. The other three problems are crippling. Bad teachers are an irritation, but have been with us always. The three problems above have not.
That is very bad, I would say
“when I blasphemed that “not all people should go to college, you know”.
Something similar happened to me when I said to a bunch of liberal acquaintances that they should bring back vocational high schools. One of them said, “you can’t do that, you will bring back the “working class”. Not everyone one is cut out to be a doctor or a lawyer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.