Posted on 08/29/2008 1:59:57 PM PDT by foutsc
This is why the Defense Department, and the US Army especially, is the most successful government institution in the US. Facing a decreasing pool of eligible recruits, the Army has started a learning program for dropouts to get up to speed before going to basic training. Hey, all you crabby leftists with smug bumper stickers wishing the DoD would have to hold bake sales to purchase their weapons take note: This is America's war machine picking up the education system's slack. Yeah, our teachers union dominated schools are failing, but don't worry, as usual, the Army's got our backs. What other government institution has educated more people, giving them real skills and real-life experience? Has any other government department turned out more responsible, independent citizens? This is how you stamp out poverty: by giving people a chance to lift themselves up by their bootstraps and earning their place in society. No handouts, no guarantees, just a shot at the pursuit of happiness. And look at what the US Army is doing overseas. Twenty-something company grade officers are acting as mayor and sheriff in towns they never heard of 5 years ago. Enlisted medics are giving hope to the hopeless. Teenage Privates and Corporals are America's goodwill ambassadors. Majors, Colonels and Generals are nurturing government institutions in foreign lands. Our victory in Iraq belongs to the US Army, Marines, Special Forces, with Navy Corpsmen and the US Air Force sharing the credit. President Bush is not responsible for Iraq success; US Army grit and determination is. They simply refuse to lose, and they never stop learning and adapting. They were given an impossible mission that our government did not prepare them for, but they gutted it out and gave us all a lesson in bravery and perseverance. If only the rest of the federal government could serve the nation like the Defense Department and the US Army has. Hooah!
How about we have the US Army take over the public schools.
How about we restrict new teacher hires to veterans of military service?
how could u be so EVIL!?!/!?!?!?!?1?!?!?Q?!?/1/1/!? the army will just INDOCKTIRNATE our stud ents!!!!!!1!1!11!!
and doo u think hour kids mite still lern about PRO-TEST FOKE SONGZ and WORLD PIECE????/?? with the army in charg, hour chidlren wil get stuk in IRACK!!!1!!!1!1!!! If only Jon Carry or Al Gore (U no, the DEMOCRATS would never fink abotu leavin Floride votress unconted!!!!!!!!!) was precedint instead of Adulf "'Hallabertin"" BU$$$$$chmipywarmunger!!!!11!!!!!
You can be there’d be an immediate improvement. Ever heard of DODDS Schools? It’s a system ran by DoD for kids of troops stationed overseas. Common rule of thumb is their kids are one year ahead of the average student here. Rich kids, poor, black, white, male or female, doesn’t matter. That is the beauty of the DoD.
Let me throw in another point of view here - these are dropouts.
They quit school before finishing their educations. It could be that they came to the Army because they found they didn't have the skills to get a job anywhere, because they didn't have enough education.
Good for the Army for educating them, but most of them could have gotten an education before dropping out, if they'd been sufficiently motivated to do so.
Can’t disagree with you. Other government agencies offer them food stamps, public housing, and welfare, which improves their lot not at all. The military offers a young person what is sometimes his only chance to make something of himself.
These are dropouts, but they should be congratulated for taking this opportunity at redemption. And God bless our military for offering these opportunities.
They have a “Troops to Teachers” program; I can tell you that the education bureaucrats are not especially eager..in many cases...to sign on the troops.
I agree with that...but as a "government" teacher who spends a great deal of time trying to get students to do their work so they can graduate, frequently unsuccessfully, I do take a bit of offense at the article blaming schools for the dropout problem (although I do think fewer students would drop out if schools offered more vocational education options.)
Frankly, I don't think it would be much different.
If you look at the voucher program in D.C., where the schools are among the worst in the nation, a relatively small percentage of those eligible for vouchers applied for them when they became available, and very few of those students were from the very worst schools.
My conclusion is that the students whose parents applied for the vouchers live in families that already value education, and those students are unlikely to become dropouts in any case.
It's the students of parents who don't value education and don't make their children attend school regularly who are more at risk of dropping out, and most of the students I know who drop out are from rather dysfunctional families.
I've crunched some back of the envelope numbers on the DC ‘system’.
By and large, for the racket to get a kid to finish one year of post high school, it runs something like 1 million dollars, or about 80K per year.
Bear with me here.
You might of seen ads over the years by various car companies that 94% of their pick-up trucks are still registered and on the road after ten years.
So, factories know how well their post production products do. Matter of fact, most give guarantees.
Not public schools.
I live in a fairly well off, totally white county, with about ten different town school systems. The county newspaper asked the school committees, principals, what the the post high school graduation rates were for their students. None, zero knew.
They couldn't even send out post cards.
What's worse, they didn't know the true percentage of kids that graduated from their high schools. For instance if a kid drops out, says they moved away, or moves in and doesn't register, they don't know.
It's odd. For tax purposes every car has to have a license, registration sticker. But when it comes to finding out results, quality control, outcomes...the schools don't know.
It is because they don't want to know. Knowing would imply responsibility, invite questions, pressure for real world improvements.
I did not mean to offend teachers. I am friends with a few. I’m tired of seeing great teachers with innovative ideas shackled by a plodding bureaucracy and a union that cares more about advancing liberalism than it does about educating kids.
I agree with you that parent involvement is key. I am not one of those who blame teachers for everything.
It's odd. For tax purposes every car has to have a license, registration sticker. But when it comes to finding out results, quality control, outcomes...the schools don't know.
There are homeschool parents on some of the school threads who don't want the government keeping track of every child - they feel that's an invasion of privacy. It sounds as if you disagree.
I don't know about your county - it sounds to me as if a county with 10 different school systems would necessarily have a lot of waste, which is one issue.
In our county, there are a lot of transient students, which is partly due to our proximity to a military base. Even with the locals, you get students who live with one parent and go to our schools for a while, then move to live with the other parent, or a grandparent, aunt, sibling, etc., and transfer in & out. Then we get the students who transfer to & from private schools and homeschool situations, or leave school to attend Job Corps, etc.
Not saying that schools couldn't do a better job, but I can see where it would be very difficult to keep track of all of the students that go through a particular school system.
I can agree with that, too!
If the schools can not count heads every day, I doubt they have any idea of how well, or not, they are doing in anything else.
I doubt the majority, especially in urban schools are missing because they are in homeschooling.
In the real world, even poor business keep count of customers, return rates, customer surveys and such. No enterprise keeps such poor, or non existing numbers as the public school systems.
I'm sure the schools know who is there on any particular day, but what happens to them? Here are a few scenarios; which of these students should the school count in its graduation/dropout rates?
1. Student attends local school system until 10th grade, then transfers to private school and graduates 2 years later.
2. Student lives with father until father goes to jail, then transfers out of state to live with mother until father gets out of jail, transfers back, transfers to GED program.
3. 11th grade student from out of state transfers to live with sister because mother is dying of cancer and can't care for student. Student does lackluster work, doesn't pass graduation test, and doesn't graduate.
4. Student transfers in from out of state, then goes to live with grandmother in Arkansas because mother is deployed to Iraq, transfers back when mother comes back (repeat 2-3 times) then finally graduates from whatever school student is attending when student reaches 12th grade.
5. Teenaged student from out of state transfers in to live with grandmother because mother can't control said student. Student gets in more trouble and is sent to juvenile hall.
6. Alternatively, Grandma is a tough old bird who lays down the law, student begins attending school regularly and graduates.
No industry save government would view its customers, their needs, wants and desires from that point of view.
James Buchanan won a Nobel Prize in economics for what is called ‘Public Choice’. The jist of it is that government bureaucracies are motivated and rewarded for making problems worse. More jobs, more secure jobs, more money.
Facing a decreasing pool of eligible recruits, the Army has started a learning program for dropouts to get up to speed before going to basic training.
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I wonder if their parents have bumper stickers that read:
“If you can NOT read this thank a government teacher!”
That was a truly funny post.
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