Posted on 07/11/2012 9:24:38 PM PDT by neverdem
Dateline America, 2012: College Students Complain “We’re Taken For Granite,” Face A “Doggy-Dog World.”
Those expressions were actually used in papers submitted to freshman comp professor James Courter. Other students wrote they found the college experience “homedrum” or had trouble getting into “the proper frame of mime.”
Courter quotes them in a Wall Street Journal column bemoaning the poor reading skills of incoming students.
Coincidentally (or something more?) that same issue of the WSJ also featured a piece entitled “America Has Too Many Teachers.” In it, Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute points out that while the number of public school students has grown a mere 8.5 percent since 1970, “the public school work force has roughly doubled — to 6.4 million from 3.3 million — and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers’ aides.”
That helps explain part of the reason why since 1980 spending on public school education in the U.S. has doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Twice as many teachers. Twice as much money. But does anybody believe that a high school graduate today is (as a college student might actually say) “twice as much smart?”
We know they’re not.
We test students all the time, tests like the National Assessment Of Educational Progress (NAEP). And since 1970, these results in math and reading have essentially been flat.
For example, the average 17-year-old’s NAEP score in reading back in 1971 was 285. In 2008 it was 286.
That’s what we got for doubling our education spending.
When you compare the U.S. to countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the results are even worse. Education reform activist Bill Costello points out that our annual “per-pupil spending in 2006 was 41 percent higher than the OECD average of $7,283, and yet American students still placed in the bottom quarter in math and in the bottom third in science among OECD countries.”
Or as they say down at offices of the teachers union, “money well spent!”
And that’s the problem. Despite the deluge of tax dollars, despite having a ridiculously high number of teachers vs. students, and despite the dismal results, the teachers unions and their allies always demand more.
And, unfortunately they often get it because the public has such a skewed view of what’s really happening in our schools.
Ask the average American and they’ll tell you our teachers are woefully underpaid, our schools are crumbling death traps and our nation is neglecting its children.
When I tell people that, just as an example, the average Boston teacher’s salary is around $82,000, they refuse to believe me.
When I tell them that the teacher-student ratio is lower than it’s ever been in the modern era, they can’t accept it.
The average person believes the “poor me” propaganda in part because the unions spend so much promoting it. Since 2005, the MTA has spent $4 million on lobbying and political activism in Massachusetts alone. People fall for it, politicians react and the cost of mediocre education continues to rise.
You want to know who does know the truth? The students.
USA Today reports that “millions of kids simply don’t find school very challenging,” based on analysis of federal data. More than half of eighth-graders say their history homework is too easy and 40 percent of seniors say they almost never write about what they read in class.
Students who care know how crummy many of our schools are. They’re just trying to find someone else who cares, too.
Until then, just expect more “poultry excuses” (as one college freshman wrote) for our school systems’ poor performance.
Michael Graham hosts an afternoon drive time talk show on 96.9 WTKK.
LOL! Thanks for the link. My sister is a public school teacher in NJ. No wonder that she doesn’t like Christie!
You’re welcome; when that info became available a few years back I posted it on several local forums here in northern NJ. It shut up the “teachers are poor” proponents (teachers and their dependent spouses), and I’m sure helped send many school budgets down in flames. After the Asbury Park Press released the data, public support for teachers dropped like a stone and Christie won his election.
Share the link far & wide; Wisonsin and NJ don’t have to be isolated victories against the true owners of the Democrat Party, the teachers’ unions themselves.
We know and history shows that lowering standards simply leads to lowering standards. It’s a vicious cycle that cannot be broken unless you raise the standards.
They're impossible to fire for incompetence - and almost impossible to fire for using schools as their personal free whore houses. Add to that 'a pass' given by the MSM - and 'victim status' accorded by Democrats and we're lucky it's not worse than it is...
The average person believes the “poor me” propaganda in part because the unions spend so much promoting it. Since 2005, the MTA has spent $4 million on lobbying and political activism in Massachusetts alone. People fall for it, politicians react and the cost of mediocre education continues to rise.
Michael Graham is a MSM reporter with a respectable newspaper AND he's telling the truth. Something big is happening... this is an early sign.
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