Numbers on Public Schools-Tell me again why charter schools and school choice are bad ideas

Wall St Journal ^ | 5-2-03 | DANIEL HENNINGER

[SJackson]

What with Americans being such an opinionated people, it isn't often that an issue of public policy ever arrives at the steady state of national agreement. Even as skulls were brought up from Saddam's torture chambers, e-mails still rolled in from the war's opponents to re-argue the wrongness of the effort. So imagine how surprising it was to discover this past week that there is one subject about which the people of this country are in about as much agreement as statistical science ever achieves: America's public schools. They are widely and deeply regarded as awful.

[netmilsmom]

This is just pitiful. I find the disrespect a big issue. In my charter school, the students can be corrected for disrespect by ANY adult and are held to a high standard. I love it.

[rebelyell]

I wonder if our public schools were better before integration? Probably not too many folks want to give that question an honest look.

[Momto2]

I find this an interesting statistic......

"Some 61% of African-American parents think inner-city kids should be expected to achieve the same standards as wealthier kids"

So that would mean that 39% think that inner city kids should NOT be expected to achieve high standards??? How Sad!!

[ladylib]

I always thought the decline in public education began in the late 60's and 70's with busing children all over the place to achieve integration. Busing created a lot of resentment and that resentment spilled over into the schools.

There was so much turmoil that the schools lost a lot of academic ground. Standards were lowered, not just for black students, but white ones as well.

[rebelyell]

It seems to me that standards were raised for the blacks and lowered for the whites. Concurrent with this was the infiltration of our school systems by leftists. They control everything now from preschool programs through post graduate degrees. The results have been incredible, literally.

Time to take it all back, folks.

[ladylib]

You're right about the infiltration of leftists. That didn't help matters any.

[rebelyell]

The NEA has done more to ruin our schools than anything else. Why their vile presence has not been eliminated, I'll never know.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Who is foolish enough to believe that the average kid from a dope-infested, violence-filled neighborhood filled with families without fathers and at the margin of survival could do as well as the Ozzie and Harriet style two parent families of the suburbs?

Answer those without any experience of life in the ghetto or inner city. And those who believe family doesn't matter.

Why don't we bet on races between kids when one has a 50 lb weight on his back and the other nothing? I know which side I want.

[tru_degenerate]

'It seems to me that standards were raised for the blacks and lowered for the whites.'

I disagree. You seem to ass-ume that all blacks have/had lower standards than whites.

[justshutupandtakeit]

This article is long on subjective speculation and short of real analysis. It says nothing we don't know.

[eleni121]

It seems to me that standards were raised for the blacks and lowered for the whites.

I agree with everything you say except the above. Standards for all children have been lowered in public schools.

[rebelyell]

You "seem" to be mighty presumptious. The fact is, standards were lower for black children, prior to integration. Do you deny this?

[tru_degenerate]

Yes I do. Remember not all blacks wanted integration. And when you say standards whose standards are you referring to. Some, not all, blacks set high standards for their kids. This was true even during segregation. And I guess you actually believe all whites had higher standards than all blacks. I say this since you make no distinctions.

[rebelyell]

That may be what you "say" but it is not what I meant. My assertion is that MOST blacks (indeed, the ones in school, at all) were receiving an education that was, by and large, inferior to that which was provided for the white children. Certainly there were exceptions but most folks today acknowledge that the schools were separate but far from equal.

[tru_degenerate]

I too can acknowledge that but to say that a school is inferior is not the same thing as saying that it has lower standards. Black schools did not have the access that white schools had so there were major reasons for the two school systems not being equal and I don't feel lower standards is high on that list.

[parents4children]

Let's take the "what's wrong with our public system a little further!" I am and have been fighting my local school corporation for going on 3 years with other parents who find several things wrong with our own system that we want changed. 1st the principal at our "failing school" is impossible for teachers, students, parents and the general public to work with. She has the "We can't do that" or better yet "I can't do that" attitude. Even though she is now in her 3rd year status with the NCLB. She is the type of person who uses itimidation, harrassment and threats if she doesn't get her way. She has the "My way, no way, your out of here way" attitude. Teachers were told by her, "You should very seriously consider getting a teaching position somewhere else!" Because they were open and honest about what was going on in the school with me. Two of her best friends are in the Administration Building, the Director of Human Resouces and the Deputy Superintendent. She according to them and herself can "Do no wrong!" School climate plays a major role in the effectiveness of both teaching and learning. If they walk through the doors only to want to walk out 2 seconds later because they have to walk on "crushed eggshells" all day, then no one is going to learn and no one is going to teach well. 2nd the curriculum taught has a lot to do with our school status. Has anyone asked students to spell simple words like thoroughbred lately? Phonics is not taught in our schools. They are taught to read, write and language arts by the ELLI (Early Literacy Learning Initiative) now called LC (Literacy Collaborative) trust me changing the name of this literacy program has done nothing for it's effectiveness to teach our students about reading, language arts, spelling or phonics. Our schools teach a "phonics" program called "Chunks." If anyone can explain what this program does please let me know. It's been useless in our schools. How do I know this? Because I have gone so far in fighting my school corporation to the point of independently testing my child from the school corporation and found that my child has problems with grapheme and phoneme abilities, for those of you who don't know the definitions of those, they are letter recognition and letter sounds. My child is an average student, no disabilities. Also I was told that my child was taught to read by sight and memorization. Where was phonics? They didn't teach it. 3rd School corporations aren't open to suggestions, complaints or anything that parents have to say anymore, they feel that parents should help teach the children at home, which they should be an extention of the education that we as parents and taxpayers mandate they get, but we aren't instructors, so our abilities to "teach" of children are not "tweaked" as those who instruct our children on a daily basis. 4th The NCLB is for Title One schools, there is the parent choice to transfer your child to an improved school, however there is a problem in doing this. There is no remediation in the improved schools to bring these students up to "grade" with the students who have been attending the improved school from Kindergarten on up. There is no funding to help these schools to bring the students who transfer from the failing schools to improved school status. So, what does that mean? The failing schools are closed for "non-performance" the students are transferred to improved schools who don't get any additional funds to help them bring these students to "grade" therefore causing the improved schools to now be targeted as failing schools. The NCLB has the right idea, however, it is designed by the "annual yearly progress" to fail every public school whether Title One or not. By the year 2014 every student in our public systems must be at "proficient levels" of education. How is a school going to accomplish this without the means, climate, teachers, administrators, parents, community and funding to teach them? I strongly advise everyone to visit www.nclb.org and read the entire law before they complain about parents, teachers and improved schools, from what I have seen of "Charter Schools", which is the next wave of "Public Schools" they will perform "less than", or "at", with the "occassional" well performing schools just as we have in our "Public Systems" now. Why, because the people running our "Public Systems" can't teach our students as it is now, how is a "Private Sector" who has no clue how to run a school or who has failed in our "Public Systems" running our schools now going to improve on something that they aren't willing to improve because they don't want to be accountable for their inabilities to properly teach our students and still want job security and as we all know "tenured teachers" can't be fired easily. Even under the NCLB it takes 3-4 years to get rid of the useless baggage teaching our students. So the problem with our systems aren't just that they are failing. It's the people we have running our schools, the people teaching our students and lack of major parent yelling, screaming and fighting for what is right for our students, compounded by ineffective curriculums, programs, climate, interest on students, teachers and parents parts, as well as a law that isn't going to work to save our "Public Systems" to begin with.
These are my own observations and my own opinions, not those of anyone else, but I still feel that our systems can be saved if enough people in the teaching industry and the communities "WORK TOGETHER" instead of blaming each other and get off the backsides to get it together and deal with the problem at hand, "EDUCATING OUR STUDENTS!"
EJackson (No Relation)