Posted on 04/01/2012 8:42:49 AM PDT by wintertime
I can’t read all you wrote right now, but your 1st paragraphs make excellent points.
This is something I’ve noticed in my area. I grew up here, and been here all my life (also went to the public schools). My mother taught through the public system, although never in regular school. My elder siblings also went to school here when they moved.
My mother says never to totally trust that our county is “the highest rated system in the country” or close to it. As she always said, it’s mostly the “culture” of the people here - liberal as they may be, most are “educated” and interested in that. That’s the main reason we’re so high up.
Meanwhile, since I left school I’ve noticed how even in our “great schools” LOTS of children are going to tutoring. I tutored myself as did my mom. And it seems most parents you talk to mention at least 1 child going to after-school tutoring. It just seems like it’s an epidemic. Either the schools really aren’t that good, and/or the kids are that stupid or careless.
The major issues on the government side that detract from education are bad curricula, inability to get rid of bad teachers, and union contracts that actively detract from education.
The lefty curricula we see in schools today is in large part supported by the teacher's union. It substitutes effective educational concepts that worked for centuries with new age garbage. This is all in an attempt to get kids who don't want to learn to magically learn. 50 years of this has been an abysmal failure. The icing on the cake has been No Child Left Behind. The metrics for NCLB has been the expansion of extremely broad based testing. I could have sworn that little kids still go to schools called elementary or primary schools. These tests foster trying to teach young students things they don't need to know, and rampant "teaching to the test." It is a great disservice to all students, regardless of ability.
Every school district has failing teachers. These teachers are supported by a seniority system that outweighs performance. In my experience, both as a parent and a student, I've found a direct correlation between bad teachers and extensive participation in the union process. The worse they are the more they are involved with the union. It is a matter of self preservation.
The last major stumbling block is collective bargaining that robs children of instructional time. The current trend in my local district is having multiple shortened school days to allow for teacher training and planning time. I remember just a few years ago the educational establishment were screaming that the answer was keeping kids in class longer. Now they use a day shorted just enough to count it as a full school day to placate the teacher's union. Other crazy bargaining issues include what Scott Walker is fighting to dismantle in Wisconsin. The teacher's union there had won a contractual agreement that school districts had to buy medical insurance for the teachers, from the teacher's union. The teacher's union is simply contracting from a normal insurance company and skimming a percentage off the top to fill their coffers. That expense has nothing to do with either providing healthcare to teachers or making schools better.
Interesting observations. When my son’s preschool started with the whole language nonsense, I got a phonics program to do at home. When he was in 6th grade, I was re-teaching him everything again in the evenings but that was due more to him being an adolescent boy more interested in his friends and girls than in academics. I homeschooled for two years and was able to deviate from the traditional educational model. When he was in 9th grade, I taught at his small Christian school (Yes, I am a teacher). It is sad to say that there are so many factors to a particular student’s success. Try as I might to make my classes fun, interesting and challenging, if there was not the proverbial kick in the pants from home, many students did not care to succeed or even learn. Homeschooling may not be for everyone ( I know of one family who had “gym” practically every day)but I am glad there are options for families to determine the best educational course for their children.
It's actually quite simple.
Students do well when their parents are active participants in their education.
Students do poorly when their parents are not active participants in their education.
"Good schools" is merely an indirect measurement of parent participation.
The brick and mortar school is an expensive proposition from its constuction costs to the costs of its employees.
Homeschooling and cyberschooling would reduce the need for expensive buildings and employees.
Sometimes I think a big reason the 501 school districts here in Pennsylvania exist is to provide athletic facilities and programs.
The districts probably spend on average a million or more to maintain their own athletics after spending millions on gyms, pools and stadiums.
Over half a billion a year at least is spent on school district sports programs with our tax dollars picking up almost all of the cost.
On top of their own programs, the school districts provide free use of their facilities for local youth sports programs subsidizing those sports programs with our tax dollars.
The bottom line reason public schools are so inefficient is that they are government bureaucracies.
These days a “good” public school is one where there is not violence and a prison atmosphere.
Simple truth that modern Americans don’t want to acknowledge: “good schools” overwhelmingly are those with higher income parents who on average have relatively high IQ’s.
I remember that at home, my parents had interesting books to read. When I got to school, none of the books were interesting. The lessons were so dull and repetitive. I could never figure out why I had to spend most of the day there. High school was a waste of my time, pure and simple. I still have needed nothing that I studied there.
1) Wintertime went to a public school and earned her medical degree from a State university
2) ALL of her children went to public schools when it was convenient.
3) Her Children attended community and State colleges.
4) And what percentage of your Grandchildren are still in public school or attended parochial school because they got a discount because their mother worked there?
I would disagree with your assessment that ‘good parents’ have their preschoolers on the Internet every day, learning phonics and math. No need for the Internet or a computer for that.
Good point. The correlation between income and test scores may not be more public school money per kid but more enrichment and tutoring provided by parents outside of public schools.
Exactly what I posted in many fewer words. ;-)
Everything from experience to detailed studies shows that good parents (or guardians) make for good students. Much of this is due to what such children learn at home: to sit still, follow directions, behave, and to apply themselves to tasks. Unless and until those things are learned, school is nearly impossible. Once those things are learned, educational progress follows — and often with good parents remedying the defects of classroom teaching.
Indeed! My own homeschoolers are proof of that. All born well before the Internet.
Where are the studies that prove that?
Perhaps these studies have never been done because education professionals **know** that such studies would show that:
1) Parents **ARE** the education!
2) Little real teaching or learning happens in institutional schools.
3) Schools are merely testing services.
4) The real teaching and the real learning is happening **in the home**!
If citizens were to learn this ( Parents **are** the education) then support for a quarter of a million dollars per child for 13 years of Prussian-model and prison-like institutional schooling would quickly evaporate in the voting booth.
Wow! That's the truth! I couldn't agree with you more! These sports programs generate “rah rah” support of school budgets in the voting booth.
Personally, all sports cheerleading, drill team, theater, arts, and music should be complete transferred over to the department of parks and recreation! Better yet would be to privatize all of it.
With regard to sports, taxpayers are being forced to subsidize farm teams and minor league teams for our nation's **private** major leagues. UNBELIEVABLE!
By the way, our county just built a 70 million dollar high school. A **major** chunk of that expense was for the playing fields, stadium, and state of the art theater that would match anything on Broadway, music, and art departments.
Government schools are the very definition of a compulsory-funded, compulsory-use, single-payer, socialist entitlement.
Parents who are highly self-diciplined have well organized and orderly homes and study habits for their children.
It is my belief that if you know of an educated child, that child has been homeschooled or afterschooled by his parents. It is in the home where the real teaching the the real learning is happening.
Of course, educators would never formally and systematically study this, because the results would show that government schools only do two things:
1) Send home a curriculum for the parents and child to follow **in the home** ! ( Thereby, essentially homeschooling after school).
2) Provide testing and grading of projects.
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