Posted on 10/24/2011 7:20:15 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Yep, and not just New York. Colleges are business. Public schools are good for that business because possessing a high school diploma does not mean a person has any marketable skills. SO, off they go to college and when they get there the students cannot do the work. The public schools pass them on for various reasons. The students enroll in developmental classes which do not always count towards a diploma. The cost of enrolling in a developmental class is the same as the cost of enrolling in a ‘real’ class. And because many of these students are deemed at-risk, the taxpayer foots the bill. And bless their little entitled hearts, some of the students are intelligent enough to take their educational dollars and enroll, buy their books, sell the books back for cash, and then fail to go to class.
99% of public schools are absolute crap at teaching anything aside from self-esteem and entitlement.
State Regents exams that were dumbed down to match lax standards must be beefed up again
One of my most important tools when learning to write was sentence diagramming.
I doubt this is taught at all now.
My 7th grade English teacher INSISTED on teaching it, and I thank her for it. I also will be teaching this to my homeschooled kids.
After subbing in schools for awhile, I can tell you that the kids just don’t know much. Oh, they can tell you who Snookie is and they know how to get to Level “x” on some video game, but I was subbing in a 9th grade algebra class the other day. Reminding kids that they wanted to “isolate” the variable (i.e., get it by itself) and they didn’t know what isolate meant. Other words I’ve seen that 7-9 grade don’t know: courteous, grieve, essential (and on and on).
My daughter’s geometry teacher in high school was a football coach. Didn’t know anything about geometry. My daughter realized this and basically taught herself. She got As but she deserves the credit - not her “teacher”.
“That real problem is that administrators don’t have the stones to do it.”
Well, when the administrators get to where they are through affirmative action and the Peter Principle, don’t expect them to promote “good” teachers. Their idea of a “good” teacher would be somewhat different than ours - someone with impeccable leftie beliefs, docile, and not sufficiently intelligent to point out how stupid the administrators are.
It’s a bit like the ugly girl who goes out to bars with a girlfriend who is even uglier so that she comes off prettier by comparison.
And homosexuality.
Amen!
Actually, the fantasy that everyone has equal potential--or anything remotely similar--is denying children the opportunity to develop any talents they actually have. It is a vicious form of the evil of the egalitarian/collectivist compulsion.
In 1961, a much older friend, who was on an upstate New York urban school board, visited me in Cincinnati, and pointed out that even by that time, those scoring in the upper ten percent on the New York Regents tests, were only at the median level in 1900--and that was relatively early in the educational decline produced by the Welfare State mindset. In other words, the average student in 1900 would have scored in the upper ten percent by 1960.
Anyone who seeks to pretend that the world of make-believe--as in "No Child Left Behind"--is not damaging America, is unable to offer anything of much value on this.
See Trust In Government Or Education? Those We Dare Not Trust.
William Flax
Could it be that the schools want you to start at the very bottom? That way you need more classes from them to graduate...
Just another classic case of “getting what you’re measuring.” If you measure graduation rates, the system will give you increasing graduation rates. If you measure grade point averages, the system will give you rising grade point averages. If you measure the percentage of kids passing math, the system will give you more a rising percentage, etc.
Until we put the public school dollars directly into the hands of parents, in the form of a voucher that can be cashed by any educator, anywhere, we will continue this insane cycle of getting what we measure, but failing to educate our children to anywhere near their learning potential.
This is a surprise? So many NYC high school students graduate, spend whatever college aid they get taking remedial classes and then have no way of continuing financially. Then the liberals who stuck them in that situation complain when all these kids can get is minimum wage jobs. By and large, they’re formative years were a total waste from an educational perpective.
A simple test colleges could do to see if prospective students should be allowed inside their venerable institutions is to ask the prospective student if they’ve ever read a book from cover to cover. Then they’d have to name the book and give a short synopsis. Then give them a simple math test of addition and subtraction that any sixth grader could do. I’ll bet a large percentage of prospective college students would fail that simple test.
Pass them and forget them. Someone else’s problem.
An bachelor’s degree used to be calibrated for an IQ of 115 points - then thought to be the required standard to teach at a primary school. Whatever IQ measures, only the top 30% of kids will have an IQ of 115+. (The standard deviation of IQ is 15 points, so 30% will be at least 1 s.d. above the mean.)
Today 70% of high school grads enroll in 4 year college. The least able of them will have an IQ of 85 points (1 s.d. below the mean).
Students with an IQ of 85 should be in special ed. not college.
To paraphrase Obama: it’s not college class warfare - it’s math.
Apparently not!
An bachelor? D’oh!
You're probably better at math than you think you are. Yes, a lot of people are stronger in the verbal and writing skills (according to a lot of studies females are stronger overall than males), and some are stronger in the math department. But I remember taking algebra as a high school freshman and doing poorly. (By the way, I'm a male). Almost thirty years later when reapplying for college, I had to take an algebra course. So I bought an elementary algebra primer, and studied it. I was amazed to discover that the same type of problems that gave me fits when I was thirteen were so easy when I was forty-one.
The key is going over certain math concepts. Some people, not me, pick them up easy. For some it takes a while. But I believe any reasonably intelligent person can learn the math if it's taught correctly and the student is given enough time to understand. A lot of math is taught at a rapid pace. If you have a math-minded mind, it's not too hard. If you don't, it can be frustrating and defeating. That doesn't mean you can't learn it, it just means you need a little more time. And maybe a better teacher.
This is the reason why public universities came up with “Fill in the blank” studies programs.
Problem was a lot of these “fill in the blank” students wanted to learn business, engineering and other fields where they could get an education, graduate and go into the job market. Due to their high school education, or lack of, the only courses they will be able to pass and get a degree in are “fill in the blank” studies.
Now take someone without a degree. They may have worked their entire career as an IT engineer, sales rep, marketing specialist, HR generalist, whatever. And did it without a degree.
Now comes a job opening and first thing is, “do you have a degree.” One says no but they have experience. The other says yes, but their degree is in “fill in the blank” studies or liberal arts.
Who gets the job? Now it gets good. The companies hiring these newly minted college grads over the experienced non-grads complain that they cannot find good help.
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.