Posted on 11/26/2001 10:42:57 PM PST by JohnHuang2
It was in 1983 that members of the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a brutally honest report entitled "A Nation at Risk." The members of the commission wrote, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war."
The report was obviously calculated to awaken a stuporous public to a national disaster. It didn't work. Neither have any of the hundreds of other reports and studies issued since then giving the same message.
We now have in hand a new report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as "The Nation's Report Card." NAEP measured the scientific knowledge of students in the fourth, eighth and 12th grades across the nation. They used three scoring levels: basic, proficient and advanced.
Having previously reported that our children are doing poorly on reading and math, NAEP currently reports that, for the United States as a whole, only three in 10 students are proficient in science at their grade level. The proportion that scored below the minimum basic level rose to almost 50 percent.
If one digs into the full report, some interesting truths emerge. For example, the everlasting gap between the achievement of blacks and Hispanics and their white classmates actually closed slightly at the 12th grade level. Alas, this was not because blacks and Hispanics improved, but because whites did worse. As an added embarrassment to the education industry, this entire decline in 12th grade science achievement took place in public schools. Twelfth grade scores in private schools rose sharply.
The overall results included scores from private schools, the three largest of which are religious schools: Catholic, Lutheran and Conservative Christian. Whites, blacks and Hispanics in these schools did significantly better at all educational stages than did their counterparts in government schools. This means, of course, that national scores would be even lower if these private schools were omitted from total results.
Based on other objective assessments, if home-schooled students had been included, the superiority of private education over "public" education would be even more striking. That is why teachers and politicians, more so than average folks, send their kids to private schools.
California came in dead last among the states. Democrat Governor Gray Davis, who claims that education is his top priority, was not discouraged by the results, said his spokeswoman, Hilary McLean.
One wonders what is his threshold of discouragement, given that year after ruinous year in the Golden State, hundreds of thousands of minority children languish in poor, unsafe, drug-infested, mind-wasting ghetto schools, held captive there by dirty politics and the governor's own incestuous relationship with old-fashioned, big-time, heavy-handed labor unions representing teachers.
To one extent or another, California's problem is the nation's problem. William McGurn, The Wall Street Journal's chief editorial writer, explained it this way: "This integration of the NEA [National Education Association] into the Democratic Party goes a long way toward explaining how a monopoly that today leaves nearly two-thirds of African-American and Hispanic fourth-graders illiterate, has insulated itself against political accountability."
Education union leaders are open about their mission to get more money for teachers and protect them from the consequences of incompetence as individuals and from accountability as a profession. As one union leader boasted, "as for the kids, they don't pay dues."
What most people, including many teachers, don't fully realize is that the NEA is a left-wing institution with an active agenda, involving support for homosexual causes, abortion, affirmative action, secular humanism, multiculturalism, egalitarianism and open borders. They have insinuated these causes into the teaching profession.
Hard to believe? Hear the words of Robert H. Chanin, NEA general counsel, as he responded to massive documentation assembled by the Landmark Legal Foundation, which supported a formal allegation that the NEA has illegally used millions of dollars of tax exempt union dues on partisan political activities, in full coordination with the Democrat National Committee.
In a brash and revealing speech to the National Council of State Education Associations, Chanin said: "Someone really is after us ... [the NEA and its affiliates] have been singled out because of our political power and effectiveness at all levels – because we have the ability to help implement the type of liberal social and economic agenda that [they] find unacceptable."
In the simplest of terms, the quid pro quo deal is this: In exchange for NEA money and votes, Democrat politicians will not allow consequential school reforms to take place. Only an informed and outraged people can change this.
And we should be.... These people have systematically brought the education system in the country to it's knees.
In the past election the NRA was attacked for being part of the power that elected Bush.. It's time we attack the NEA for the dumbing down of American children. They have been in the background for many years undermining the education system in this country. A small group of leaders in the NEA control the large masses of incompetent members to vote the agenda they dictate.
This is the dirty little secret BOTH the left and right try to cover up. The leftists want to cover it up because worse *average* performance means more money for their programs. The right wants to cover it up because it undermines their agenda of privatization of the public schools (*including* the good suburban districts!)
You can do the same thing with test scores for *non-English speaking* immigrants. Of COURSE school districts like Los Angeles are going to have terrible performance on tests - the vast majority of their students can't speak or read English because of illegal immigration! In my state of Missouri, we have entire rural school districts that have been swamped with enormous numbers of Mexican immigrant children who can't speak a word of English, and yet they have to sit in the same classrooms and take the same tests as everyone else.
There are many problems with public schooling, but public schools are NOT responsible for: failure to enforce immigration laws; 14-year old crackhead mothers who abuse their babies to the point the kids are mentally disabled; parents who ignore their kids entirely, don't read to them, don't teach them proper English, etc. These "lower test scores" are showing the demographic cracks in American society, not an overall "failure" of public education.
Ms. Bowles comments that "Only an informed and outraged people can change this."
Our job is to "inform and engender outrage in the American public" about the issues important to Taking America Back!
If we are successful in our campaign to "inform and outrage America," we can, most assuredly, Take America Back!
But we have much work ahead of us. Keep up the good fight, my man. We are with you.
So, what you're advocating is tougher immigration laws, fewer teenage mothers, stronger families, and better parenting. All good ideas. Unfortunately, the Left has historically opposed these ideas as well.
FReegards
Illiterate in Boston: Samuel Blumenfeld explains U.S.'s ongoing reading problem
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: July 20, 2001
Author:Samuel BlumenfeldNEA - Let our children go!
Source: WorldNet Daily; Published: June 23. 2001
Author: Linda HarveyWhy Do Schools Play Games With Students' Minds ?
Source: The Detroit News; Published: April 1, 2001
Author: Thomas SowellThe Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
Source: http://home.talkcity.com/LibraryDr/patt/homeschl.htm
Author: John Taylor GattoDumbing down teachers
Source: USNews.com; Published: 2/21/01
Author: John LeoFree Republic links to education related articles (thread#8)
Source: Free Republic; Published: 3-20-2001
Author: VariousAre children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school? {YES!!!}
Source: World Net Daily; Published: May 13, 2001
Author: Geoff Metcalf {Interview}New Book Explores America's Education Catastrophe
Source: Christian Citizen USA; Published: April 2000
Author: William H. WildDeliberately dumbing us down (Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: December 2,1999
Author: Samuel L. BlumenfeldCould they really have done it on purpose?
Source: THE LIBERTARIAN; Published: 07/28/2000
Author: Vin SuprynowiczFrom the Littleton Crisis to Government Control link
The UN Plan for Your Mental Health link
A small group of leaders in the NEA control the large masses of incompetent members to vote the agenda they dictate.ditto, for the American Red Cross, the United Way, and on and on...
these organizations exist, in large part, for a perpetuation of good (and sometimes exorbitant) paying jobs, for people who would find it difficult to make a living in the private sector. But then, I'm preaching to the choir.
The vast majority of government teachers have endorsed every tax raising, family hating, homosexual loving, immigration encouraging, criminal coddling Democrat who has run for public office for as long as I can remember.
One quarter to one third of the delegates to the DNC nominating conventions are government teachers. The NEA spends over $70 million a year (against IRS code) supporting liberals.
Government teachers are not only responsible for wrecking public schools, they are responsible for many of the social pathologies outside our schools.
Minority students to not have to remain at the bottom of the pool of students. I have said time and again that a large portion of the problem with education in this country today is corrupted curriculum.
We need to go back to basics (you know, evil rote learning) and jettison the social agenda stuff that takes away valuable time in the classroom. Add teacher testing and merit pay for teachers who perform well (i.e. their students learn something) and putting educational dollars on the backs of students to go to whatever school they choose; and, we might make a dent in this problem.
However, none of this will happen because education (like just about everything else in this country) has been so politicized that it can't be touched.
This is really pathetic. California came in behind Mississippi and Alabama and Arkansas? What a wonderful legacy for Gray Davis.
EXACTLY! They are the number one political force behind LIBERALS (just behind trial lawyers).
NEA To Support Non-Testing Measures, gay education, partnership with AFT -- The union has long warned against an overreliance on standardized tests, though Bush wants the test results to determine how much federal funding schools should get. The measure directs the NEA's lobbyists to fight for federal laws that allow parents to opt out of tests. It doesn't require delegations to lobby for state laws but promises union support for those who do.
TEACHERS BACK DNC WITH MONEY, MUSCLE [Excerpt]--In Iowa, New Hampshire, and other key primary states, teachers knocked on doors, staffed telephone banks, and helped get out the vote for Gore. In New York, members of the United Federation of Teachers helped distribute more than one million fliers for Gore in one day. In Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Teachers Association contacted each of its 90,000 members three times by phone and by mail, urging them to vote for Gore over Bradley………….
The teachers and their unions have long been a force in American politics. From 1991 to 1999, for example, contributions to the Democratic Party from the NEA, AFT, and the Service Employees International Union, which includes some education workers, totaled $6.7 million, making teachers by far the party's biggest donor bloc, according to the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity. The largest single contributor to Democrats - the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - gave $3.7 million in that period……..[End Excerpt]
I don't know what government teachers think. We pay them to do a job and all we hear is bitching. If they don't like the pay, if they don't like the kids, if they don't like the parents, they should go do something else. A member of any other occupation who blamed the customer for their failure would be out of business in a week.
Ahh, yes. I remember that line. It was from the late Al Shankar, union prez, and I believe the full quote was, "We'll start representing the children's interests when they start paying dues." Something like that.
Take it from one who wasted three years trying to reform one little elementary schol, it's not just the NEA and Democrats -- its also the average, run of the mill parent who stands in the way of better schools! To my horror and chagrin, I found that most parents of any political stripe would rather rationalize their good feelings about their child's school than take the real effort of going to meetings, researching and finding out the truth about public schools today. Inflated grades and feel good "Blue Ribbon" school awards do it for them. They ask nothing more of their schools than this. If they did, they would have to expend effort themselves to make something happen. Anyway, what does it cost them? Colleges today are going along with the program and lowering standards and even employers have to adjust their standards downwards -- or get Congress to let them bring in brighter foreign workers.
I have given up on school reform from within. The only thing that forces schools to change is competition. Parents who wouldn't take the trouble to check out schools themselves will follow those parents who do know a good school from a bad one. Once they have the ability to change their school, they no longer have an excuse for leaving their child in a bad school. Nothing is a better motivator than the feeling that little John down the street is going to a better school than your own child because his parents went to the trouble to get him in. Parent "peer pressure" then does its miraculous works to bring about accountability.
But the real opportunity of change without the requirement of superhuman effort has to be there. For this reason, vouchers may be the only reform that has a chance to significantly improve school performance and accountability. Personally, my ideal reform would be to take away the responsibility for education from the state and give it back to parents (along with their tax money) and the private sector. This would encourage more private sector schools (which I would imagine would be largely religious) and other imaginative -- we could even use the word "DIVERSE" -- approaches to education. It is amazing how education is the one human endeavor in which liberals think diversity is bad! There would, of course, have to be some safety net education program in the public sector if private initiatives did not step up to the plate to take care of everyone. This reform would be a great step toward recovering the competence of the citizenry to govern itself and would solve the problem of the role of faith in schools.
Schools back then taught the "three R s" and not much else. If we measure schools today by those standards then it looks as if they do a pretty good job.
Main Entry: 1war
Pronunciation: 'wor
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English werre, from Old North French, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German werra strife; akin to Old High German werran to confuse
Date: 12th century
...1 a (1) : a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism b : a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end <a class war>
It was an act of war. It was an a secret war successfully overwhelming the American public by appealing to their emotions while simultaneously mouthing all the "correct" platitudes. It was carefully planned and waged by corrupt politicians, judges, unions, academics, major media and other Liberals. You know; the ones who are still in power!
This report was also written in 1983, so the country can't say 'we were never warned'. Just imagine how much worse the problem is today than it was then?
The marvel is, somehow America has survived (albeit tenuously) for as long as it has. But the big questions are, can America ever recover and what will it take to turn the situation around before the grievous wounds are fatal?
Not just the NEA but the WHOLE Department of Education.
Remember Reagan's promises?
Public Education has proven to be a failure.
Major BUMPS to those responsible parents who choose to not allow the government to raise their children.
It might be too late for what ikanakattara is advocating. This is a "democracy" ha, excuse me, and the majority rules. If the Mexican population exceeds the anglo in the schools they should all be taught in Spanish.. Remember we do NOT have a national language.....
So many people think that since their local public school is better than some other public school, it's their duty to support the public schools, regardless of the damage to their children and others.
The NEA/AFT dictates the agenda at every public school in the country, including charter schools. They allow enough variation on the theme to sucker parents and taxpayers into "keeping the faith", they'll even pretend to split their teachers union, to give teachers the impression that there are alternatives.
The only viable alternatives are (1) homeschooling and (2) private schools which hire teachers who know and can teach their subject material without injecting socialist (or other) indoctrination.
Unless the voters/taxpayers can remove all the liberals from all public colleges and public schools, there is no hope for reform. Since there is little chance of that happening, every effort should be made to vote away every taxpayer source of their funding.
After all is said and done, it all boils down to this:
The teachers pretend to teach,
the children pretend to learn,
and the parents pretend that
the teachers are teaching
and the children are learning.
The nature of the ‘debate’ I've heard there and elsewhere can be likened to a situation where we’re showing kids porn films and merely arguing over the size of the next theater that we’re going fund and build.
It’s all meaningless unless we address what is taught and how it is taught…
Bookmarked to read and study again later.
At least they're trying....
My grandmother started her 50-year career in NYC Public School teaching in 1912. It was very interesting and informative to hear her talk about what it was like, and how it changed (of course, 1962 looks like paradise compared to now, but the adverse trends which have brought us this low were well-developed by then).
Grandma always thought that what she was doing in the Lower East Side public schools of 1912-1940 was making Americans.
A few more teachers like her would do us a world of good.
Fanny Dorothea Butt, nee Wolff, 1894-1991 R.I.P.
MARK A SITY
www.logic101.net
And she was. People would scream today if faced with one tenth of what she faced. With no antibiotics, a cold was a serious life threatening event in her class room.
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.