Of course, a good education requires kids who actually want to learn. And parents who actually care. But no politician will ever go there.
Shocking details of Atlanta cheating scandal
The results confirmed the suspicions and then some: The report said that cheating on 2009 standardized tests in Atlanta Public Schools was widespread and didn’t start that year, “significant and clear” warnings were ignored by top administrators, an environment of fear and intimidation ruled the system, and thousands of students were harmed. The cheating resulted primarily from “pressure to meet targets” in the data-driven system, it said.
Obama’s Budget Kills DC’s Successful School Voucher Program, Increases Subsidy on a Car No One Wants to Buy
You trust Never Educate Anyone ( NEA) or Democrats?
That about sums up a great "please 'em all, say nothing" answer.
Smaller class size correlates with *lower* student performance in most studies. Obviously, this is not a cause-effect relationship. Rather, smaller class size is a marker for a system that prioritizes everything *except* teacher competence, student discipline, and administrative accountability.
Public education should stop at the sixth grade. Graduates should know how to read, speak, and write English, they should know arithmetic inside out, and they should know true American history.
Beyond that, private school, pay as you go.
Wow, I actually agree with Mitty!
I attended a Roman Catholic Parish school for First Grade. We had nearly fifty children in that class. The nun who taught our class was a lovely young woman and would tolerate no nonsense.
Class size has nothing to do with how well children learn.
My nephew attended a Roman Catholic Parish school where the teachers were all civilians and classes never exceeded thirty-two children.
I had to teach him to read phonetically. I had to teach him math. By the 6th grade he had failing grades. I took him out of the school and home taught him.
Within 28 months he was reading, writing, comprehending and doing math on a college entrance level. Turns out he has an IQ of 167. Some children should never be in an institution of learning. In our case, his mind was too busy and he learned better and quicker when alone.
Remember the GREAT SHAPE Chicago schools were in when Obama left Illinois? Man, those were stellar examples of public education.
I attended a Catholic elementary school in the ‘50’s. Every year from 1st to 8th grade there were 50 students in my classes. I have no patience for this whining about class size.
Obama SHOULD fire back at Romney—after all, what’s the class size in the public schools the Obama daughters attend!?
Wait, never mind...
1) Students who have an interest and aptitude in learning.
2) Parents who help kids learn.
3) Good teachers.
(distant 4th): class size.
Smaller class size = more unionized teachers = more campaign cash for Democrats
The non-effect of class size as a variable for educational success is a well-documented FACT, attested to by many studies. The is in the exact same class as the Democrats castigating Reagan for saying that trees contribute to smog (which they do).
A bad teacher cannot teach 2 kids much less 20.
In my public school, 40 some-odd years ago, we had between 35 and 40 kids in my elementary school classes. Our teachers handled them quite nicely. Sometime after that, these 35 to 40 kids who were assigned to a classroom became too difficult to handle for one teacher.
Logic tells me they need to figure out what changed and work on that.
Also, I didn’t go to college, but aren’t there sometimes classes held in small auditoriums with a couple hundred students or more? So, obama - what’s up with that??
We uh need to make sure that the er local resources be plowed back into the coffers of the um NEA just to make sure we uh have enough resources to er continue Hope and Change.
All this means nothing. When Communist China decided to adopt free market reforms and established good relations with US, they sent a group of students in their mid 20’s and early 30’s to study in the US before the embarked on reforms. One group is well publicized as techies and engineers, the other group less publicized was tasked to determine how a nation that began as coastal colonies in 1776 and by 1945 became a world power. This group was instructed to clear their minds of all the past Communist teachings that the US is a decadent nation and any pre notions. One of the profound conclusions was the key to US rise to world power was nonentanglement and concentrating on economic/financial development which would form the foundation to support US technical innovation and later the technologies will support US rise in military power and dominance. Interesting note, the students did not mention freedom and liberty. The study group closest acknowledgement is the fact the US decentralized decision making to the lowest level and that China needed a strong rule of law to insure political/legal stability. Today the Communist Party of China refuses to deal with this issue head on and still suffers from lack of political freedom and official accountability for abuse and corruption.
Freedom and liberty is the US strength but it means nothing if the financial system is deep in debt. As long as the US is in debt, and the people refuses to address this issue head on. Only fiscal conservatives understand this issue, but the moderates may balk when austerity is carried out. In other words, politically the debt is so large it may be politically impossible to resolve except thru currency devaluation and inflation. I think the US future is already determined by the Federal Reserve, US banks and world banks to inflate their way out of debt. Read about Brazil after World War 2. Many Americans do not realize that Brazil had a large middle class just like post WW2 US. Except the Brazilian blew their opportunity by taking on too many foreign debts and in the early 1970’s and inflating their way out of debt. By 2000 Brazil’s debt is mostly inflated away and now she is emerging as one of the premier BRIC nations. But her middle class has dwindle to a small number while her poor has swelled. I anticipate the US will go the way of Brazil, unless there is a courageous politician who will do the right thing accepting public ire and losing re election. That is not likely unless the US has a dictator. So all these teachers can argue all they want, they do not realize that the US days of public plenty is over and they face inflation that will dwindle the buying power of their income and savings. For the rest of us, start prepping, and buy hard assets to preserve your savings from the coming inflation and savings for possible deflation. Most important, avoid debt. If inflation goes out of control and the US gov resets the currency (banks do not reset the loan amount), you are financially screwed. Read what happen in Mexico during the 1990’s and Argentina recently. More important when the system goes, all promises and contracts will be broken by gov to the citizen and major financial institutions to their customers.
I am certainly not a Romneybot but it is clear here that Mitt Romney is NOT the one who is “out of touch with reality”. He is absolutely right and the truth is that we are turning out college graduates who may know a lot about things that did not exist fifty years ago but still could not pass the HIGH SCHOOL final exam from a public school in South Carolina of fifty years ago. In many cases they could not even pass the test to ENTER that high school as it existed then. Obama and many others think they can improve upon the work of those who founded this nation but in terms of classical education I don’t believe any of them could sit in the same class with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and the rest. Anything they know that the founders did not know is probably something that came into existence very recently.
But they “feel” that smaller classes will be better “for the kids” and if you don’t agree, then you are a dooty head. So there.