This is like other "learning styles" stuff which tends to be much flimsier on the evidence than its advocates hoped.
There was a real postwar shift on educational ideas that cast everything that would have been in your grandparents classroom as bad. (Drills, rote learning, dunce caps, canes). Strong case obviously that the latter 2 are b…
This is like other "learning styles" stuff which tends to be much flimsier on the evidence than its advocates hoped.
There was a real postwar shift on educational ideas that cast everything that would have been in your grandparents classroom as bad. (Drills, rote learning, dunce caps, canes). Strong case obviously that the latter 2 are bad, but the baby was thrown out with the bath water in getting rid of the rest of the "discipline" bundle.
Yes children are creative and isn't that nice? But Timmy needs to actually know how to count and spell non-creatively to be an operative adult. A century ago there were people who left school at 11 who could read and write and knew basic mathematics. Now we are warehousing kids to 18 without giving them these skills.
Hard to imagine how kids can go through life not learning to read—irrespective of school, where they can learn to grammar and how to read better, more interesting books.
Parents have a job to make their kids receptive to learning and to be well behaved. They can also teach their kids to read, as mine did, so that the basic skills of reading are there when a child starts school. Story time is the beginning, and it's through stories that kids can love to lear to read.
Yeah, turns out being too soft with kids is as bad (maybe worse) than being too hard. Exactly what year did "discipline" become a dirty word when it came to childhood education? Sometime after my childhood, that's for sure. And I'm thankful for that.
The only things Timmy needs to know is that he/they can choose a gender and, if they are White, to be ashamed of their privilege and heritage. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are for chumps.
I have the McGuffey readers for my homeschool library. They were used regularly from 1850-1930, and some still use it today. When teaching my daughter to read, I used it concurrently with another curriculum that focused on reading classical literature. They are really impressive. Cursive taught by first grade, memorization and emphasis on sounds. Easy to use. Like others have said, we finished our lessons in under an hour (at least for that young, my now fourth grader takes about 2 to 3 hours to finish all her lessons) and focused on play, community engagements (ie actually LIVING in the real world) and sports/activities like art or soccer.
Used the McGuffey readers to teach my two daughters to read as kindergarteners. They devoured the Nancy Drew books by the 2nd or 3rd grade. Their cursive is superb. Now in their late 30's/early 40's with kids of their own, the tradition continues.
You remind me of a visit with my husband’s father in the last months of his life, some twenty five years ago. He flat out said that the kids needed to learn to read, write and do figures. It rings in my ears to this day, every time I read an article or hear a complaint about the public school system.
Exactly. What the heck is happening in these buildings for seven hours a day, 180 days a year, for 13 years, that the students come out and they can’t even read or write a coherent paper or do basic math? Whatever schools think is important, if kids aren’t coming out with these basic skills, schools are failing at their job, their reason for existence.
Meanwhile, homeschoolers are getting their school work done in 2-3 hours a day (in the early grades—my high schooler is far busier these days), and spending the rest of their lives playing and LIVING. I literally just don’t know what goes on inside school buildings all day. Oh, except all the kids can talk quite coherently about transgender ideology and anti-racism.
I have a feeling technology problems take up a shocking percentage of the day. Whenever I hear schools brag about their tech and how every kid has a chromebook, it makes me scream on the inside.
My wife is a public school teacher at a Title 1 school (low income) and truthfully, the technology stuff isn't a problem. It's likely not that effective either, but technical problems don't consume any significant part of her day.
What does consume 20-30% of her day is dealing with children rolling on the floor and screaming because their parents never taught them basic self-control or discipline and the school won't call the parents out on it out of (not unwarranted) fear of being labelled racist.
There's a reason we home educate our own kids. Most common occupation for homeschooling parents? Former or current public school teachers.
I'm in a Title 1 school, as well. I work with students who have disabilities. Technology is a tool. Behavior is a far greater problem, as you said. When you get to Middle School, cockiness/arrogance are a problem. I've seen students ask for the in-school suspension, because they believe it gives them a status boost.
Students are not allowed to be given less than 50%, even if they do nothing. They're allowed test retakes and penalty free late work. They're being bribed and rewarded, for meeting normal expectations. Our school has a game room and a rewards cart (!) for kids who are rewarded for doing what was normal, when my kids were in school.
Teaching kids that they're both extra special and a victim, at the same time...that is part of the problem. The unreasonable expectations are another issue, though. When you have so many standards that teachers know it's not possible to even teach in a year, we have a huge problem.
I'm a teacher in a challenging area of Los Angeles and 11th graders in my school are at a 6th/7th grade level -- I am not kidding. Kids in my school can barely get through a book in a year so we have to give them stories to read -- and even those are too difficult. The writing is worse. I feel so disheartened.
Multiple things are going on. Significant behavioral challenges that take up time and effort. Children with disability challenge, that need more support than schools want to provide while they only focus on the superficial aspects of inclusion and the mountains of data/goal paperwork. I say this as both a Special Education Teacher and a mother, for over 31 years, who raised a son that has Autism.
Teachers have an excess of paperwork, meetings, and utterly useless training usually involving the flavor of the month. Teaching to pass tests, only. Too many standardized tests, which completely dominate instruction time. Many of our students are taking standardized tests twice a year, plus they have to do English language assessments, annually, which run over multiple class periods.
Starting kids, far too early, on things they're not ready for and moving instruction along, without ever building the required foundation. I saw almost an entire 4th grade (multiple classes) have to start back to the beginning of the school year, because everyone was failing Math. Students don't learn their multiplication tables. But, they were expecting them to do fractions. Don't even get me started on the crazy systems they were using to solve multiplication problems, which took far longer to complete than what I learned as a child. It looked more like tic-tac-toe.
I had a coworker, in his 20's, who came from Togo as a teenager. He couldn't believe how far ahead he was, compared to the students in his new High School. In Togo, they HAD to learn to do Math, because there were no calculators. If they studied the solar system, they had to draw and label everything, rather than simply write the names on a worksheet.
I think we're suffering from many problems. We've asked schools to do too much and there's so much happening,very can't be everywhere. My kids didn't even get textbooks,when we got to this district. They were given worksheets to glue in composition books. Teachers decide what to teach, to meet the "standard". That's all that matters.
It's an overwhelming mess. I haven't listed everything
Plus, another big missing component: we have tons of students who don't speak English as their native language. That has a huge impact on education effectiveness. Many also have significant other needs. Our student and parent population has changed. That includes the number of single-parent and two working parent households.
That's right. DEI/DIE and SEL (Social Emotional Learning) give them an education in Marxist Queer Theory and "anti-racism". The "educators" tell themselves this is more important than actual learning and so let themselves off the hook over that failure.
Concerns are waved away as coming from "the far right".
"AFT’s Randi Weingarten: The most dangerous person in the world"
"Ms. Weingarten, in her capacity as the titular head of America’s educational elite, is a noted champion of Common Core, critical race theory, intersectionality, LGBTQIA, “drag queen story hours,” diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI), as well as social and emotional learning (SEL) and all else considered in vogue in academia. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find anything but her full embrace of these educational paradigms that have overwhelmed our nation’s entire educational system from kindergarten to graduate school. With this as a fact, wouldn’t it be prudent to consider what Ms. Weingarten’s ideas have wrought?"
I think there are 2 things that could help. One is to reduce the power of the teachers unions somewhat by having the money follow the student instead of the school. This is a national trend. By the way, have you read that the Covid lockdowns revealed that there were hundreds of thousands of public school kids on the books who never existed? I believe it's in a WSJ article.
The other thing is that Marxist Queer Theory needs to be shown for the junk science that it is. That should tarnish all those who promote it in the schools. (One hopes.) A take down of the child gender clinic in St. Louis and some lawsuits like Chloe Cole's against Kaiser in Oakland, CA ought to help - if any of it ever enters the mainstream news...
I think that Richard Levine needs to be arrested and investigated but that is likely going to require a regime change up top - like a Ron DeSantis instead of a Joe Brandon. I like how DeSantis has worked to help kids and weaken teachers unions in FL. He has offered teachers raises, too, which might have once been what unions were about.
Parents are getting pretty fed up with schools. Maybe there will be a sudden preference cascade.
You make a good case that perhaps we've reached a tipping point and that things will begin to improve. Imagine if we create an education system designed for students. Thanks for that hopeful post!
Yes, I think you're right. One would hope that at some point people tire of a failed system and demand better. The NEA spent $374m in the 1920-21 period. Only 9% went to member-related items. The rest was buying influence and direct political donations. Union membership is compulsory for teachers, as are their dues. It's a racket.
Definitely - along with a few others like Richard Levine (first female..) who pushes for the transing of children from his perch at the White House - and Satanic Panic UCSF Doctor Diane Ehrensaft:
"Diane Ehrensaft, 'Satanic Panic' Woo Peddler, Now Champions the 'Gender Angels' Among Us
Who is responsible for her continued employment? We know that Biden is responsible for Levine's continued employment when the guy could be fired any day.... Show us, Joe!
Adrienne, thanks for mentioning that our school year is 180 days. In China, with more of a STEM focus, the school year is 245 days. Most countries are over 200 days. Were not even in the top 20 in any category globally (PISA scores). It's a freaking disaster that will unfold slowly.
China does not have students who speak over 160 languages, in their classrooms. My school district does. I work in a school that is 70% Hispanic. My guess is that other countries don't have the crazy paperwork required by No Child Left Behind and IDEA. We have so many standards kids are expected to be taught, every year. Teachers cannot possibly teach them all. We get kids who come from other countries, with severe disabilities, who have never been to school. Their parents think US school teachers will wave a magic wand and change their child. I have parents who suggest that their child become a doctor or a pilot. Their child has severe disabilities, including physical ones, and daily seizures.
I know teachers who work on paperwork until 8pm. The average Special Education Teacher leaves the field after 7 years, because they are burning them out, through ridiculous expectations of data collection, paperwork, and concerns about being seriously injured. We can't compare other countries to ours. I've lived in 5 states and have been a parent of school-aged children in 3. Every community has its own unique population, needs, and challenges. We have to focus on what has gone grievously wrong, in our system.
Considering how lousy the American educational system does with the time they have the kids, why would anyone want to trust them with more time? Zoom school was a wake-up call for a lot of parents who had way to much blind faith in their kid's teacher.
Can’t read, but certainly know how to look at all the pictures of
“Genitalia, how to use a condom & sexual positions, masturbate, gay sex, identify transgender, etc., etc., etc.”
When I was in 5th grade, many years ago, (showing my age) our Sex Education was presented by the school nurse. Girls only for half a day. Given pamphlets all about female genitalia, in order to understand ovulation & menstruation. And we thought THAT was a bit risqué. Ha!
Remember when home schooling was suspect because the children weren’t socialized like they would be in government schools? Lock them out of schools, gyms and parks and put masks on them for two years and that argument doesn’t hold water. The homeschoolers have fared much better than government school attendees and have been able to avoid the most odious mandates of the Covid “experts”. We need to tear down the current system and build a new education program for the 21st century. Without unions and bureaucrats.
If you're going to make sure that home schooling sticks around without being harassed by demands for a complete shutdown, you're going to need to build some sort of independent credentialing organization for homeschoolers- multi-ethnic, multiracial, interfaith. Because homeschooling is at risk of being libeled by scandals like this- I view it as a scandal, anyway: https://nypost.com/2023/02/03/ohio-doe-investigating-white-supremacist-online-homeschool-network/
I've occasionally heard of incompetent homeschooler parents, but nothing like a neo-Nazi front providing organized assistance with textbooks and lessons for White Supremacist Nazis.
Read the article, you'll realize that I'm not crying wolf. I hate fake wolf-crying on this subject, over every little slight, real or imagined. And one of the main reasons I hate it is that it provides such effective cover for when the real thing shows up.
I've endorsed homeschooling for as long as I've been out of public high school, basically. I've studied the issue enough to be firmly in the camp of independent learning, homeschooling, and freedom of choice. But Nazi homeschooling is unacceptable, okay? All judicial wranglings, litigation, and matters of possible government restriction aside. The problem needs to be obviated by the creation of a homeschool credentialing institution. A model that doesn't have to adhere to guidelines as strict as, say, those mandated by the institutions that credential new colleges and universities. But it should at least refuse to certify homeschools and homeschool networks run as openly racist institutions, and identify them as such. Which does imply that the credentialing organization has to be multiracial- and preferably interfaith. The credentialing coalition doesn't have to agree on everything. It simply has to have a consensus of what's unacceptable.
I'm not crazy about the idea of imposing a layer of bureaucratic meddling into the home school situation, not even on an optional basis by an organization made up of the folks involved. But this needs to be done, because otherwise demands will increase for the government to actively intervene.
"I'm not crazy about the idea of imposing a layer of bureaucratic meddling into the home school situation, bet..."
I've been in home education long enough to have heard this line many times over many years. It's always a Trojan horse. Translation: I desperately want to impose my way of thinking on you and your kids.
Why is it always the default position of the statists that their government bureaucrats will care more about kids than the kids' parents do?
There are good and bad homeschoolers.
There are good and bad public school teachers.
There are good and bad social workers.
Because people are selfish and sinful and envious and jealous. No occupation or educational system has a monopoly on virtue. I side with parents though. When it comes to protecting a child, even a third rate parent is better than a first class government bureaucrat.
Do you view the situation of an organized group offering a curriculum of "white supremacy" and the Nazi version/vision of history to homeschooling parents as a problem, or not?
If you view it as a problem, what do you propose as a solution?
Of course it’s a problem. But it’s also a really bizarre and rare one. Plenty of public/private school kids are radicalized (in a variety of ways) outside of school, on the internet. What do you propose as a solution to that? Should we cut everybody off from the internet? Should we strip everyone of their freedom because some people are misusing theirs?
I told you what I proposed already. None of it bore any resemblance to your rhetorical suggestions. Which makes you at least the second person who doesn't seem to have comprehended what I wrote. When people draw inferences from my writing that aren't present, I don't think I'm being impolite by bringing up that fact.
I also asked another poster on whether they thought the situation was worth addressing, and how they would address it. They didn't reply, but my inquiry is open. My view is that this is for American homeschooling's coalition of interests- the parents, tutors, and the people supplying the curricula- to sort out.
[ I'm leaving both links up in the hope that at least one of them won't 404 itself into oblivion. ]
That's an issue with political implications- as well as, I think, ethical ones. Particularly if the curriculum provided by the "Dissident Homeschooling" network based in Wyandot County draws more recruits. https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34ane/neo-nazi-homeschool-ohio
To me, temporizing on this issue is akin to what I've noticed taking place among Left-identified political activists- like Antifa and eco-activist meeting, where participants refuse to disavow Black Bloc elements who advocate violence and destruction because that might "split the movement", "no policing the activist community", etc. The extremes win by default, because not enough people toward the center will take a stand to oppose them.
With all due respect I strongly disagree. While I understand your concern any attempt at "credentialing" by definition means relinquishing control, and control is the point of homeschooling- control of the environment and control of the curriculum. We really need to get past making decisions for the general population based on fear of the outliers.
I'm not getting how an independent group outside of the government made up of people who home-school or pursue alternatives outside the public school system is going to have a default of being hostile to autonomy.
"While I understand your concern any attempt at "credentialing" by definition means relinquishing control, and control is the point of homeschooling- control of the environment and control of the curriculum."
Someone who's signing on with a Nazi curriculum and lesson plan has already "given up control", to be real about it. It's a collectivist, zero-sum racial herding agenda. They're also finding it desirable to condition their children to Nazism.
In some states, homeschoolers are seeking an allowance of government voucher money to defray their homeschooling expenses. How successful is the effort going to be, once the word gets out that the networks of educational assistance include avowed biological racists and Hitler fans?
"We really need to get past making decisions for the general population based on fear of the outliers."
I really hate to make this point, but it's a valid one; in a nation awash in firearms that allows people "the right to keep and bear arms" to the point of permitting them to stockpile semiautomatic rifles, a few "outliers" with an agenda of race war have an agenda to make an enormous amount of trouble. There are no organized groups of "live and let live" white supremacists or Nazis. Allowing an organized agenda of concerted Nazi indoctrination to be treated as a legitimate educational program means entrenching a genocidal, militarist agenda as part of the pedagogy. It's been that way since Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1923.
To those who think as you do it will be outrageous. Outrageous I tell you. And amid much pearl-clutching and drama, much as you are displaying now, will demand, demand I tell you, government oversight. What will you the anti-home school movement be called? The possibilities are endless. Your problem.is you are using outliers to seek control of an entire movement. A very justified movement IMO. A movement formed in reaction to union/Department of Education usurpation of parental rights. I recognized over a decade ago that as significant as the 2A power grab is, it pales in comparison the those entities usurpation of parental rights. BTW there are any number of fully functioning madrassas in the US and while I do not support that idealogy I understand why the parents of those children do not want their children in public schools. Ditto Catholics and Orthodox Jews. But parents displeased with public education should not be herded into religious schools by default nor required to prove their merit to credentialed who are themselves credentialed by the system the parents find objectionable. The government is not a fix for everything that ails you. Lastly, at least in my state home-schoolers are recognized and supported with a wide variety of resources available.
"required to prove their merit to credentialed who are themselves credentialed by the system the parents find objectionable."
That isn't what I'm proposing, from my lofty perch as a rando on the Internet.
"The government is not a fix for everything that ails you."
That notion was implicit in my proposal for a way to solve the problem without the government. Although it's worth noting in the US version of institutionally liberal society, the Nazis apparently have the Big Bad Federal Government on their side, as the default bias. Which indicates to a pearl-clutcher like me that maybe any homeschooling/charter school community that has an interest in not being confused with Hitler Youth recruitment has an interest in developing some standards and broadcasting them publicly. This is not the same as dictating a curriculum, or a lesson plan, or a particular set of schools. A simple declaration of what's unacceptable would be worthwhile. In the interest of addressing the problem as presented in terms of empirical reality, not Theory.
I do not see that you are proposing anything other than home schools be "credentialed". Which I view as a very slippery slope among other objections Let's just agree to disagree as we have opposing points of view on this issue that are not subject to resolution.
Yes, credentialed in a very ordinary sense of the word, by an independent entity. Something akin to compliance with the Better Business Bureau's standard of ethical practice. The Better Business Bureau is not the government. The have a long record of operation without noteworthy public complaint. Every American I know views them as providing a public service.
I have no doubt that some number of the business owners who have been sanctioned by the BBB harbor animosity toward them. That doesn't make their mission illegitimate.
So I'd think it would be within the realm of possibility for an alternative school alliance of participants to establish some ethical standards and publicize them.
It also has to be acknowledged that there isn't just one slippery slope associated with the matter being discussed.
So what do you propose as the qualifications of the inspectors who provide the credentials? And very true about the potential for abuse (slippery slope) of mainstreaming home schooling. I do not deny that. But as is there are a number of problems with too many public schools. And I support any parents' unequivocal right to remedy those problems as s/he deems right. To me one of the slipperiest issues of the homeschooling trend is what happens to the kids whose parents don't remove them from.public school? Are we potentially creating 2 distinct classes of people based on education? Or I guess as techinprek believes, and I agree, that there are already 2 , 3? While public school is part of all of our experience, even if we did not attend one, it is a modern phenomena. Many of the greatest minds in history were not products of what we now know as formal education.
It all starts with the Faculty of Education. That graduates leave the program not knowing how to teach reading is a damning indictment.
Unfortunately, the faculty also attracts some of the worst post-secondary students. If you can’t make it in Science, you go into Arts. If you can’t make it Arts, you go into Education. If you can’t make it in Education, you’re out the door.
My son is a dedicated hard working teacher who has taught in inner city and small city schools. He is imaginative and can handle discipline programs. Let’s be thankful and remunerate our great teachers!
That's great. I'm a teacher in Compton and I am feeling so exhausted after 23 years of teaching. My daughter, though, is just about to start teaching middle school and I'm praying for her. because she is in a very very challenging area of Philadelphia. :-)
Honestly, I don’t know how you do it. I dump on teachers a lot, because there’s a lot of bad ones out there. But to truly care, to put it all out there in a challenging environment, I simply couldn’t do it. I hope the small victories make it rewarding.
Jim-- There are some victories and I can remember ALL the students who I feel I made a small difference in improving their lives. But-- after 23 years I am ready to retire.
I agree. They're just not in it for the kids. There are no consequences for poor performance. We insist on perfection from our police - a much more nuanced job - but we give our teachers a complete pass on accountability. Why?
Teacher's unions exist for the teachers, not the students. The corruption that exists involving the teacher's unions and the State dooms the educational system to perpetual mediocrity.
Are you familiar with James Lindsay? He has produced a lot of material linking post-modern philosophy and Neo-Marxism to the condition of the current education system.
We have evaluations. I have to turn in paperwork showing how I have met each required section of expectations, with multiple examples. I am required to have a goal, every year, beyond the goals of the course, which I have to support and document, throughout the year. I think you are underinformed, in this area, along with very understandable frustration. I share that frustration. I was a parent, long before I became a teacher. The problem is that teaching is like any other business. There is favoritism and politics, just like in a corporation. We're dealing with people. Being a teacher does not change that.
Yes, the silly paperwork teachers have to endure is ridiculous. But as a former teacher and as a former businessperson, I have to disagree with your analogy. Teaching is not like any other business. It is far more political. It is largely unaccountable. It is a quasi-monopoly with the deck heavily stacked against competition. In business, outcomes matter. Customers (the students) matter. Useless paperwork hurts productivity. If you're not successful, you're out of business. Period. Money should follow students just as consumers of business goods make their own choices. Then the good schools and good teachers would prosper and be rewarded accordingly. I'm an independent, but it's pretty clear that the teaching industry today is a coercive fundraising arm of the Democratic party, which protects it and funds it in exchange for campaign donations. I assume you see that.
I'm an Independent, as well. I don't fit in the mold of whatever people think the average teacher is.
I just think the picture is so complex. It can't be covered in a couple of thoughtfully written paragraphs. I'm trying to help flesh it out; more balanced perspective.
But, I'm mentally exhausted, after a chaotic and tiring workday. I've got Grad School homework waiting for me. I'm back in school, to earn a different license, because I don't want to spend my years trying to avoid serious injury.
There's also no consequences for High School kids who aren't doing work or keeping up. In lower income schools where I teach they give a free pass to kids. Low expectations, which I dislike.
I'm at one of those schools. Our entire district will not allow any grade lower than 50%. Students are not doing their work, because they can squeak by, with minimal effort and are allowed test retakes and penalty free late work. They're also being bribed and rewarded for meeting normal expectations.
Remunerate? Our teachers earn nearly 6 figures working 9 months, can't be fired and get lifetime pensions and health care. It sounds like your son is doing a great job. Unfortunately, it's not a meritocracy in public education. There is no other profession in America that is failing its customers this badly, and which is completely unaccountable. We need to start over. Your son would be a leader in a system that is student-oriented, and compensated as such.
Teachers do not make 6 figure salaries. Perhaps, those nearing retirement, in an expensive area are. But, that's not typical.
We pay health care premiums and deductibles, like everyone else. I spend days with a indescribable level of stress, from coping with assorted behavioral and other challenges, from my students, while also trying to avoid being injured. I deal with nearly delusional level expectations on what these kids can be doing. I take work home and I have to plan my work, before I can do my work. If I am absent, I have to leave work prepared for a sub. I spend a lot of time creating materials, because my kids need them. The school does not supply what we truly need.
I have so much paperwork, that has nothing to do with teaching. It takes 3 attempts and a translating service to get paperwork returned from parents. I could go on, all day. I work, during the summer, and we're barely down to 8 weeks of summer break. We don't get paid,for those months we are off. The salary is adjusted and 12 months of medical premiums are paid in less time.
If you want to know what's truly wrong, blame No Child Left Behind. Honestly, blame IDEA. Blame unreasonable expectations that kids are not prepared to meet, because they don't fit into neat little statistical boxes.
I like your points. We've piled too many tasks on schools and teachers. What would you ideal teaching setup look like? I'm at nail56@gmail.com if this venue isn't good for you.
This venue is fine, but I've not studied specifics with enough granularity to opine with authority, I'll admit that.
I'm for what works. Catholic schools tend to do better with less resources. Why? Scandinavians do much better, especially the vaunted Finns. Why?
Not being sure of the right answer, however, has never stopped me from opining before. No reason to start now.
I'd start with teachers. They should be deep subject matter experts, masters level minimum. They should be paid like the professionals they need to be to serve our kids. Eliminate the pensions and use that money to pay teachers much higher. They can have matching 401(k)'s like the rest of us. And they should be held accountable - no tenure.
Next administrators. Schools are top heavy. All administrative roles and costs should be 100% transparent to all. Again, no tenure. Run the operational side of a school like a well-run business. The bloat will fall off.
Now the kids. First, back to uniforms to level all kids and prevent garment competition. No tolerance for intimidation, violence, drugs, weapons, etc. Far fewer tests, more individualistic work, a solid grounding in the basics. Make education a national priority the way the Moon Race once was. No political indoctrination of any kind, but teach history fairly and honestly. High standards, for everyone.
Just some ideas to start the conversation. Wish I had all the answers.
Seattle public school teachers make that kind of money on 9 month contracts. Lots of bennies take over the top. All that's asked of them is to graduate from a "teachers college" where they get indoctrinated in Wokeism.
According to one site, there are about 13,800 school districts in the US. I don't think that all of them are paying what Seattle is paying their teachers. I'm sorry that you are irritated with what is being taught, when teachers are in college. So was I. Not everyone fits into the little "woke" mold being cast. Some of us are trying to survive and make a positive difference.
Here in Seattle, most of the teachers go through the University of Washington College of Education. It's a total indoctrination factory. (Could say the same about most of the humanities departments there including the social sciences, and now increasingly the hard sciences.) That in turn infects the schools and ultimately the students. Therefore, most of the kids in Seattle Public Schools (actually the State of Washington) cannot read, write, or do math. The teachers in the greater Seattle area make plenty of money. Bellevue the nearby more affluent suburb actually pays even more. To give you an idea just how bad it is, my immigrant sister in law just wanted to get a cook job on campus, but she had to go through about 12 hours of online woke indoctrination to get it. I know that because I sat alongside her to get her through it as her English is not so great after working most of her years in a Mexican restaurant kitchen. Some of the videos we could translate into Spanish on YouTube, but some not. It was quite a wake up call for me to realize where DEI is at on the UW campus. All of that trickles into the College of Ed. All of it.
I don't doubt any of this. I deal with the same garbage, where I live. We can talk about and analyze it until I have another migraine. Solves nothing. I don't disagree with you. But, I'm interested in solutions. You're trying to prove something to the wrong person, simply because I don't agree that Seattle is a valid example of how all teachers are paid. I think you also, mistakenly, believe that I somehow teach and believe all this stuff. I don't. I've had to sit through ridiculous, useless trainings, for the last 5 years, that have everything to do with politics and nothing to do with teaching. I would LOVE for that to change.
I'm through contributing to these comments, for this topic. I am not the stand-in for whatever frustrates people about the education system. I am just as frustrated and this dialogue has taken up too much of my limited time. It's not going to result in anything effective.
Exactly, Nicole Ann. The problems you cite are all a function of how education is run. Security should not be an issue. English should be the only language. The paperwork is ridiculous. The system is broken. The teachers (yes, they do make 6 figures here in California) are in a unique position to go on strike for a better educational process and outcomes, and challenge "management" (administration) but they don't. They only go on strike (in our area at least) for more pay or for political grandstanding. Why don't teachers ever strike on behalf of their students that they know they are failing despite their and your best efforts?
Striking is not legal in my state. It is grounds for firing. Aside of surveys and asking questions, we don't have a collective voice.
I'm too tired, tonight, to effectively write what is tumbling about in my mind.
Children and teachers are both being failed. It just depends on what situation you're talking about. It's not one or the other. The system is a tangled mess.
I couldn't agree more. I'm not sure what's going to dislodge the status quo, but people are becoming increasingly aware of our education system's failures.
I can see that, I see a lot of red tape. But my impression is thatit seems driven by State Board of Education? What about the teacher's unions? I feel they are into Politics vs helping teachers in situation like yours. BTW teachers in CA make 100k (you can check online), but then our cost of living is insane... Believe me as a parent I can see which teacher is trying to help, versus the admins...
I'm in a right-to-work state. No unions and no collective bargaining rights Striking is grounds for firing.
I agree that the State Board of Education drives a lot. Definitely true for our district. Politically motivated leadership contributes, as well. Definitely. We're close to DC. Politics is like a virus or a fungus. I hate it.
I'm sure that CA teachers are making a higher paycheck. But, the cost of living is insane, as you said. I was considering moving, in 2021, because of the political garbage impacting the schools where I live. Starting teacher's salaries were pretty low, in all the states I checked. I would have needed a second job. CA is definitely an exception, rather than an example of the average.
It is absolutely not unreasonable. I sure hope you're not asking me, because I am definitely not part of the problem. I became a Special Education Teacher in 2020, teaching work skills to students who have disabilities. Our current situation drives me crazy.
I think you're tempted to look to me as place to address the frustrations of what might be happening in schools. I'm not that person and I have absolutely not advocated for students not meeting minimum standards.
I've been a parent for nearly 32 years. I've been a teacher for 3. I work in a system that asks me to talk to students about their career plans, when they are 11, non-verbal, pre-literate, can't work or even remain seated independently, and are not toilet trained.
You tell me where the problems originate and show me how we are not battling delusional expectations based on blanket policies and statistics that have nothing to do with the actual capabilities of the students. We are so busy making sure that all the boxes are checked. Those boxes are part of the problem.
I'm a teacher and you really have to blame admin because we teachers are expected to follow what the administrators want. I personally would love to do it my own way but I can't.
Deirdre my parents and uncle/aunts were all teachers. All of them were democrats. The only thing that they agreed with Ronald Reagan on was closing the US Department of education/ Masters & Phd factory that has been destroying education for decades. It created the administration state that prevents you from educating children. (Thank you for mentioning it.) That was my parents' rationale, particularly my father who went to Georgetown Law School. He had been asked in NY to be part of the Union in the 70's-80's to go get the money. Yes Randi was there back then and it was a corporate goal of the union. He rejected it because he had impeccable ethics and spent decades on the mission of teaching individuals rather than fleecing taxpayers for unionist power.
Look at the multi trillion-dollar budget that pays for the administrator proposed by Biden (below). This is what the 'education' at any cost mantra that has been built into by the DNC/teachers union lobby. An agenda that completely ignores education outcomes for children. The poorer you are the less you get and the more you owe. The podcast will only get worse, unless democrats demand the teachers union and higher ed are held to task.
Very little money for the Dept. of Ed goes to direct classroom education of children, or what most people call "teaching".
Go to the budget table.
Look at the advocacy of a multi trillion dollar increase in student loan debt/grants that the Biden Administration has proposed (a 350% increase )
More administrators, more debt, less education. It is disgusting & pathologically sick to keep doing this to American children and families.
Matt-- Absolutely! And what I see now in the inner city schools where I teach is a huge push for APs when most of the kids are unable to write coherently. Who benefits from this? Not the students who will either not take the test or get a worthless 1 or 2 on it. It's The College Board. (In 2021, the most recent audit available, the College Board had $1,693,847,000 in Cash and Investments.) Rather than pushing basic writing skills like grammar, they push AP because they get money from the government to put APs into the schools. The more I researched this, the more sick I felt.
Dierdre a local principle told me about this 1.6 billion a couple weeks ago. I was unsure of what she was saying. This helped clarify what she was saying. It's part of taking money regardless of need- because they can get the money. They routinely over ask, and build in enormous amounts of fat in the system because of negotiating habits. This is part of why school districts and upstream budget requests are so distorted. They are slaves to use or lose it mentalities. Never thinking to legislate repurposing dollars to need. This is the main problem when federal conditions are tied to state and local funding.
The purse strings for every kid in America is held by a bloated administrator, and teachers who are burned out get bought off with more internal administration jobs at the districts. This is the answer to frustrated teachers. They buy the passion out of good people working in districts with the watered-down education.
My father had worked as lobbyist in DC before going back to school for teaching. He laid all this stuff out for me in the 90's. He had worked in the Bronx too before moving up to Westchester. I urge every Democrat I know to start reading the fine print before it is too late for another generation of kids- at their hands. The syndrome here is really institutionalized child neglect & abuse. The neglect converts into indentured servitude later on in these peoples lives. It is punishing people for doing the right thing. The way things are set up it extinguishes hope for millions.
My son’s school district does not pay any teacher in the six figures. He would probably agree to merit vs seniority pay. But this is not as simple an issue as it first appears.
Not in California. I remember seeing a Fordham U. study on what percentage of school funds actually go to education: salaries, buildings, supplies, etc. - it was about 1/3. 2/3 went to administrators and administration. No business or even non-profit could get away with this. In government, there is simply no accountability, at least not in the U.S.
Every profession is not as simple as it appears. But OK, I'll bite: explain to us why our failure to adequately educate our children is "not as simple an issue as it first appears". Maybe we can all learn something about what's holding back our public education. It's certainly not money.
One class could have kids with very distressing family situations and kids with sever learning disabilities. That class doesn’t do ss well as the class next door without those problems. You needed to have a granular understanding of the class to evaluate the teacher. That kind of evaluation can be skewed by say, how the principal likes the teacher’s spouse. This kind of stuff does happen.
All true, but the education system needs to be held accountable for these issues. The private sector already is. It's a failed system, period. We can't afford this.
Exactly. I have a class with 27 students and about a third of them have behavioral problems which can disrupt the class and impact the really eager students. It's so frustrating because many of those (behavioral) kids are in foster care or have severe situations at home. I am exhausted every day. But the kids can also be sooo funny and make my life better.
In the real world your evaluation can be skewed by your boss as well. What amazing teacher would like the same race as the dunce next door? Our school district has one teacher that goes from school to school, as soon as enough parents complain about him he gets transferred. Guaranteed job, guaranteed retirement.
Twenty years ago, the first large wave of home schoolers hit the universities. They were skeptical that these home schoolers could perform at the college level. Like most people they questioned the value of a different form of education.
After the first year of teaching home schoolers, they were clamoring for more of these kids. They were outperforming the public school students.
40 or 50 years ago we got new math from these "education experts". They replaced a successful system of teaching math with one that had not been tested in the classroom. Well after 30 or forty years of they admitted failure and went back to using a successful system that had been used for hundreds of years. Obviously, these education elitists hadn't heard the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
The same can be said for bilingual education. The left loved bilingual education because it proved they weren't racist Hispanophobes. Well that turned out to be a disaster. Hispanic students who were taught solely in Spanish, graduated high school unable to speak English and couldn't compete in an English language job market. Even the left wing loons in the capital of the loons, California, said bilingual education was a failure. Once again, the left's irrationality has shone through and like always was a cruel disaster.
Now it is “racist” to expect kids to take foreign language classes, even English, if not their native language. Nor is cursive writing required. And let’s not even go into math!
It seems that you have learned a lot in your travels. I think you are correct that the decline began after WW II. My dad was born in 1911 and in 1975 when my parents moved from their home to a condominium apartment, while helping with the move I came across my dad’s grade school grammar book. As I read through it I was stunned to discover that he had received a better education in grammar in the 1920’s than I had received in the 1950s. And I had Mother Syncleta who was a great taskmaster.
I am very grateful for my parents. My dad taught me to do simple arithmetic in my head and to always check my work and never hand a test paper in early. My mom taught me how to work with my hands and that if there was a will there was a way.
In my opinion, the real drop off in standards occurred in the late 1960s when healthy living and happy music was replaced with drugs and noise.
The teaching profession broke several rules. 1. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. 2. If you have a new idea for a fundamental change try it out on a small number of people and see if it works.
We are living with the consequences of these decisions. Doctors, Lawyers and Teachers have all failed us since March 2020. They joined the Media which has failed us as long as I’ve been alive. There are very few journalists today who investigate before reporting, or more accurately, opining.
We are lucky that the Nurses and Engineers, so far, have performed better than these other vocations.
My father who grew up in that era used to say it was common for produce sellers to add everything up on the outside of a brown paper bag. Today you would need a PhD in math for that kind of feat.
So true, Terrence. I get young lawyers who graduated from great schools who can neither write a grammatically correct sentence nor fashion a cogent, well ordered argument.
By the way, wasn't there circulating years ago a test from the NYC schools from the early 1900s that was pretty daunting - but was for then 8th graders or something like that? Was it true or another urban legend?
I was a Teaching Assistant for “Research and Writing” when I was in law school over 40 years ago. The illiteracy I witnessed —from students who were generally very bright and educated —was shocking. It was obvious to me that a substantial number of these law students had never mastered basic grammar, punctuation and sentence structure; much of what I read was almost unreadable. I found myself teaching English Composition as much as Legal Research and Writing. These were LAW STUDENTS. AT A WELL-REGARDED LAW SCHOOL. It certainly didn’t get better over the past 40+ years either.
I attended Catholic school and for several years, part of our English curriculum included diagramming sentences. A sentence was defined as a complete thought with a subject, verb and object in addition to prepositions and prepositional phrases. I wonder if this valuable method is still being taught.
After hiring a couple of college grads (honor roll! 4.0gpa!) who greatly underperformed, my husband started giving applicants a basic skills test - and I do mean basic (what’s 10% of 540). The vast majority can not pass it.
We did the same thing in my business. Applicants would say they were proficient in math, Excel, etc. We'd give them a test. Most failed. Their self-esteem, however, was a solid A+.
I believe it is illegal now in most places to give any kind of skill test in job interviews. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. My last employer mentioned it to me one time. It is definitely illegal to give anything that remotely resembles an IQ test, and I believe skills tests are generally viewed as subsets of these.
I don't know about that. all states have bar exams and I think MDs have to pass an exam to practice medicine and as MDs move into specialties they have to pass an exam.
If I apply to be an airline pilot, I would hope they have a certification exam.
Yes, they have to pass their bar exams. But notice that the employer isn't the one giving that. It's a separate gate-keeping organization. It may not be a Federal law but apparently in Washington State you cannot give a skill test in a job interview. It is considered discriminatory against minorities. Amazing to even type that sentence.
A neighbor of mine awhile back was a pilot for Northwest. He learned to fly in the Navy and flew both in Vietnam and U2 flights. When he retired out of the Navy he went to Northwest Airlines. He told me virtually all pilots back then were military trained. But sometime in the eighties they were running short on these and so started lowering the standards to qualify as an airline pilot. He thought it was a terrible mistake. The number of flight hours of training professional pilots had to have kept dropping, and more and more of it was in simulators. He said that they seemed to be proficient enough in normal flights, but where they got into trouble was in the extra-normal situations. They just hadn't trained for handling many of the very weird situations and breakdown conditions the military pilots had to deal with. He had been landing aircraft on pitching high-seas carriers; he was shaking his head we read about a commercially trained pilot ran off the end of a runway somewhere. Several of the big accidents we all read about would have very different scuttlebutt stories circulating among he and his pilot friends. It was very eye-opening. And I don't feel nearly so comfortable flying anymore.
So many novels now get homonyms mixed up and relevant words mixed up with similar words. It ruins the flow of the story telling to always be having to try to figure out what the author is really trying to say. It's a failure of both writing and editing. But the sensitivity readers have at least made it safe to read a book!
"So true, Terrence. I get young lawyers who graduated from great schools who can neither write a grammatically correct sentence nor fashion a cogent, well ordered argument."
But I bet they Feel Real Good About Themselves, right? Massive Self Esteem.
I consider myself as well educated but I can't pass that exam. Some of the questions are not valid today. I know what a rod is but I don't know how long it is.
A rod is usually long enough to cover your backside and short enough to easily wield. Or it is a misspelling of the nickname of a famous baseball player.
They do it both by lowering standards and be creating new divisions within these fields which require less (rigorous) education. My mother was a nurse during WW2 (in England). She was an RN which required several years of training. By the time she retired most of the nursing staff at the hospital in San Jose at which she worked were not RNs. They'd created LPNs and other categories which were easier to get into. Even with doctors now there are "physician's assistants" and other categories.
My grandmother was born in 1917 and was educated in a one room schoolhouse. I watched her do the NYTimes Sunday crossword each week using a pen and finishing the puzzle. She did math in her head, and had beautiful handwriting.
I’m 80. My mom was the bookkeeper in our family business. She did the “books”, columns of figures in her beautiful hand writing with a fountain pen. Age taught me about the columns of figures and debits and credits and how they had to add up and balance. Years later I took my first accounting course at Wharton. And there the professor was making a big deal out of this where the debits went and the credits meant. I raised my hand. Wait. My mom taught me that when I was ten years old! The class cracked up!!
We sent our kids to the local German school and opted out of the public education system (Silicon Valley. They teach cursive writing with ink pen. Our kids are 11 and 12 years old now and both have nice handwriting.
When she was little, my daughter went to a school in rural Paraguay for the summer. Dirt floors and a poor community. She said they were at least a year ahead of her school in math. Can you imagine?
“Most Catholic schools are still teaching cursive”
Funny story. When my kids first started doing school assignments they only knew how to print. On each paper they would have to print to our last name. One day one of them asked if we could change it because it took so long. I told her not to worry. As soon as she learned cursive all it would take is a few squiggles and demonstrated my technique. Being the perfectionist she is I’m happy to say she didn’t adopt my style.
We called it longhand. I had never heard the word cursive until a few years ago. Despite all of my public school teachers putting us through our paces writing longhand, I never mastered the art and as a lawyer my writing became so bad that I couldn’t read what I had written. Amazingly, I had 2 secretaries who were able to read it.
Catholic schools have a higher graduation rate and their students as a whole place higher on the SATs than public school students and have a higher rate of students going on to higher education.
And.... the cost of a catholic education is much less than public schools.
We really have to lay our crappy school system at the feet of the Democrats. They are to blame.
Teaching is a noble profession and there are a lot of dedicated great teachers. But the system holds them back. We need to be teaching the 3 Rs not CRT, gender propaganda and teachers should be fired if they interject their political views in a classroom. CRT, gender discussions and politics should be left up to the parents not some glassier, drooling leftist fanatic.
"Yes children are creative and isn't that nice? But Timmy needs to actually know how to count and spell non-creatively to be an operative adult. A century ago there were people who left school at 11 who could read and write and knew basic mathematics. Now we are warehousing kids to 18 without giving them these skills."
BINGO! We have a winner! Before you can play Brandenburg Concerto you have to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
My grandfather dropped out of school at age 15. He was a qualified surveyor and civil engineer and retired from the US Army a highly decorated full colonel.
Clarence Darrow never graduated law school but was considered one of the best defense lawyers the US has ever seen. He passed the bar exam by bringing a fifth of bourbon to the three judge panel and shooting the shit with them for a couple of hours.
Today, I think he could run circles around a Harvard law graduate.
I graduated from high school in 1972 and that was the extent of my formal education.
Sadly, I compare favorably to current college graduates in grammar and writing and reasoning ability.
As someone asked in an earlier comment - what are they doing in our public schools?
Also, how much of this is parental/family failure? The more the government, in all of its iterations, takes on - (by force?) - the responsibilities of the family, the worse our schools (and the entire culture) get.
The county in which I reside is No. 1 in our state in educational achievement (NEAP standard testing); however, that doesn’t mean much when only 67% are proficient in ELA and less than 50% are proficient in math.
I left college with a commercially useless degree in history and political science. Back when I entered the job market if a company wanted a computer programmer, they had to apprentice one and I was lucky enough to snag such a job. With the help of my coworkers I taught myself to program.
Years later I was running my own computer shop. There was a young woman who was a clerk in my shop but she had taught herself the programming language we were using. She was a crackerjack programmer and I promoted her as fast as I could. When I retired years later she took my job.
If I were to run a shop again and I needed programmers and I got applications from kids who had just graduated college with a computer science degree and an applicant that had four years experience but no degree, I would snap the non-degree applicant right up.
Most university degrees are over rated. To get a good paying job, you don't need a college degree. All you need is a skill that is in demand.
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's how you bet.
The saying goes, "The exception proves the rule." Proves in this case means "tests" not "validates." It is certainly possible to excel without finishing formal training, but that is the exception. My outlier friend is fond of saying, "Copernicus was an outlier, too." Yes, but he's no Copernicus.
The problem with Hahhhhhhhhvahhhhhd graduates is that their institution - and therefore their knowledge - has been gnawed away by the termites of Woke. Several prominent law firms have agreed in principle to not hire Hahhhhhhhhvahhhhhhhd graduates, nor those from that slaver, Elihu Yale's, little college.
Ha. That expression has always provoked a similar line of thought in me. I've often wondered how it came about, because obviously an exception doesn't prove anything about a rule - and in fact is a kind of counter example which ordinarily would disprove it. I've come to the conclusion it's something along the lines of "the fact that this IS an exception and stands out so much shows by it's rarity the rule." But a rule whose exceptions are evidence that it isn't that well formulated.
If you follow the "equality of outcome" theory also put forward by educators, then everything they try, which leaves Black kids further and further behind, is racist.
The only effective way to achieve equality of outcome is to hamstring the brighter kids so they can't perform any better than those less so. Looks like that is exactly what is happening. A pity we compete with other cultures and countries that don't subscribe to the hamstring theory of education.
(I'm probably gong to get Into Trouble over this. Fine, I'm used to it.)
There are basically two groups of people that Care/Obsess about someones Race. The KKK/White Supremacists, and Progressives/Democrats. In the last couple of years its getting harder and harder to tell the difference.
It's not hard at all to tell the difference. When was the last time the KKK tried to impose their version of CRT on your schools? Or transition your kid's sex without telling you? Or riot and burn down minority owned businesses? I've met two white supremacists in my life, and I've met hundreds of Progressives. The KKK was a plague, but from yesteryear. Today it's Progressives. The KKK never controlled the media, law profession, education and academia the way progressives do.
Excerpt from the essay: ‘In other words, Black, American Native, Hispanic, and Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students with high educational aspirations outscored Asian, White, multiracial, and non-identifying students with lower aspirations. Unfortunately, no one seems to have noticed.’
This is classic shoehorning, trying to compare apples to oranges..
On the one hand, this statement supports the thesis that aspiration is a far better predictor of performance than race. On the other, it makes minimal statement on distribution of performance within a race, parsed by aspiration.
When parsed as the author suggests, of course there will be overlap and exceedance, all for societal better…but that constitutes at best anecdote, worth mentioning, but not necessarily celebrating, at least not in a scholarly article.
I’m glad there’s a path to identifying role models. The effort will be in making it work…getting people to aspire to more, and making the commitments to work for it.
Until then, I’ll stick with my email tag: Facts before feelings, ability before identity, excellence before mediocrity
If these kids graduated from the worst schools in the US, which is Washington DC they would not have good scores. What I just said does not take to account a smart student with a strong study ethic. If they graduated from a great school district, they would, on the whole, do better simply because they had a stronger educational base.
That's because there is none. Both believe that race swamps hard work - or at least say they do.
I have a black flight instructor; we've been personal friends for over twenty years, and I tell him "Black people are stupid." Why? "Because in seventy-five years they've never figured out the Democrat scam." He just laughs.
I got a present on Feb. 1. A young black man moved into my building, and Loudly/Proudly proclaimed he was a BLM Revolutionary Activist. Life..Is..Good! :-) Poor Kid, I've forgotten more about this stuff than he knows. I was one Back In The Day...then I grew up.
I gave him a copy of Thomas Sowell's Race & Culture. i can hardly wait.
He got REAL EXCITED when I told him Tom Sowell was black. He's all about Race. A perfect example of The Public Education System.
I feel Race is important. Almost as important as whether someone has an innie or an outtie belly button. Now I have nothing against outties, but lets be honest, they're not really Our Kind of People.
I have a sad story about outies. My daughter had one as a child and the pediatrician said it would resolve when she added more body fat, and so it seemed. Now that she has had three kids in the last seven years, the outie has revealed itself as an umbilical hernia, so she will need invasive surgery that may not even work.
This is like other "learning styles" stuff which tends to be much flimsier on the evidence than its advocates hoped.
There was a real postwar shift on educational ideas that cast everything that would have been in your grandparents classroom as bad. (Drills, rote learning, dunce caps, canes). Strong case obviously that the latter 2 are bad, but the baby was thrown out with the bath water in getting rid of the rest of the "discipline" bundle.
Yes children are creative and isn't that nice? But Timmy needs to actually know how to count and spell non-creatively to be an operative adult. A century ago there were people who left school at 11 who could read and write and knew basic mathematics. Now we are warehousing kids to 18 without giving them these skills.
Hard to imagine how kids can go through life not learning to read—irrespective of school, where they can learn to grammar and how to read better, more interesting books.
Parents have a job to make their kids receptive to learning and to be well behaved. They can also teach their kids to read, as mine did, so that the basic skills of reading are there when a child starts school. Story time is the beginning, and it's through stories that kids can love to lear to read.
As usual they overcorrected.
Yeah, turns out being too soft with kids is as bad (maybe worse) than being too hard. Exactly what year did "discipline" become a dirty word when it came to childhood education? Sometime after my childhood, that's for sure. And I'm thankful for that.
The only things Timmy needs to know is that he/they can choose a gender and, if they are White, to be ashamed of their privilege and heritage. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are for chumps.
I have the McGuffey readers for my homeschool library. They were used regularly from 1850-1930, and some still use it today. When teaching my daughter to read, I used it concurrently with another curriculum that focused on reading classical literature. They are really impressive. Cursive taught by first grade, memorization and emphasis on sounds. Easy to use. Like others have said, we finished our lessons in under an hour (at least for that young, my now fourth grader takes about 2 to 3 hours to finish all her lessons) and focused on play, community engagements (ie actually LIVING in the real world) and sports/activities like art or soccer.
Used the McGuffey readers to teach my two daughters to read as kindergarteners. They devoured the Nancy Drew books by the 2nd or 3rd grade. Their cursive is superb. Now in their late 30's/early 40's with kids of their own, the tradition continues.
You remind me of a visit with my husband’s father in the last months of his life, some twenty five years ago. He flat out said that the kids needed to learn to read, write and do figures. It rings in my ears to this day, every time I read an article or hear a complaint about the public school system.
Yeah but they can dance......
Exactly. What the heck is happening in these buildings for seven hours a day, 180 days a year, for 13 years, that the students come out and they can’t even read or write a coherent paper or do basic math? Whatever schools think is important, if kids aren’t coming out with these basic skills, schools are failing at their job, their reason for existence.
Meanwhile, homeschoolers are getting their school work done in 2-3 hours a day (in the early grades—my high schooler is far busier these days), and spending the rest of their lives playing and LIVING. I literally just don’t know what goes on inside school buildings all day. Oh, except all the kids can talk quite coherently about transgender ideology and anti-racism.
I have a feeling technology problems take up a shocking percentage of the day. Whenever I hear schools brag about their tech and how every kid has a chromebook, it makes me scream on the inside.
My wife is a public school teacher at a Title 1 school (low income) and truthfully, the technology stuff isn't a problem. It's likely not that effective either, but technical problems don't consume any significant part of her day.
What does consume 20-30% of her day is dealing with children rolling on the floor and screaming because their parents never taught them basic self-control or discipline and the school won't call the parents out on it out of (not unwarranted) fear of being labelled racist.
There's a reason we home educate our own kids. Most common occupation for homeschooling parents? Former or current public school teachers.
I'm in a Title 1 school, as well. I work with students who have disabilities. Technology is a tool. Behavior is a far greater problem, as you said. When you get to Middle School, cockiness/arrogance are a problem. I've seen students ask for the in-school suspension, because they believe it gives them a status boost.
Students are not allowed to be given less than 50%, even if they do nothing. They're allowed test retakes and penalty free late work. They're being bribed and rewarded, for meeting normal expectations. Our school has a game room and a rewards cart (!) for kids who are rewarded for doing what was normal, when my kids were in school.
Teaching kids that they're both extra special and a victim, at the same time...that is part of the problem. The unreasonable expectations are another issue, though. When you have so many standards that teachers know it's not possible to even teach in a year, we have a huge problem.
I'm a teacher in a challenging area of Los Angeles and 11th graders in my school are at a 6th/7th grade level -- I am not kidding. Kids in my school can barely get through a book in a year so we have to give them stories to read -- and even those are too difficult. The writing is worse. I feel so disheartened.
Anyone remember Ebonics?
So many misguided efforts.
Multiple things are going on. Significant behavioral challenges that take up time and effort. Children with disability challenge, that need more support than schools want to provide while they only focus on the superficial aspects of inclusion and the mountains of data/goal paperwork. I say this as both a Special Education Teacher and a mother, for over 31 years, who raised a son that has Autism.
Teachers have an excess of paperwork, meetings, and utterly useless training usually involving the flavor of the month. Teaching to pass tests, only. Too many standardized tests, which completely dominate instruction time. Many of our students are taking standardized tests twice a year, plus they have to do English language assessments, annually, which run over multiple class periods.
Starting kids, far too early, on things they're not ready for and moving instruction along, without ever building the required foundation. I saw almost an entire 4th grade (multiple classes) have to start back to the beginning of the school year, because everyone was failing Math. Students don't learn their multiplication tables. But, they were expecting them to do fractions. Don't even get me started on the crazy systems they were using to solve multiplication problems, which took far longer to complete than what I learned as a child. It looked more like tic-tac-toe.
I had a coworker, in his 20's, who came from Togo as a teenager. He couldn't believe how far ahead he was, compared to the students in his new High School. In Togo, they HAD to learn to do Math, because there were no calculators. If they studied the solar system, they had to draw and label everything, rather than simply write the names on a worksheet.
I think we're suffering from many problems. We've asked schools to do too much and there's so much happening,very can't be everywhere. My kids didn't even get textbooks,when we got to this district. They were given worksheets to glue in composition books. Teachers decide what to teach, to meet the "standard". That's all that matters.
It's an overwhelming mess. I haven't listed everything
Plus, another big missing component: we have tons of students who don't speak English as their native language. That has a huge impact on education effectiveness. Many also have significant other needs. Our student and parent population has changed. That includes the number of single-parent and two working parent households.
That's right. DEI/DIE and SEL (Social Emotional Learning) give them an education in Marxist Queer Theory and "anti-racism". The "educators" tell themselves this is more important than actual learning and so let themselves off the hook over that failure.
Concerns are waved away as coming from "the far right".
"AFT’s Randi Weingarten: The most dangerous person in the world"
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/4/afts-randi-weingarten-most-dangerous-person-in-wor/
"Ms. Weingarten, in her capacity as the titular head of America’s educational elite, is a noted champion of Common Core, critical race theory, intersectionality, LGBTQIA, “drag queen story hours,” diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI), as well as social and emotional learning (SEL) and all else considered in vogue in academia. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find anything but her full embrace of these educational paradigms that have overwhelmed our nation’s entire educational system from kindergarten to graduate school. With this as a fact, wouldn’t it be prudent to consider what Ms. Weingarten’s ideas have wrought?"
Weingarten should be in the Hall of ... Shame.
how do you get rid of monsters like Weingarten? It is impossible.
I think there are 2 things that could help. One is to reduce the power of the teachers unions somewhat by having the money follow the student instead of the school. This is a national trend. By the way, have you read that the Covid lockdowns revealed that there were hundreds of thousands of public school kids on the books who never existed? I believe it's in a WSJ article.
The other thing is that Marxist Queer Theory needs to be shown for the junk science that it is. That should tarnish all those who promote it in the schools. (One hopes.) A take down of the child gender clinic in St. Louis and some lawsuits like Chloe Cole's against Kaiser in Oakland, CA ought to help - if any of it ever enters the mainstream news...
I think that Richard Levine needs to be arrested and investigated but that is likely going to require a regime change up top - like a Ron DeSantis instead of a Joe Brandon. I like how DeSantis has worked to help kids and weaken teachers unions in FL. He has offered teachers raises, too, which might have once been what unions were about.
Parents are getting pretty fed up with schools. Maybe there will be a sudden preference cascade.
You make a good case that perhaps we've reached a tipping point and that things will begin to improve. Imagine if we create an education system designed for students. Thanks for that hopeful post!
Yes, I think you're right. One would hope that at some point people tire of a failed system and demand better. The NEA spent $374m in the 1920-21 period. Only 9% went to member-related items. The rest was buying influence and direct political donations. Union membership is compulsory for teachers, as are their dues. It's a racket.
Definitely - along with a few others like Richard Levine (first female..) who pushes for the transing of children from his perch at the White House - and Satanic Panic UCSF Doctor Diane Ehrensaft:
"Diane Ehrensaft, 'Satanic Panic' Woo Peddler, Now Champions the 'Gender Angels' Among Us
The dangerously consequential career of a quack"
https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/diane-ehrensaft-satanic-panic-woo
Who is responsible for her continued employment? We know that Biden is responsible for Levine's continued employment when the guy could be fired any day.... Show us, Joe!
Adrienne, thanks for mentioning that our school year is 180 days. In China, with more of a STEM focus, the school year is 245 days. Most countries are over 200 days. Were not even in the top 20 in any category globally (PISA scores). It's a freaking disaster that will unfold slowly.
China does not have students who speak over 160 languages, in their classrooms. My school district does. I work in a school that is 70% Hispanic. My guess is that other countries don't have the crazy paperwork required by No Child Left Behind and IDEA. We have so many standards kids are expected to be taught, every year. Teachers cannot possibly teach them all. We get kids who come from other countries, with severe disabilities, who have never been to school. Their parents think US school teachers will wave a magic wand and change their child. I have parents who suggest that their child become a doctor or a pilot. Their child has severe disabilities, including physical ones, and daily seizures.
I know teachers who work on paperwork until 8pm. The average Special Education Teacher leaves the field after 7 years, because they are burning them out, through ridiculous expectations of data collection, paperwork, and concerns about being seriously injured. We can't compare other countries to ours. I've lived in 5 states and have been a parent of school-aged children in 3. Every community has its own unique population, needs, and challenges. We have to focus on what has gone grievously wrong, in our system.
Absolutely right. Couldn't agree more.
Considering how lousy the American educational system does with the time they have the kids, why would anyone want to trust them with more time? Zoom school was a wake-up call for a lot of parents who had way to much blind faith in their kid's teacher.
I hadn't thought of that. Good p;oint!
Can’t read, but certainly know how to look at all the pictures of
“Genitalia, how to use a condom & sexual positions, masturbate, gay sex, identify transgender, etc., etc., etc.”
When I was in 5th grade, many years ago, (showing my age) our Sex Education was presented by the school nurse. Girls only for half a day. Given pamphlets all about female genitalia, in order to understand ovulation & menstruation. And we thought THAT was a bit risqué. Ha!
Remember when home schooling was suspect because the children weren’t socialized like they would be in government schools? Lock them out of schools, gyms and parks and put masks on them for two years and that argument doesn’t hold water. The homeschoolers have fared much better than government school attendees and have been able to avoid the most odious mandates of the Covid “experts”. We need to tear down the current system and build a new education program for the 21st century. Without unions and bureaucrats.
If you're going to make sure that home schooling sticks around without being harassed by demands for a complete shutdown, you're going to need to build some sort of independent credentialing organization for homeschoolers- multi-ethnic, multiracial, interfaith. Because homeschooling is at risk of being libeled by scandals like this- I view it as a scandal, anyway: https://nypost.com/2023/02/03/ohio-doe-investigating-white-supremacist-online-homeschool-network/
I've occasionally heard of incompetent homeschooler parents, but nothing like a neo-Nazi front providing organized assistance with textbooks and lessons for White Supremacist Nazis.
Read the article, you'll realize that I'm not crying wolf. I hate fake wolf-crying on this subject, over every little slight, real or imagined. And one of the main reasons I hate it is that it provides such effective cover for when the real thing shows up.
I've endorsed homeschooling for as long as I've been out of public high school, basically. I've studied the issue enough to be firmly in the camp of independent learning, homeschooling, and freedom of choice. But Nazi homeschooling is unacceptable, okay? All judicial wranglings, litigation, and matters of possible government restriction aside. The problem needs to be obviated by the creation of a homeschool credentialing institution. A model that doesn't have to adhere to guidelines as strict as, say, those mandated by the institutions that credential new colleges and universities. But it should at least refuse to certify homeschools and homeschool networks run as openly racist institutions, and identify them as such. Which does imply that the credentialing organization has to be multiracial- and preferably interfaith. The credentialing coalition doesn't have to agree on everything. It simply has to have a consensus of what's unacceptable.
I'm not crazy about the idea of imposing a layer of bureaucratic meddling into the home school situation, not even on an optional basis by an organization made up of the folks involved. But this needs to be done, because otherwise demands will increase for the government to actively intervene.
"I'm not crazy about the idea of imposing a layer of bureaucratic meddling into the home school situation, bet..."
I've been in home education long enough to have heard this line many times over many years. It's always a Trojan horse. Translation: I desperately want to impose my way of thinking on you and your kids.
Why is it always the default position of the statists that their government bureaucrats will care more about kids than the kids' parents do?
There are good and bad homeschoolers.
There are good and bad public school teachers.
There are good and bad social workers.
Because people are selfish and sinful and envious and jealous. No occupation or educational system has a monopoly on virtue. I side with parents though. When it comes to protecting a child, even a third rate parent is better than a first class government bureaucrat.
Do you view the situation of an organized group offering a curriculum of "white supremacy" and the Nazi version/vision of history to homeschooling parents as a problem, or not?
If you view it as a problem, what do you propose as a solution?
The public schools are currently offering communism. I think that is a much much bigger problem.
Of course it’s a problem. But it’s also a really bizarre and rare one. Plenty of public/private school kids are radicalized (in a variety of ways) outside of school, on the internet. What do you propose as a solution to that? Should we cut everybody off from the internet? Should we strip everyone of their freedom because some people are misusing theirs?
I told you what I proposed already. None of it bore any resemblance to your rhetorical suggestions. Which makes you at least the second person who doesn't seem to have comprehended what I wrote. When people draw inferences from my writing that aren't present, I don't think I'm being impolite by bringing up that fact.
I also asked another poster on whether they thought the situation was worth addressing, and how they would address it. They didn't reply, but my inquiry is open. My view is that this is for American homeschooling's coalition of interests- the parents, tutors, and the people supplying the curricula- to sort out.
I do think that it the answer turns out to be to sweep it under the rug, that isn't a good look for the goal of independent schooling. https://news.yahoo.com/ohio-superintendent-condemns-neo-nazi-202343123.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=fb&tsrc=fb&mibextid=Zxz2cZ
(The source for the Yahoo article is here. https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/state/2023/01/30/ohio-superintendent-speaks-against-nazi-curriculum-created-by-family/69854810007/
[ I'm leaving both links up in the hope that at least one of them won't 404 itself into oblivion. ]
That's an issue with political implications- as well as, I think, ethical ones. Particularly if the curriculum provided by the "Dissident Homeschooling" network based in Wyandot County draws more recruits. https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34ane/neo-nazi-homeschool-ohio
To me, temporizing on this issue is akin to what I've noticed taking place among Left-identified political activists- like Antifa and eco-activist meeting, where participants refuse to disavow Black Bloc elements who advocate violence and destruction because that might "split the movement", "no policing the activist community", etc. The extremes win by default, because not enough people toward the center will take a stand to oppose them.
oh, it's my problem, because I pointed out a problem instead of sweeping it under the rug?
Anyway, sob- no Upvotes for me! Haven't I been punished enough? Labeled a "troll" for my reasoned comments and mild suggestions...oh, the ignominy...
With all due respect I strongly disagree. While I understand your concern any attempt at "credentialing" by definition means relinquishing control, and control is the point of homeschooling- control of the environment and control of the curriculum. We really need to get past making decisions for the general population based on fear of the outliers.
I'm not getting how an independent group outside of the government made up of people who home-school or pursue alternatives outside the public school system is going to have a default of being hostile to autonomy.
"While I understand your concern any attempt at "credentialing" by definition means relinquishing control, and control is the point of homeschooling- control of the environment and control of the curriculum."
Someone who's signing on with a Nazi curriculum and lesson plan has already "given up control", to be real about it. It's a collectivist, zero-sum racial herding agenda. They're also finding it desirable to condition their children to Nazism.
In some states, homeschoolers are seeking an allowance of government voucher money to defray their homeschooling expenses. How successful is the effort going to be, once the word gets out that the networks of educational assistance include avowed biological racists and Hitler fans?
"We really need to get past making decisions for the general population based on fear of the outliers."
I really hate to make this point, but it's a valid one; in a nation awash in firearms that allows people "the right to keep and bear arms" to the point of permitting them to stockpile semiautomatic rifles, a few "outliers" with an agenda of race war have an agenda to make an enormous amount of trouble. There are no organized groups of "live and let live" white supremacists or Nazis. Allowing an organized agenda of concerted Nazi indoctrination to be treated as a legitimate educational program means entrenching a genocidal, militarist agenda as part of the pedagogy. It's been that way since Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1923.
To those who think as you do it will be outrageous. Outrageous I tell you. And amid much pearl-clutching and drama, much as you are displaying now, will demand, demand I tell you, government oversight. What will you the anti-home school movement be called? The possibilities are endless. Your problem.is you are using outliers to seek control of an entire movement. A very justified movement IMO. A movement formed in reaction to union/Department of Education usurpation of parental rights. I recognized over a decade ago that as significant as the 2A power grab is, it pales in comparison the those entities usurpation of parental rights. BTW there are any number of fully functioning madrassas in the US and while I do not support that idealogy I understand why the parents of those children do not want their children in public schools. Ditto Catholics and Orthodox Jews. But parents displeased with public education should not be herded into religious schools by default nor required to prove their merit to credentialed who are themselves credentialed by the system the parents find objectionable. The government is not a fix for everything that ails you. Lastly, at least in my state home-schoolers are recognized and supported with a wide variety of resources available.
"required to prove their merit to credentialed who are themselves credentialed by the system the parents find objectionable."
That isn't what I'm proposing, from my lofty perch as a rando on the Internet.
"The government is not a fix for everything that ails you."
That notion was implicit in my proposal for a way to solve the problem without the government. Although it's worth noting in the US version of institutionally liberal society, the Nazis apparently have the Big Bad Federal Government on their side, as the default bias. Which indicates to a pearl-clutcher like me that maybe any homeschooling/charter school community that has an interest in not being confused with Hitler Youth recruitment has an interest in developing some standards and broadcasting them publicly. This is not the same as dictating a curriculum, or a lesson plan, or a particular set of schools. A simple declaration of what's unacceptable would be worthwhile. In the interest of addressing the problem as presented in terms of empirical reality, not Theory.
I do not see that you are proposing anything other than home schools be "credentialed". Which I view as a very slippery slope among other objections Let's just agree to disagree as we have opposing points of view on this issue that are not subject to resolution.
Yes, credentialed in a very ordinary sense of the word, by an independent entity. Something akin to compliance with the Better Business Bureau's standard of ethical practice. The Better Business Bureau is not the government. The have a long record of operation without noteworthy public complaint. Every American I know views them as providing a public service.
I have no doubt that some number of the business owners who have been sanctioned by the BBB harbor animosity toward them. That doesn't make their mission illegitimate.
So I'd think it would be within the realm of possibility for an alternative school alliance of participants to establish some ethical standards and publicize them.
It also has to be acknowledged that there isn't just one slippery slope associated with the matter being discussed.
So what do you propose as the qualifications of the inspectors who provide the credentials? And very true about the potential for abuse (slippery slope) of mainstreaming home schooling. I do not deny that. But as is there are a number of problems with too many public schools. And I support any parents' unequivocal right to remedy those problems as s/he deems right. To me one of the slipperiest issues of the homeschooling trend is what happens to the kids whose parents don't remove them from.public school? Are we potentially creating 2 distinct classes of people based on education? Or I guess as techinprek believes, and I agree, that there are already 2 , 3? While public school is part of all of our experience, even if we did not attend one, it is a modern phenomena. Many of the greatest minds in history were not products of what we now know as formal education.
It all starts with the Faculty of Education. That graduates leave the program not knowing how to teach reading is a damning indictment.
Unfortunately, the faculty also attracts some of the worst post-secondary students. If you can’t make it in Science, you go into Arts. If you can’t make it Arts, you go into Education. If you can’t make it in Education, you’re out the door.
My son is a dedicated hard working teacher who has taught in inner city and small city schools. He is imaginative and can handle discipline programs. Let’s be thankful and remunerate our great teachers!
That's great. I'm a teacher in Compton and I am feeling so exhausted after 23 years of teaching. My daughter, though, is just about to start teaching middle school and I'm praying for her. because she is in a very very challenging area of Philadelphia. :-)
Honestly, I don’t know how you do it. I dump on teachers a lot, because there’s a lot of bad ones out there. But to truly care, to put it all out there in a challenging environment, I simply couldn’t do it. I hope the small victories make it rewarding.
Jim-- There are some victories and I can remember ALL the students who I feel I made a small difference in improving their lives. But-- after 23 years I am ready to retire.
Lots of great teachers out there. They should be celebrated. Unfortunately, lots of dead weight as well.
I would have much more sympathy for teachers’ unions if they made it easier to get rid of incompetent teachers
I have no love for my ex-union-- LAUSD. I am in a charter school now. It's not really any better, though.
I work in a right-to-work state. No unions and no collective bargaining rights. I belong to a teacher's association.
I agree. They're just not in it for the kids. There are no consequences for poor performance. We insist on perfection from our police - a much more nuanced job - but we give our teachers a complete pass on accountability. Why?
Teacher's unions exist for the teachers, not the students. The corruption that exists involving the teacher's unions and the State dooms the educational system to perpetual mediocrity.
Agree. As I asked Nicole Ann nearby, why don't teachers ever strike for the students and better educational outcomes?
Striking is not legal and is grounds for firing, where I live.
Are you familiar with James Lindsay? He has produced a lot of material linking post-modern philosophy and Neo-Marxism to the condition of the current education system.
I love it! You have a question that needs to be asked - loudly
We have evaluations. I have to turn in paperwork showing how I have met each required section of expectations, with multiple examples. I am required to have a goal, every year, beyond the goals of the course, which I have to support and document, throughout the year. I think you are underinformed, in this area, along with very understandable frustration. I share that frustration. I was a parent, long before I became a teacher. The problem is that teaching is like any other business. There is favoritism and politics, just like in a corporation. We're dealing with people. Being a teacher does not change that.
Yes, the silly paperwork teachers have to endure is ridiculous. But as a former teacher and as a former businessperson, I have to disagree with your analogy. Teaching is not like any other business. It is far more political. It is largely unaccountable. It is a quasi-monopoly with the deck heavily stacked against competition. In business, outcomes matter. Customers (the students) matter. Useless paperwork hurts productivity. If you're not successful, you're out of business. Period. Money should follow students just as consumers of business goods make their own choices. Then the good schools and good teachers would prosper and be rewarded accordingly. I'm an independent, but it's pretty clear that the teaching industry today is a coercive fundraising arm of the Democratic party, which protects it and funds it in exchange for campaign donations. I assume you see that.
I'm an Independent, as well. I don't fit in the mold of whatever people think the average teacher is.
I just think the picture is so complex. It can't be covered in a couple of thoughtfully written paragraphs. I'm trying to help flesh it out; more balanced perspective.
But, I'm mentally exhausted, after a chaotic and tiring workday. I've got Grad School homework waiting for me. I'm back in school, to earn a different license, because I don't want to spend my years trying to avoid serious injury.
There's also no consequences for High School kids who aren't doing work or keeping up. In lower income schools where I teach they give a free pass to kids. Low expectations, which I dislike.
I'm at one of those schools. Our entire district will not allow any grade lower than 50%. Students are not doing their work, because they can squeak by, with minimal effort and are allowed test retakes and penalty free late work. They're also being bribed and rewarded for meeting normal expectations.
And the kids who are really wanting to learn are surrounded by low achievers who are rewarded.
Remunerate? Our teachers earn nearly 6 figures working 9 months, can't be fired and get lifetime pensions and health care. It sounds like your son is doing a great job. Unfortunately, it's not a meritocracy in public education. There is no other profession in America that is failing its customers this badly, and which is completely unaccountable. We need to start over. Your son would be a leader in a system that is student-oriented, and compensated as such.
Teachers do not make 6 figure salaries. Perhaps, those nearing retirement, in an expensive area are. But, that's not typical.
We pay health care premiums and deductibles, like everyone else. I spend days with a indescribable level of stress, from coping with assorted behavioral and other challenges, from my students, while also trying to avoid being injured. I deal with nearly delusional level expectations on what these kids can be doing. I take work home and I have to plan my work, before I can do my work. If I am absent, I have to leave work prepared for a sub. I spend a lot of time creating materials, because my kids need them. The school does not supply what we truly need.
I have so much paperwork, that has nothing to do with teaching. It takes 3 attempts and a translating service to get paperwork returned from parents. I could go on, all day. I work, during the summer, and we're barely down to 8 weeks of summer break. We don't get paid,for those months we are off. The salary is adjusted and 12 months of medical premiums are paid in less time.
If you want to know what's truly wrong, blame No Child Left Behind. Honestly, blame IDEA. Blame unreasonable expectations that kids are not prepared to meet, because they don't fit into neat little statistical boxes.
I like your points. We've piled too many tasks on schools and teachers. What would you ideal teaching setup look like? I'm at nail56@gmail.com if this venue isn't good for you.
This venue is fine, but I've not studied specifics with enough granularity to opine with authority, I'll admit that.
I'm for what works. Catholic schools tend to do better with less resources. Why? Scandinavians do much better, especially the vaunted Finns. Why?
Not being sure of the right answer, however, has never stopped me from opining before. No reason to start now.
I'd start with teachers. They should be deep subject matter experts, masters level minimum. They should be paid like the professionals they need to be to serve our kids. Eliminate the pensions and use that money to pay teachers much higher. They can have matching 401(k)'s like the rest of us. And they should be held accountable - no tenure.
Next administrators. Schools are top heavy. All administrative roles and costs should be 100% transparent to all. Again, no tenure. Run the operational side of a school like a well-run business. The bloat will fall off.
Now the kids. First, back to uniforms to level all kids and prevent garment competition. No tolerance for intimidation, violence, drugs, weapons, etc. Far fewer tests, more individualistic work, a solid grounding in the basics. Make education a national priority the way the Moon Race once was. No political indoctrination of any kind, but teach history fairly and honestly. High standards, for everyone.
Just some ideas to start the conversation. Wish I had all the answers.
Seattle public school teachers make that kind of money on 9 month contracts. Lots of bennies take over the top. All that's asked of them is to graduate from a "teachers college" where they get indoctrinated in Wokeism.
According to one site, there are about 13,800 school districts in the US. I don't think that all of them are paying what Seattle is paying their teachers. I'm sorry that you are irritated with what is being taught, when teachers are in college. So was I. Not everyone fits into the little "woke" mold being cast. Some of us are trying to survive and make a positive difference.
Here in Seattle, most of the teachers go through the University of Washington College of Education. It's a total indoctrination factory. (Could say the same about most of the humanities departments there including the social sciences, and now increasingly the hard sciences.) That in turn infects the schools and ultimately the students. Therefore, most of the kids in Seattle Public Schools (actually the State of Washington) cannot read, write, or do math. The teachers in the greater Seattle area make plenty of money. Bellevue the nearby more affluent suburb actually pays even more. To give you an idea just how bad it is, my immigrant sister in law just wanted to get a cook job on campus, but she had to go through about 12 hours of online woke indoctrination to get it. I know that because I sat alongside her to get her through it as her English is not so great after working most of her years in a Mexican restaurant kitchen. Some of the videos we could translate into Spanish on YouTube, but some not. It was quite a wake up call for me to realize where DEI is at on the UW campus. All of that trickles into the College of Ed. All of it.
I don't doubt any of this. I deal with the same garbage, where I live. We can talk about and analyze it until I have another migraine. Solves nothing. I don't disagree with you. But, I'm interested in solutions. You're trying to prove something to the wrong person, simply because I don't agree that Seattle is a valid example of how all teachers are paid. I think you also, mistakenly, believe that I somehow teach and believe all this stuff. I don't. I've had to sit through ridiculous, useless trainings, for the last 5 years, that have everything to do with politics and nothing to do with teaching. I would LOVE for that to change.
I'm through contributing to these comments, for this topic. I am not the stand-in for whatever frustrates people about the education system. I am just as frustrated and this dialogue has taken up too much of my limited time. It's not going to result in anything effective.
Exactly, Nicole Ann. The problems you cite are all a function of how education is run. Security should not be an issue. English should be the only language. The paperwork is ridiculous. The system is broken. The teachers (yes, they do make 6 figures here in California) are in a unique position to go on strike for a better educational process and outcomes, and challenge "management" (administration) but they don't. They only go on strike (in our area at least) for more pay or for political grandstanding. Why don't teachers ever strike on behalf of their students that they know they are failing despite their and your best efforts?
Striking is not legal in my state. It is grounds for firing. Aside of surveys and asking questions, we don't have a collective voice.
I'm too tired, tonight, to effectively write what is tumbling about in my mind.
Children and teachers are both being failed. It just depends on what situation you're talking about. It's not one or the other. The system is a tangled mess.
I couldn't agree more. I'm not sure what's going to dislodge the status quo, but people are becoming increasingly aware of our education system's failures.
I can see that, I see a lot of red tape. But my impression is thatit seems driven by State Board of Education? What about the teacher's unions? I feel they are into Politics vs helping teachers in situation like yours. BTW teachers in CA make 100k (you can check online), but then our cost of living is insane... Believe me as a parent I can see which teacher is trying to help, versus the admins...
I'm in a right-to-work state. No unions and no collective bargaining rights Striking is grounds for firing.
I agree that the State Board of Education drives a lot. Definitely true for our district. Politically motivated leadership contributes, as well. Definitely. We're close to DC. Politics is like a virus or a fungus. I hate it.
I'm sure that CA teachers are making a higher paycheck. But, the cost of living is insane, as you said. I was considering moving, in 2021, because of the political garbage impacting the schools where I live. Starting teacher's salaries were pretty low, in all the states I checked. I would have needed a second job. CA is definitely an exception, rather than an example of the average.
Is it unreasonable to expect young adults in their senior year to read, write, and do mathematics at grade level?
If not, please explain...
It is absolutely not unreasonable. I sure hope you're not asking me, because I am definitely not part of the problem. I became a Special Education Teacher in 2020, teaching work skills to students who have disabilities. Our current situation drives me crazy.
I think you're tempted to look to me as place to address the frustrations of what might be happening in schools. I'm not that person and I have absolutely not advocated for students not meeting minimum standards.
I've been a parent for nearly 32 years. I've been a teacher for 3. I work in a system that asks me to talk to students about their career plans, when they are 11, non-verbal, pre-literate, can't work or even remain seated independently, and are not toilet trained.
You tell me where the problems originate and show me how we are not battling delusional expectations based on blanket policies and statistics that have nothing to do with the actual capabilities of the students. We are so busy making sure that all the boxes are checked. Those boxes are part of the problem.
And can retire at 55.
Even the French can't do that!
No-- not true. I am a teacher in Los Angeles and the only other people that make those figures are administrators.
I'm a teacher and you really have to blame admin because we teachers are expected to follow what the administrators want. I personally would love to do it my own way but I can't.
Deirdre my parents and uncle/aunts were all teachers. All of them were democrats. The only thing that they agreed with Ronald Reagan on was closing the US Department of education/ Masters & Phd factory that has been destroying education for decades. It created the administration state that prevents you from educating children. (Thank you for mentioning it.) That was my parents' rationale, particularly my father who went to Georgetown Law School. He had been asked in NY to be part of the Union in the 70's-80's to go get the money. Yes Randi was there back then and it was a corporate goal of the union. He rejected it because he had impeccable ethics and spent decades on the mission of teaching individuals rather than fleecing taxpayers for unionist power.
Look at the multi trillion-dollar budget that pays for the administrator proposed by Biden (below). This is what the 'education' at any cost mantra that has been built into by the DNC/teachers union lobby. An agenda that completely ignores education outcomes for children. The poorer you are the less you get and the more you owe. The podcast will only get worse, unless democrats demand the teachers union and higher ed are held to task.
Very little money for the Dept. of Ed goes to direct classroom education of children, or what most people call "teaching".
Go to the budget table.
Look at the advocacy of a multi trillion dollar increase in student loan debt/grants that the Biden Administration has proposed (a 350% increase )
More administrators, more debt, less education. It is disgusting & pathologically sick to keep doing this to American children and families.
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/tables.html
President Biden's Budget request for education finance- 351% increase
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget23/23pbapt.pdf
Thanks for those links.
Matt-- Absolutely! And what I see now in the inner city schools where I teach is a huge push for APs when most of the kids are unable to write coherently. Who benefits from this? Not the students who will either not take the test or get a worthless 1 or 2 on it. It's The College Board. (In 2021, the most recent audit available, the College Board had $1,693,847,000 in Cash and Investments.) Rather than pushing basic writing skills like grammar, they push AP because they get money from the government to put APs into the schools. The more I researched this, the more sick I felt.
Dierdre a local principle told me about this 1.6 billion a couple weeks ago. I was unsure of what she was saying. This helped clarify what she was saying. It's part of taking money regardless of need- because they can get the money. They routinely over ask, and build in enormous amounts of fat in the system because of negotiating habits. This is part of why school districts and upstream budget requests are so distorted. They are slaves to use or lose it mentalities. Never thinking to legislate repurposing dollars to need. This is the main problem when federal conditions are tied to state and local funding.
The purse strings for every kid in America is held by a bloated administrator, and teachers who are burned out get bought off with more internal administration jobs at the districts. This is the answer to frustrated teachers. They buy the passion out of good people working in districts with the watered-down education.
My father had worked as lobbyist in DC before going back to school for teaching. He laid all this stuff out for me in the 90's. He had worked in the Bronx too before moving up to Westchester. I urge every Democrat I know to start reading the fine print before it is too late for another generation of kids- at their hands. The syndrome here is really institutionalized child neglect & abuse. The neglect converts into indentured servitude later on in these peoples lives. It is punishing people for doing the right thing. The way things are set up it extinguishes hope for millions.
My son’s school district does not pay any teacher in the six figures. He would probably agree to merit vs seniority pay. But this is not as simple an issue as it first appears.
School systems can be top heavy, too many "administrators".
They are the ones earning the six figure salaries.
Not in California. I remember seeing a Fordham U. study on what percentage of school funds actually go to education: salaries, buildings, supplies, etc. - it was about 1/3. 2/3 went to administrators and administration. No business or even non-profit could get away with this. In government, there is simply no accountability, at least not in the U.S.
Every profession is not as simple as it appears. But OK, I'll bite: explain to us why our failure to adequately educate our children is "not as simple an issue as it first appears". Maybe we can all learn something about what's holding back our public education. It's certainly not money.
Drug prohibition has entrenched the criminal class in this country so far that it's like 1990s Russia.
One class could have kids with very distressing family situations and kids with sever learning disabilities. That class doesn’t do ss well as the class next door without those problems. You needed to have a granular understanding of the class to evaluate the teacher. That kind of evaluation can be skewed by say, how the principal likes the teacher’s spouse. This kind of stuff does happen.
All true, but the education system needs to be held accountable for these issues. The private sector already is. It's a failed system, period. We can't afford this.
Exactly. I have a class with 27 students and about a third of them have behavioral problems which can disrupt the class and impact the really eager students. It's so frustrating because many of those (behavioral) kids are in foster care or have severe situations at home. I am exhausted every day. But the kids can also be sooo funny and make my life better.
In the real world your evaluation can be skewed by your boss as well. What amazing teacher would like the same race as the dunce next door? Our school district has one teacher that goes from school to school, as soon as enough parents complain about him he gets transferred. Guaranteed job, guaranteed retirement.
Starting with the Department of Education.
Possibly the most worthless cabinet level department ever created.
Twenty years ago, the first large wave of home schoolers hit the universities. They were skeptical that these home schoolers could perform at the college level. Like most people they questioned the value of a different form of education.
After the first year of teaching home schoolers, they were clamoring for more of these kids. They were outperforming the public school students.
40 or 50 years ago we got new math from these "education experts". They replaced a successful system of teaching math with one that had not been tested in the classroom. Well after 30 or forty years of they admitted failure and went back to using a successful system that had been used for hundreds of years. Obviously, these education elitists hadn't heard the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
The same can be said for bilingual education. The left loved bilingual education because it proved they weren't racist Hispanophobes. Well that turned out to be a disaster. Hispanic students who were taught solely in Spanish, graduated high school unable to speak English and couldn't compete in an English language job market. Even the left wing loons in the capital of the loons, California, said bilingual education was a failure. Once again, the left's irrationality has shone through and like always was a cruel disaster.
God bless the Democrats!
Now it is “racist” to expect kids to take foreign language classes, even English, if not their native language. Nor is cursive writing required. And let’s not even go into math!
To the left almost everything is racist. It is the prism through which they view the world.
Katrina Gulliver
It seems that you have learned a lot in your travels. I think you are correct that the decline began after WW II. My dad was born in 1911 and in 1975 when my parents moved from their home to a condominium apartment, while helping with the move I came across my dad’s grade school grammar book. As I read through it I was stunned to discover that he had received a better education in grammar in the 1920’s than I had received in the 1950s. And I had Mother Syncleta who was a great taskmaster.
I am very grateful for my parents. My dad taught me to do simple arithmetic in my head and to always check my work and never hand a test paper in early. My mom taught me how to work with my hands and that if there was a will there was a way.
In my opinion, the real drop off in standards occurred in the late 1960s when healthy living and happy music was replaced with drugs and noise.
The teaching profession broke several rules. 1. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. 2. If you have a new idea for a fundamental change try it out on a small number of people and see if it works.
We are living with the consequences of these decisions. Doctors, Lawyers and Teachers have all failed us since March 2020. They joined the Media which has failed us as long as I’ve been alive. There are very few journalists today who investigate before reporting, or more accurately, opining.
We are lucky that the Nurses and Engineers, so far, have performed better than these other vocations.
My father who grew up in that era used to say it was common for produce sellers to add everything up on the outside of a brown paper bag. Today you would need a PhD in math for that kind of feat.
Has anyone noticed that the youngs can't make change anymore?
A PhD in math would probably use a calculator.
Yes, but math is RACIST, haven’t you heard!
Before reading this, I posted, above, almost the same thing.
So true, Terrence. I get young lawyers who graduated from great schools who can neither write a grammatically correct sentence nor fashion a cogent, well ordered argument.
By the way, wasn't there circulating years ago a test from the NYC schools from the early 1900s that was pretty daunting - but was for then 8th graders or something like that? Was it true or another urban legend?
I was a Teaching Assistant for “Research and Writing” when I was in law school over 40 years ago. The illiteracy I witnessed —from students who were generally very bright and educated —was shocking. It was obvious to me that a substantial number of these law students had never mastered basic grammar, punctuation and sentence structure; much of what I read was almost unreadable. I found myself teaching English Composition as much as Legal Research and Writing. These were LAW STUDENTS. AT A WELL-REGARDED LAW SCHOOL. It certainly didn’t get better over the past 40+ years either.
And young lawyers expect Fridays off....and they are glued to their phones most of the day.
I attended Catholic school and for several years, part of our English curriculum included diagramming sentences. A sentence was defined as a complete thought with a subject, verb and object in addition to prepositions and prepositional phrases. I wonder if this valuable method is still being taught.
After hiring a couple of college grads (honor roll! 4.0gpa!) who greatly underperformed, my husband started giving applicants a basic skills test - and I do mean basic (what’s 10% of 540). The vast majority can not pass it.
We did the same thing in my business. Applicants would say they were proficient in math, Excel, etc. We'd give them a test. Most failed. Their self-esteem, however, was a solid A+.
I believe it is illegal now in most places to give any kind of skill test in job interviews. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. My last employer mentioned it to me one time. It is definitely illegal to give anything that remotely resembles an IQ test, and I believe skills tests are generally viewed as subsets of these.
I don't know about that. all states have bar exams and I think MDs have to pass an exam to practice medicine and as MDs move into specialties they have to pass an exam.
If I apply to be an airline pilot, I would hope they have a certification exam.
Yes, they have to pass their bar exams. But notice that the employer isn't the one giving that. It's a separate gate-keeping organization. It may not be a Federal law but apparently in Washington State you cannot give a skill test in a job interview. It is considered discriminatory against minorities. Amazing to even type that sentence.
A neighbor of mine awhile back was a pilot for Northwest. He learned to fly in the Navy and flew both in Vietnam and U2 flights. When he retired out of the Navy he went to Northwest Airlines. He told me virtually all pilots back then were military trained. But sometime in the eighties they were running short on these and so started lowering the standards to qualify as an airline pilot. He thought it was a terrible mistake. The number of flight hours of training professional pilots had to have kept dropping, and more and more of it was in simulators. He said that they seemed to be proficient enough in normal flights, but where they got into trouble was in the extra-normal situations. They just hadn't trained for handling many of the very weird situations and breakdown conditions the military pilots had to deal with. He had been landing aircraft on pitching high-seas carriers; he was shaking his head we read about a commercially trained pilot ran off the end of a runway somewhere. Several of the big accidents we all read about would have very different scuttlebutt stories circulating among he and his pilot friends. It was very eye-opening. And I don't feel nearly so comfortable flying anymore.
If I were a company with the means to do this I would challenge this in court under freedom of expression. It is my right to test all and anyone.
The vast majority likely includes Brandon.
Please tell us you were just kidding.....
10% of 540 is a no brainer.
That is really scary.
Bruce
In the last few years I’ve even seen Court Judgments that contain grammatical errors.
I've noticed that many modern novel's from major publishing house's now contain typographical error's.
Was that intentional??
So many novels now get homonyms mixed up and relevant words mixed up with similar words. It ruins the flow of the story telling to always be having to try to figure out what the author is really trying to say. It's a failure of both writing and editing. But the sensitivity readers have at least made it safe to read a book!
Was that on purpose?
Given the quality of the judiciary does that surprise you?
Just read decisions from the 1950s versus the garbage that's written today. The contrast is stunning.
"So true, Terrence. I get young lawyers who graduated from great schools who can neither write a grammatically correct sentence nor fashion a cogent, well ordered argument."
But I bet they Feel Real Good About Themselves, right? Massive Self Esteem.
I consider myself as well educated but I can't pass that exam. Some of the questions are not valid today. I know what a rod is but I don't know how long it is.
A rod is usually long enough to cover your backside and short enough to easily wield. Or it is a misspelling of the nickname of a famous baseball player.
It is also 20s/30s gangster slang for a pistol.
"We are lucky that the Nurses and Engineers, so far, have performed better than these other vocations."
Alas That is changing...and not for the better.
They do it both by lowering standards and be creating new divisions within these fields which require less (rigorous) education. My mother was a nurse during WW2 (in England). She was an RN which required several years of training. By the time she retired most of the nursing staff at the hospital in San Jose at which she worked were not RNs. They'd created LPNs and other categories which were easier to get into. Even with doctors now there are "physician's assistants" and other categories.
I recently dealt with a PA. She was very sharp. Seemed highly educated.
My grandmother was born in 1917 and was educated in a one room schoolhouse. I watched her do the NYTimes Sunday crossword each week using a pen and finishing the puzzle. She did math in her head, and had beautiful handwriting.
My grandmother, too.
My Dad too. He could recite poetry and add columns of figures in his head.
I’m 80. My mom was the bookkeeper in our family business. She did the “books”, columns of figures in her beautiful hand writing with a fountain pen. Age taught me about the columns of figures and debits and credits and how they had to add up and balance. Years later I took my first accounting course at Wharton. And there the professor was making a big deal out of this where the debits went and the credits meant. I raised my hand. Wait. My mom taught me that when I was ten years old! The class cracked up!!
We sent our kids to the local German school and opted out of the public education system (Silicon Valley. They teach cursive writing with ink pen. Our kids are 11 and 12 years old now and both have nice handwriting.
When she was little, my daughter went to a school in rural Paraguay for the summer. Dirt floors and a poor community. She said they were at least a year ahead of her school in math. Can you imagine?
yepp. I am an immigrant. I can.
“Most Catholic schools are still teaching cursive”
Funny story. When my kids first started doing school assignments they only knew how to print. On each paper they would have to print to our last name. One day one of them asked if we could change it because it took so long. I told her not to worry. As soon as she learned cursive all it would take is a few squiggles and demonstrated my technique. Being the perfectionist she is I’m happy to say she didn’t adopt my style.
I bet no letter is discernible after the K.
I’m afraid most times not even the K is.
We called it longhand. I had never heard the word cursive until a few years ago. Despite all of my public school teachers putting us through our paces writing longhand, I never mastered the art and as a lawyer my writing became so bad that I couldn’t read what I had written. Amazingly, I had 2 secretaries who were able to read it.
I look like I write with my foot.
I blame mine on being left handed....
Catholic schools have a higher graduation rate and their students as a whole place higher on the SATs than public school students and have a higher rate of students going on to higher education.
And.... the cost of a catholic education is much less than public schools.
So true. They are a model of efficient outcomes compared to public schools. And they mostly serve at-risk kids.
I know that school! I went to Dominican Academy in NYC and had a fabulous education and went on to Columbia University.
We really have to lay our crappy school system at the feet of the Democrats. They are to blame.
Teaching is a noble profession and there are a lot of dedicated great teachers. But the system holds them back. We need to be teaching the 3 Rs not CRT, gender propaganda and teachers should be fired if they interject their political views in a classroom. CRT, gender discussions and politics should be left up to the parents not some glassier, drooling leftist fanatic.
Teachers around here wear jeans and t-shirts and complain about not treated as professionals.
"Yes children are creative and isn't that nice? But Timmy needs to actually know how to count and spell non-creatively to be an operative adult. A century ago there were people who left school at 11 who could read and write and knew basic mathematics. Now we are warehousing kids to 18 without giving them these skills."
BINGO! We have a winner! Before you can play Brandenburg Concerto you have to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
My grandfather dropped out of school at age 15. He was a qualified surveyor and civil engineer and retired from the US Army a highly decorated full colonel.
Clarence Darrow never graduated law school but was considered one of the best defense lawyers the US has ever seen. He passed the bar exam by bringing a fifth of bourbon to the three judge panel and shooting the shit with them for a couple of hours.
Today, I think he could run circles around a Harvard law graduate.
I graduated from high school in 1972 and that was the extent of my formal education.
Sadly, I compare favorably to current college graduates in grammar and writing and reasoning ability.
As someone asked in an earlier comment - what are they doing in our public schools?
Also, how much of this is parental/family failure? The more the government, in all of its iterations, takes on - (by force?) - the responsibilities of the family, the worse our schools (and the entire culture) get.
The county in which I reside is No. 1 in our state in educational achievement (NEAP standard testing); however, that doesn’t mean much when only 67% are proficient in ELA and less than 50% are proficient in math.
I left college with a commercially useless degree in history and political science. Back when I entered the job market if a company wanted a computer programmer, they had to apprentice one and I was lucky enough to snag such a job. With the help of my coworkers I taught myself to program.
Years later I was running my own computer shop. There was a young woman who was a clerk in my shop but she had taught herself the programming language we were using. She was a crackerjack programmer and I promoted her as fast as I could. When I retired years later she took my job.
If I were to run a shop again and I needed programmers and I got applications from kids who had just graduated college with a computer science degree and an applicant that had four years experience but no degree, I would snap the non-degree applicant right up.
Most university degrees are over rated. To get a good paying job, you don't need a college degree. All you need is a skill that is in demand.
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's how you bet.
The saying goes, "The exception proves the rule." Proves in this case means "tests" not "validates." It is certainly possible to excel without finishing formal training, but that is the exception. My outlier friend is fond of saying, "Copernicus was an outlier, too." Yes, but he's no Copernicus.
The problem with Hahhhhhhhhvahhhhhd graduates is that their institution - and therefore their knowledge - has been gnawed away by the termites of Woke. Several prominent law firms have agreed in principle to not hire Hahhhhhhhhvahhhhhhhd graduates, nor those from that slaver, Elihu Yale's, little college.
Ha. That expression has always provoked a similar line of thought in me. I've often wondered how it came about, because obviously an exception doesn't prove anything about a rule - and in fact is a kind of counter example which ordinarily would disprove it. I've come to the conclusion it's something along the lines of "the fact that this IS an exception and stands out so much shows by it's rarity the rule." But a rule whose exceptions are evidence that it isn't that well formulated.
Damon Runyon?
Because racism.
If you follow the "equality of outcome" theory also put forward by educators, then everything they try, which leaves Black kids further and further behind, is racist.
The only effective way to achieve equality of outcome is to hamstring the brighter kids so they can't perform any better than those less so. Looks like that is exactly what is happening. A pity we compete with other cultures and countries that don't subscribe to the hamstring theory of education.
(I'm probably gong to get Into Trouble over this. Fine, I'm used to it.)
There are basically two groups of people that Care/Obsess about someones Race. The KKK/White Supremacists, and Progressives/Democrats. In the last couple of years its getting harder and harder to tell the difference.
It's not hard at all to tell the difference. When was the last time the KKK tried to impose their version of CRT on your schools? Or transition your kid's sex without telling you? Or riot and burn down minority owned businesses? I've met two white supremacists in my life, and I've met hundreds of Progressives. The KKK was a plague, but from yesteryear. Today it's Progressives. The KKK never controlled the media, law profession, education and academia the way progressives do.
No truer words were spoken.
You may be interested in this essay:
"When ‘Black’ & ‘Hispanic’ Students Outscore ‘Asian’ & ‘White’ Students on the ACT, Nobody Notices"
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/when-black-and-hispanic-students
Excerpt from the essay: ‘In other words, Black, American Native, Hispanic, and Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students with high educational aspirations outscored Asian, White, multiracial, and non-identifying students with lower aspirations. Unfortunately, no one seems to have noticed.’
This is classic shoehorning, trying to compare apples to oranges..
On the one hand, this statement supports the thesis that aspiration is a far better predictor of performance than race. On the other, it makes minimal statement on distribution of performance within a race, parsed by aspiration.
When parsed as the author suggests, of course there will be overlap and exceedance, all for societal better…but that constitutes at best anecdote, worth mentioning, but not necessarily celebrating, at least not in a scholarly article.
I’m glad there’s a path to identifying role models. The effort will be in making it work…getting people to aspire to more, and making the commitments to work for it.
Until then, I’ll stick with my email tag: Facts before feelings, ability before identity, excellence before mediocrity
Thank you for your thoughtful comment!
This bares out what you are saying. I wonder what the left wing nuts on this BBS (comprof) will say about this video.
Comprof is a race baiter. Let him answer this:
https://www.tiktok.com/@iamdavehurt/video/7154131981343755563
FR, yet the ACT & LSAT are now considered “racist” and should no longer be required, or necessary for college admission.
Your thoughts, plz.
To a Democrat reality is racist.
Thanks for sharing that link. Great read and new source of information for me.
If these kids graduated from the worst schools in the US, which is Washington DC they would not have good scores. What I just said does not take to account a smart student with a strong study ethic. If they graduated from a great school district, they would, on the whole, do better simply because they had a stronger educational base.
Horseshoe Theory in action, basically.
Well the KKK and the dems area the same. Dems started the KKK, Jim Crow and every racist thing that’s come down the pike.
That's because there is none. Both believe that race swamps hard work - or at least say they do.
I have a black flight instructor; we've been personal friends for over twenty years, and I tell him "Black people are stupid." Why? "Because in seventy-five years they've never figured out the Democrat scam." He just laughs.
I got a present on Feb. 1. A young black man moved into my building, and Loudly/Proudly proclaimed he was a BLM Revolutionary Activist. Life..Is..Good! :-) Poor Kid, I've forgotten more about this stuff than he knows. I was one Back In The Day...then I grew up.
I gave him a copy of Thomas Sowell's Race & Culture. i can hardly wait.
Keep us posted. Thomas Sowell can have an unsettling effect on people.
He got REAL EXCITED when I told him Tom Sowell was black. He's all about Race. A perfect example of The Public Education System.
I feel Race is important. Almost as important as whether someone has an innie or an outtie belly button. Now I have nothing against outties, but lets be honest, they're not really Our Kind of People.
/Sarc
I have a sad story about outies. My daughter had one as a child and the pediatrician said it would resolve when she added more body fat, and so it seemed. Now that she has had three kids in the last seven years, the outie has revealed itself as an umbilical hernia, so she will need invasive surgery that may not even work.
Bottom line: outies really are victims. 😂
Support group? Go fund me campaign?
Or…the model victim for just learning to live with it?
I hope you get that I was joking, George!
The difference is in what they intended.
Well, Brandenburg is by Bach and Twinkle is by Mozart so it came about 100 years later. ;-)
Yeah, but they're going to tell you classical music is dead white guys - racist.
LOL!