Posted on 05/22/2002 4:25:40 AM PDT by Starmaker
Preliminary scores from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test are in, and the results are not good. According to published reports, "Statewide, in the ninth grade only 29 percent of students met or exceeded the state's minimum competency level in reading and math." Tenth grade scores were better, but not by much. When one considers the inordinate amount of tax dollars that are thrown into public education, these numbers scream of irresponsibility, waste, and utter failure!
Sadly, this report is nothing new. We have witnessed these kinds of statistics for years! Sadder still is the fact that the only answer being advanced by today's politicians (from both parties), academicians, and journalists is to throw even more dollars down this rat hole.
When are we going to admit it? Modern public education is nothing more than a monstrous waste of taxpayers' money! The failure of government schools to produce even nominal education is so glaring that to even consider sending our children to most of these institutions of sub-level learning should be regarded as cruel and unusual punishment. However, the worst part of the story does not even show up in FCAT results.
The worst part of the story is the utter vacuum of basic morality that permeates these halls of hideousness. The secularization of our state education systems (thanks to federal intrusion) has become so complete, so pervasive that it is considered unconstitutional and even un-American to recognize (much less teach) the most fundamental virtues.
There is no neutrality regarding Judeo/Christian principles in most of our public schools today; there is open hostility! Anything — and I mean anything — that smacks of these values is openly condemned. The animosity and anger against bedrock moral principles are so aggressive it can only be regarded as either pure propaganda or humanistic hysteria, or both.
Instead of throwing more money into an education system proven to fail, we should completely purge it from the things that contribute to its failure. This means dismantling the federal Department of Education, returning education to the states and local communities by accepting zero federal dollars, and reinstituting respect and appreciation for America's Judeo/Christian heritage.
Since it is extremely unlikely that any of the above will be done, the only sensible course left to us is to take the responsibility of educating our children away from the government schools. Home schooling, private schooling, and Christian schooling are very vibrant and viable options.
In the mean time, the vast majority of America's public school students will continue to languish academically but learn to excel in the fine art of social maladjustment and moral misbehavior. This is education?
For a corroborating story check this link about a Florida school board (with low FCAT scores, I might add) that nixed an assembly because the word "faith" is involved.
However, you'll never hear any school-related person ever mention GIGO.
Yeah, Right. Bubba Junior just signed the Education Bill remember. The one that dumps an EXPANDED Dept. of Ed. budget down the toilet of mediocracy.
But don't blame GW, he was real busy with other things to put too much time in on it, like the Campaign finance Bill and the super inflated Farm Bill.
Ahhhh, isn't it nice to have a Conservative at the helm......(/sarcasm)
Homeschooling is good for some, but not many parents in America. You are wasting your time dreaming about privatized education in America, it will be federalized long before privatized; and then the game will be over. The education industry will buy off the politicals even quicker than today and govt mind control will be the norm.
I see local education being corrupted more and more by federal money. The school districts would sell their souls to the devil to get more funding from the feds. Just take a look at special education and you will see the future designs on the entire education spectrum; and the repubs cannot throw enough money towards education. The school districts are still broke and underfunded. Writings on the wall, federalization.
I guess as a conservative teacher, I am astounded at the lack of understanding of the problem by many freepers. Playing right into their hands rather than solving the problems. Remember your vote determines who controls education. Maybe everyone should begin by attending a local school board meeting?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating flushing money down the education toilet represented by the current teachers or on more "resources" (whatever that means. On a theoretical level, salary economics determine who will do the teaching.
Try looking at NEA's agenda(I still get their propaganda in the mail), The Democratic Party's attempt at indocrination, and the Unions protecting the freeloading, burnt out "Colleagues" by fighting testing of Teachers for basics.
Example: WEA orders teachers and their representatives to be quiet, or else
Wasn't that a Republican Party platform goal once?
They had the opportunity in the latter half of the 1990s when they controlled both houses of Congress to defund this department. Indeed, they briefly, until Jefford's treachery, controlled both houses and the Presidency. So, opportunity existed, but they did not act upon it.
One can only conclude that the Republican Party wants the Department of Education to exist. So does the Democrat Party. So what's the difference? A dime's worth?
Second, admit that your love of this utterly failed system is really not how much you can do "for the children, for the children..." but rather your desire to have a nice snug, secure job in which you work, on average, every other day for that starting pay of $31,000, have a giant chunk of time to yourself in the summer vacation period to further augment your income, need be accountable to no one for performance, get protected by one of two unions (association or federation) which lead the union movement in corruption of every sort, in which it would take an act of Congress or a military attack to remove the incompetents who predominate in every level of your "profession."
Third, would you care to imagine what the level of support from an overtaxed and overregulated public might be for the exorbitant waste of dollars which is the hallmark of government schools if they were not not a necessity for two-earner families as government provided baby-sitting?
Fourth, would you care to justify the necessity of graduate education degrees for kindergarten, grammar school or high school? Would you agree that those who best teach math are those who best understand math. Likewise for history, grammar, language, literature, sciences?
Fifth, would you care to give us your or your union's justifications for the closed guild system of time and money-wasting pursuit of "education" degrees necessary to enter into your occupation?
Sixth, do you think that people who have reasonably orthodox beliefs in God are somehow obligated to turn their youngsters over to a system hostile to God and hostile to Judaeo-Christian religion? Should fifth-graders be receiving condoms from their government "schools" with or without parental knowledge?
As to dropping everything to run off to the local "normal" school as brainwashing factories for government educators used to be called, to show one's submissiveness to the agenda of government and the NEA as a qualification to become a brainwasher of children whether you know the substantive course material or not, no thanks. It is far easier to educate my own children at home in the values of their faith, their civilization and high competence in language, grammar, literature, the Saxon Math program (hated by government incompetents everywhere because that series commits the unpardonable sin of giving kids expertise in math), sciences, and courses unseen in generations like Latin, Greek, ethics, logic, speech and other classics courses.
And you have the colossal gall to claim that Freepers who object to this socialist, amoral system of raping the minds, competence and capability of America's children JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND!?!?!?!?
You suggest that we should go to school board meetings. Will that help educate my home-schooled kids? Will the school board listen? Will the educrats listen? No, in all cases. If my vote can strip the school board of those who want to STEAL more of my family's money, I will vote. Otherwise, it is in my interest and that of every taxpayer that this fraud mislabeled "public education" be abolished at the earliest opportunity. You, as a government teacher, when you collect your salary, are in receipt of stolen goods. You are not a moral role model for that reason alone.
In the event that you are actually a moral person, resign, set up a decent private academy for kids whose parents cannot homeschool them. Take the risk of depending upon parental recognition in a free market to pay your salary. You will find that most private sector teachers receive less than their government school counterparts BUT earn much more than they receive.
Finally, I suppose that the government schools do provide one good thing: a large supply of ignorant drones who will inevitably be ruled by those who possess genuine homeschool or private educations. My kids thank you for that.
AND, by the way, as you can see, we Freepers DO understand.
Speaking of you know where, how do you feel about the Massachusetts goverment experiment in teaching adolescent lads (no doubt "conflicted over their sexuality") that they can "fist" up to the elbow? Or shouldn't we talk about that when the parents are around?
Got to go for a little while. I will be back before too terribly long. I'll bet I won't find answers to my questions from Eska.
You can blame whatever entity (NEA/government schools/whomever), but you control the politicians by your vote and they seem to be completely unresponsive to change.
Until America gets the family back together and does a better job at raising their kids; the situation will continue to degrade. The govt will dump more of your taxes into social problems and you will continue to cry the blues.
Talks cheap, do something about, go back to school and become a conservative teacher. Right now, you have lost the war.
The problems in education are just a relection of our societies social problems in general. There is a severe shortage of teachers, they don't even want to deal with your kids anymore; for no amount of money or love of teaching.
You can blame anybody you like but you are not having an impact or correcting the problem; just whining. I got to get on to school and do my part to bring about positive change.
Maybe their salaries are (as you put it) "abysmally low" due to the FACT that teachers (as a group) score below the median on their college entrance exams and then graduate college in the BOTTOM 20% of their graduating classes (this even considering that an "education major" is horribly deficient in REAL academic content but focues more on touchy-feely, psyco-babble that is practically impossbile to fail as most of the "content" is subjective. Even "master's degrees" in education are grossly deficient when compared to a master's degree in almost ANY OTHER field. The real academic requirements are simply NOT there.
Of course, there ARE good teachers and there are even some (in some few states) that are teaching subjects that they actually MAJORED in during college but they are getting fewer and farther between. The education establishment does not WANT these people teaching because they have practically no control over the subjects they were required to take in college and, therefore, haven't been subjected to the socialist propaganda taught in most "teacher's colleges". So frankly, I'm tired of hearing MOST teachers whinning about their pay - too many of them got their degrees in education because nothing else was open to them due to their lack of academic achievment and they knew the hours and salary ranges when they decided to teach. Look at Mass., for instance: their state legislature decided to TEST their teachers with a HIGH SCHOOL profeciency test and over 50% of the state's teachers FAILED IT their first time and almost 40% failed it on subsequent takings!! Of course, the NEA and the MEA jumped up and down, cried foul and applied political pressure to get the test either changed (dumbed down) or dropped altogether.
There's an old adage that goes something to the tune of if you can change jobs/careers and make the same pay, you're making what you're worth. If you can change job/careers and make more money, you're not making what you're worth but if you can't change job/careers and make, at least, what you're currently earning, then you're making MORE than you're worth. Too many teachers can't go into another career and maintain their current level of salary and benefits for me to believe that most aren't already making MORE than they're actually worth.
We need to do away with "teacher's colleges" and degrees/majors in "education" along with removing the federal, and even the state, governments from all matters involving education and RETURN the control to the local parents and taxpayers.
Now, in the defense of our good teachers - sadly they are having to spend entirely too much time baby-sitting and trying to ride herd on unruly students who do not wish to be in any school environment. This takes time away from actual teaching and turns them into substitute police - something that no teacher should have to put up with. The best way to solve this would be to remove compulsory attendence laws so that only those who wished to there and/or whose parents wished for them to be there - would be. Forcing perpetual childhood is no way to create responsible adults and informed citizens, IMHO, and let's face it - there will always be a need for burger-flippers, floor sweepers and ditch diggers (all worthy jobs even though they don't typically require great amounts of intellect nor schooling) and to force those who have no higher aspirations to attend schools for 13 years where they simply serve to disrupt the learning process for those who do take their studies seriously and to distract teacher's attention from same is ludicrous. Maybe if the teachers who REALLY wish to TEACH weren't having to deal with some of these additional problem areas, they wouldn't feel so over-taxed and under-paid.
Uh oh!! Another one of those educrate "change agents" that thinks they know best what our children should be learning and how they should be thinking than the parents who pay their salaries....
I wish I had seen your post before I put my fingers into gear. You have summed up more than eloquently most of the same points that I attempted to make!!
Sadly, the public schools were turned into socialist retraining centers during the 1900s and will probably never make a return to the actual imparting of knowledge unless so many parents remove their children that is causes the government-run system to collapse. Of course, we can always hope....
--another homeschooling mother
I agree with you to a point on this issue. I'm originally from Canada and had friends that wanted to become teachers. The system there requires a 4 year degree before even entering teachers college. The pay and benefits (at that time) were so good that the competition to get in was fierce. You needed the equivalent of a 4.0 grade point average to get in and two thrids of the applicants were rejected. In Florida, it seems the opposite: only the bottom quartile become teachers. It is utterly foolish to have just an education major without a 4 year degree to back it up.
Absolutely!! Many people have been advocating just such a system here but the NEA has been fighting it tooth and nail. Maybe they realize that those with less REAL knowledge and those of a lower intellect are much easier to brainwash into statist dogma. The NEA here also avidly fights those who have REAL degrees (even Masters and PHDs) from becoming teachers because they (the NEA) SAY that these folks haven't been "taught" to teach!! Happily, several states are now allowing these professionals into the classroom and giving them time to take the coursework necessary to get their teaching certificates (albeit on their own time and dime, in most cases).
Interesting take on it. I go for the simpler, "You get what you pay for" adage. The reason that a majority of teachers aren't even close to approaching "exceptional" status truly is because of the salaries. Those with talent can make 2-3 times as much in the private sector as they can in the classroom. Many forego the extra pay and teach anyway, but they are the exception. The ones who fight for the positions are the ones who can't get that nice union pay scale, government employee benefits, and job security anywhere else. Those who have other options frequently leave when the going gets tough. Those who don't have other options, stay put. (The majority of teachers follow two paths: leave after 3-5 years or else stay for 15+ years.) This process inevitably finds the largest part of the talent pool leaving. The remainder could be easily said to be "paid more than they're worth", but it's the fault of the process, not the fault of those who are trying to maximize their opportunities.
Personally, I took a 5 figure pay cut to go into teaching, and later another 5 figure pay cut to teach (math) at a smaller, rural school. My SAT was close to 1500, my SAT Math was a perfect 800, my GPA was over 3.5, I had a bachelor's degree (with honors) before I went for the Education degree, my GRE was in the top quintile, my students class average standardized test scores have always been higher than the last time they were tested, they raised over $10,000 for charities in my 4 years (mostly Breast Cancer), and most recently, my LSAT was over 160... after 4 years of fighting incompetent administrators, vile union regulations, unconcerned parents, over-indulgent parents, uninvolved students, and my ego (making less than my age was never in my plans, LOL!), I'm now leaving for Law School in August. I fall directly into the "leaving after 3-5 years" group. I would consider myself talented, original, motivated, and competent, but I'm leaving for greener pastures.
One story certainly isn't a statistically significant sample, but my case certainly supports both of our hypotheses.
What has happened to the schools? My mother was quite meticulous with keeping school papers and I found a number of "ditto sheets"(the days when they copied them on that bluish ink copier from ONE original sheet and the teachers actually had the creativity to come up with thier own worksheets as well) and quite a few said Saxon and several of the language arts said Scott Foresman at the bottom of them. This was in a Maryland public school back in the mid 70's. That just doesn't seem that long ago. It's really a shame what has been done to the schools.
ps we plan to homeschool. I see no other option for a quality, God centered education. BTW, I noticed you mentioned Greek and Latin. Are you teaching with classical methods? I find that a quite intriguing course of study.
Your personal story only serves to reinforce one of the ways that I feel the system could be vastly improved. You took your Bachelor's degree BEFORE going into "education" so you would certainly fall outside the statistics of those who go straight from HS on to "education" degrees in teacher's colleges. I don't believe most folks have a problem actually paying the TEACHERS who are truly knowledgeable in their particular subjects for their talents. Where I, and most others that I talk to, have a problem is constantly having the "children" and "education" brought up every time some bureaucrat wants to raise taxes. You stated (and it is a known fact) that teachers in many private schools receive higher salaries (and justifiably so) than their public school counterparts. The differences lie in amounts and types of "education" and personal initiative on the parts of these private school teachers, IMHO. Also, it costs MUCH less to privately school a child than is spent on "public education" for one. The reason? The government run education monolith that is top-heavy and corrupt. I say again, if we could rid of the federal department of education AND its state-level counterparts, we could get back on the road to putting the money where it needs to be with funding and control entirely from local sources. The way I see it, this would solve both the teacher's and the parent's dilemas. The teachers could be individually compensated based on actual merit and the parents would once again have a say in what and how their children were learning.
BTW: Good luck with your latest educational endeavor!
Maybe the government schools will FINALLY die when the greedy incompetent teachers (typically in the bottom 20% of their classes. It won't be a moment too soon. Again, like all government indoctrinators you blame society and you blame the parents and the local indoctrination center is not the Taj Mahal and your salary isn't even half of Bill Gates's salary, same old/same old. And, of cousre, if we are not ignorant enough to submit to the usual NEW horror stories and blackmail, we will be paying prison guards instead of teachers, etc.,, etc., same old/same old.
Wow, do I have an idea for you! Why don't you take your claws out of my taxpaying wallet until you answer the questions I previously posted. If you cannot or will not answer them (as I predicted yesterday), then we all know the implications of those questions are true and that you have conceded, don't we? But we knew that already.
I AM doing something. We have homeschooled our three and have now created a private religious school so that our kids will be able to step in and govern when the illiterate, innumerate, irrational but oh so politically correct and diversified alumni and alumnae (or dropouts) of the government system collapse into chaos. In the school and in our homeschooling, Latin begins in 4th grade, foreign language by 6th, daily essays, daily diagramming of sentences, courtesy, manners, morality, no condoms, no abortions, no fisting classes, etc. Well, you get the picture and, if you are not envious, you are not a teacher.
his or her amoral, atheistic, etc.
incompetent not incomeptent
Maybe the government schools will FINALLY die when the greedy incompetent teachers (typically in the bottom 20% of their classes) all quit or refuse to hire on because of those cheap taxpayers who are sick and tired of pissing oceans of hard-earned money down the sewer of government indoctrination with virtually zero, zip, nada in terms of results.
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