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I disagree with this opinion. Perhaps there was no true Golden Age, but certainly America has seen a long and precipitous decline in academic achievement.
Here's an indication of the timing of declines in student interest in STEM, which would closely correlate with a decline in logic and analysis skills: "Interest and subsequent funding for STEM subjects began when Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. From this point, investment expanded in the form of scholarships, schemes, training and private funds. STEM growth continued until 1992, when it began to suffer a decline in the U.S. over the following ten years." Is STEM education declining in the U.S.? | ZDNet Another excellent read is entitled "The Decline and Fall of Education," where a physics teacher notes the decline in students interested in, and academically ready to study STEM over the years prior to 1994.
Interestingly, great care has been taken to make sure that the results of standardized tests cannot be compared over time; the tests are dramatically reworked to make sure no direct comparison is possible. It would seem that those in charge of the education system don't want a precise way to measure academic achievement over time However, comparisons in achievement can be made in other ways: "According to a new Council on Foreign Relations report on U.S. Education Reform and National Security, declines in U.S. education performance are jeopardizing U.S. national security, including the country’s ability to compete in a high-skill global marketplace...According to a recent report by the not-for-profit testing organization, ACT, only 22 percent of U.S. high school students met “college ready” standards in all of their core subjects; these figures are even lower for Hispanic and African-American students?" 7 Signs That U.S. Education Decline Is Jeopardizing Its National Security - Forbes
On a more anecdotal level, consider this: in the 1970s and early 80s I and other students spent our school days studying english, math, the sciences, history, logic and debating, all the while being taught to question authority, critically analyze speeches and political rhetoric, and understand the biases of reporters/writers. We learned how to learn without a teacher, and how to weed out inconsistencies and falsities in speech and written word. We debated issues on teams against other schools in order to see how to present our own arguments, and how to dissect the flaws in our opponent's speeches. We understood that writers and speakers (especially politicians) attempt to convince us that their views are correct by ignoring or misrepresenting conflicting views; we knew that if we listen to biased sources habitually, we will come to accept these biases as truth no matter how illogical they are upon close examination. We also understood that academic achievement was NOT a function of how much money is poured into the school system.
With this kind of background, I listened to Obama when he first became a popular candidate, and was immediately struck with the realization that he said absolutely nothing about what he intended to do as President, and instead relied on Evangelist Preacher methodology to get crowds enthusiastic about meaningless chants ("Yes we can!"). He gave no details, no new ideas, no analyses, no facts, no nothing. It was a long speech of "Yea for good! Boo for bad! I'm going to give you a wonderful life and I love the poor and the working class! My opponents will hurt you and they hate the working class." It was a speech that would have gotten good marks for confident presentation (which narcissists do instinctively), while failing utterly for making a case.
In comparison to the focus of my education, modern students are taught that diversity is so critically important that you cannot so much as criticize someone of a "minority" race (whether that race be the minority in your city or not). They are taught to obey authority and never question it. They speak and think under the PC Code. They are incapable of listening to a political speech and then researching the ideas and premises presented. They are taught that government is a wonderful thing that must be obeyed, that whatever government says is true, that government works for you (the citizen), and that they have a voice through their votes. Their public education costs 10 times more than mine did, but with the focus on the lowest-achieving students and government propaganda, much of the time spent in school is wasted or worse, counterproductive.
So the modern young person grows up surrounded by a media and education system that leads him to think liberal ideas are the most prevalent, and obviously correct and enlightened. He has no idea that conservatives outnumber liberals 2 to 1, and would refuse to believe it anyway because that's not what the TV reflects. Besides, the political parties are a 50-50 split, and the split is basically good and generous people versus selfish, evil people. It would never occur to the modern student that the political parties are philosophically inconsistent in their own platforms, in order to create the illusion of a 50/50 split.
So this modern student listens to a speech by Obama, and everything he's been taught leads him to think that a wonderful guy (a perfectly PC minority) is running for office, intending to champion the little guy. This is why young people overwhelmingly voted for Obama in the last election, even though a careful analysis of what Obama actually supports (not in word, but in deed) would have shown them that he intended that THEY shoulder a much larger burden for health care costs and government programs that won't even be around when they are old enough to need them.
I fully agree.
Maybe the Courts will finally rule to stop affirmative action soon and kids will get into colleges based on ability, not race or other "extra credit"
As to your complaints: anybody who taught in a really big and corrupt system like CHICAGO full well knows about all the corrupt political aspects of urban districts. [In any case, you / as being part of the district / should have had lots of $$$$$$$$$$$ DC support... maybe you did / district and even your school, on all levels...........but solely your class just didn't get it? ]
The total amount of the education budgets in all school districts that comes from the feds is 10.8% Note that this INCLUDES the federal breakfast and lunch programs and Headstart. Schools in Chicago do not get adequate funding for mandates from the state or for mandates from the feds. The funding has to come from the local school budget. It is that way all over the country.
I still think the Dept. of Ed. is totally corrupt and wastes way too much money and should be eliminated (at least in its present state). Local control is much better; under mostly local control when the department of education was not fully pulling strings, NY State was at the top in education when I attended school in the 1950s and 1960s -- and money was so well spent, we had good schools and if you scored well on a 6 hour long Senior Year Regents exam (to take the exam in the first place, you needed the 4 Regents academic sequences and at least one other / generally a language - and most of us has a 6th sequence ), you had your tuition paid for a SUNY state school for college; -- that concept of academics meaning something and kids expected to achieve? It is long gone and anyone that goes to college in NY gets that state money spread around, it doesn't matter for grades, just be a state resident. You also cannot have tracking because of the department of education in DC: No districts using a tracking of Honors, Regular, Basic, Vocational... because it is discriminatory. This is NOT fair to most kids. You can, however, have separate and mainstreamed and additional special teachers for special ed and somehow, that isn't discrimination... it's just called Political Correctness -- and pushed by DC/department of education. It gets lots of money, at the expense of the rest of the students
I went to a good school in New York in the same time frame that you did, not in NYC or Long Island. I graduated High School in 1962 and had a full scholarship to a private liberal arts college including room, board and tuition because my parents did not make much money.
However, I do NOT remember tuition being paid if you passed the regents. Most of the students in my school got 80s or better. However, not all schools in New York were good at that time either. Local control meant that schools like mine did very well and schools in other parts of the state had kids who were not getting regents diplomas because they could not pass with a 60.
One of the things that changed, btw, in New York and many other states was the trend away from requiring courses. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were many more electives and scores on the traditional subjects were declining. That is not the fault of the feds - it was local control that got us into that. Not only that but local control means that poor families are stuck in schools that do worse in general. One thing that Texas does right is allow for interdistrict and intradistrict transfers so *if* a parent can transport a child to a better school, that child can transfer.
Interestingly, there is a website where you can download regents exams from various time periods and compare them. The course content has changed though, so it is difficult to compare the exams.
Your first alternate option was to teach elsewhere, like a small town or a charter or a private. [However, Chicago has HIGH salaries.] I fully expect all teachers in a large (and corrupt systems) to know ALL the tricks to get all students labelled with disabilities to get more federal money and even cash money for the parents of the kids...and it is usually for the "disability of the day" [I taught in a small urban district and our special ed teachers and special ed parents knew all of them] As well, but imho, Chicago is currently giving the rest of the nation a black eye for what teachers are this year. Seriously, if it is a Fed program under the department of education [notice I put it lower case], any big district can "milk" the Feds for all they are worth -- and your district ranks for corruption and connected to DC.
A solution to "all the ills of education" (as you see it) would be to find all the special ed teachers you need, start a charter school, and go out and get full federal funding for all kids who want to attend, pricing the autistic children at 3X the monetary resources as any regular student there. [That is the multiplier my district had for any child labelled special ed: 3X the money that a normal kid got. ] Isn't that about what segregated schools got? So, you are, in essence, asking for schools which pay for one class of student at a higher rate than others and by doing such, you CREATE a monetary segregation. No child deserves to be considered less worthy.
If you cared about the majority of children, I wager you would have lobbied for their needs: they get shut out and lost in the system
First, when I taught in Chicago, the salaries were not high especially compared to the surrounding districts.
Second, it was difficult to get students classified. I had one child who had been hidden in the bilingual program since kindergarten who should have been classified special education and it took us at the high school level almost a full year to get him into services. At first, we thought he was still having difficulty with English, but the other kids told us he didn't speak Spanish either, but gibberish.
You are sadly misinformed if you think that Chicago gets a lot of money from the feds for anything. Autistic children, btw, do NOT get 3X the money that regular ed students get and the services they need cost more than 3X. Let me explain - we had two sets of grandparents and one set of parents paying for services for my grandson and it was not cheap. We did manage to get 5 hours of early intervention a week for free for a whole 18 months. We got none of the extra services he needed through the government either state or federal - we paid privately and it cost us for that 10 hours of ABA and 2 hours of private OT and ST. We were fortunate that we could afford it, but for poor children who cannot, the schools are the only option and they do NOT get the services they need for the most part because it is not funded. Insurance, btw, in Texas did cover him for a while, but not when the company my son works for switched providers. He still needs speech and OT and we pay for it because insurance will not. He gets a little bit at school, but mostly, that's a resource teacher because he needs a smaller class in order to do his some of his academic work. So that does cost the school some money. It's NOT federally funded though.
Note that my grandson is getting As and Bs on regular academic work in second grade. He can succeed, but he needs a smaller class. OTOH, he needs to be around his peers and they need to be around him, so he is in a regular classroom of 24 kids for most of the day.
We have been fortunate to have a good public school system that worked with us, but so many kids don't have that at all. And many of the parents just don't have the knowledge to fight for what their kids need or the ability to get an advocate to fight for them.
You seem to have a very distorted view of disabled kids. What about kids in wheel chairs? Are they supposed to be segregated? What about kids who are blind or deaf? My dil has a hearing aide, should she have not gone to the public school?
First, when I taught in Chicago, the salaries were not high especially compared to the surrounding districts.
Second, it was difficult to get students classified. I had one child who had been hidden in the bilingual program since kindergarten who should have been classified special education and it took us at the high school level almost a full year to get him into services. At first, we thought he was still having difficulty with English, but the other kids told us he didn't speak Spanish either, but gibberish.
You are sadly misinformed if you think that Chicago gets a lot of money from the feds for anything. Autistic children, btw, do NOT get 3X the money that regular ed students get and the services they need cost more than 3X. Let me explain - we had two sets of grandparents and one set of parents paying for services for my grandson and it was not cheap. We did manage to get 5 hours of early intervention a week for free for a whole 18 months. We got none of the extra services he needed through the government either state or federal - we paid privately and it cost us for that 10 hours of ABA and 2 hours of private OT and ST. We were fortunate that we could afford it, but for poor children who cannot, the schools are the only option and they do NOT get the services they need for the most part because it is not funded. Insurance, btw, in Texas did cover him for a while, but not when the company my son works for switched providers. He still needs speech and OT and we pay for it because insurance will not. He gets a little bit at school, but mostly, that's a resource teacher because he needs a smaller class in order to do his some of his academic work. So that does cost the school some money. It's NOT federally funded though.
Note that my grandson is getting As and Bs on regular academic work in second grade. He can succeed, but he needs a smaller class. OTOH, he needs to be around his peers and they need to be around him, so he is in a regular classroom of 24 kids for most of the day.
We have been fortunate to have a good public school system that worked with us, but so many kids don't have that at all. And many of the parents just don't have the knowledge to fight for what their kids need or the ability to get an advocate to fight for them.
You seem to have a very distorted view of disabled kids. What about kids in wheel chairs? Are they supposed to be segregated? What about kids who are blind or deaf? My dil has a hearing aide, should she have not gone to the public school?
You and I often agree on issues, but I'm not so sure we're on the same page in regards to special education. If these kids need more services to adequately educate them (and I agree that most, particularly those from poor families, do), who is to pay for it? Should taxpayers pay more? Should funds be diverted from other educational sources (like average students or gifted programs)? Education is so vitally important, but taxpayers seem to be weary about paying more, or even as much as they do, when they see these per pupil expenditure numbers. In many cases, these numbers are inflated precisely because of how much more it costs to educate an increasing amount of special education students.
Just curious to hear your take on financial solutions.
I went to a public school on LI; mid 1960s. Student who chose to take the Regents Scholarship exam needed the following at minimum: Regents classes in full sequences:: Sequences were 4 yrs English/Regents in 3rd year, 4 years History/Regents in 3rd year, 3 years Math/Regents each course, as: 1 Algebra, 1 Geometry, etc.), 4 years History/Regents each course, just like Math & 1 additional sequence as a Language/Regents in 3rd year. In Honors, most of us took an additional Regents (yes, they had them in Music, Business, Art and several other areas). You just needed a school district that cared about all the work that went into this on the part of the District.
Taking Regents classes alone did nothing for you; it was taking the college Regents Scholarship exam that could get you a scholarship. It was in Fall of Senior year; 6 hours long, broken up in 6 sections (I seem to remember 1 hr. 15 min for each academic area and 1 hr on general knowledge) There was a 30 min break in the middle for lunch . The total possible score was 300.( People in my senior year needed about a score of over 240 of 300 to rank for the Scholarship).
The Regents Scholarship was good for SUNY state school tuition, nothing more. Not for books, room and board, etc. ... just state tuition. It was also worth that cash value if you went to any school in the state. If you went out of state, an alternate got the scholarship. Now it is all turned into TAP ( most students get $250 /semester)
My husband went to school at this end of NY and not all districts bothered with it. He took the same classes I did and same Regents. His HS did NOT have the Scholarship exam. I guess LI was more competitive; parents wanted districts with it.
You may contend it didn't exist, but I went to a SUNY school free with one.
You and I often agree on issues, but I'm not so sure we're on the same page in regards to special education. If these kids need more services to adequately educate them (and I agree that most, particularly those from poor families, do), who is to pay for it? Should taxpayers pay more? Should funds be diverted from other educational sources (like average students or gifted programs)? Education is so vitally important, but taxpayers seem to be weary about paying more, or even as much as they do, when they see these per pupil expenditure numbers. In many cases, these numbers are inflated precisely because of how much more it costs to educate an increasing amount of special education students.
Just curious to hear your take on financial solutions.
Clevelander, Re: your post to nana :: this is my entire contention with Special Ed. Taxpayers are paying for whatever the costs are, based on Federal DOE guidelines and definitions. Where I taught, there was a massive siphoning off of money from regular classes to pay for the additional costs in Spec. Ed. When I started, you had perhaps 2 kids in a grade "labelled" Spec. Ed. in a school (having 2-3 classes a grade).When I retired, there were at least 10 in regular classes and usually 1-2 classes of self-contained special ed. (Urban District, many low income, close to 40,000 students when I taught / now it says there are 34,000). This required a massive hiring of Special ed. teachers, guidance and all the services with it. The need for the education is there -- but the cost is borne by all and it is the "regular kids" who get the shaft of resources. The really bright get into the academic exam only schools .
I went to a public school on LI; mid 1960s. Student who chose to take the Regents Scholarship exam needed the following at minimum: Regents classes in full sequences:: Sequences were 4 yrs English/Regents in 3rd year, 4 years History/Regents in 3rd year, 3 years Math/Regents each course, as: 1 Algebra, 1 Geometry, etc.), 4 years History/Regents each course, just like Math & 1 additional sequence as a Language/Regents in 3rd year. In Honors, most of us took an additional Regents (yes, they had them in Music, Business, Art and several other areas). You just needed a school district that cared about all the work that went into this on the part of the District.
Taking Regents classes alone did nothing for you; it was taking the college Regents Scholarship exam that could get you a scholarship. It was in Fall of Senior year; 6 hours long, broken up in 6 sections (I seem to remember 1 hr. 15 min for each academic area and 1 hr on general knowledge) There was a 30 min break in the middle for lunch . The total possible score was 300.( People in my senior year needed about a score of over 240 of 300 to rank for the Scholarship).
The Regents Scholarship was good for SUNY state school tuition, nothing more. Not for books, room and board, etc. ... just state tuition. It was also worth that cash value if you went to any school in the state. If you went out of state, an alternate got the scholarship. Now it is all turned into TAP ( most students get $250 /semester)
My husband went to school at this end of NY and not all districts bothered with it. He took the same classes I did and same Regents. His HS did NOT have the Scholarship exam. I guess LI was more competitive; parents wanted districts with it.
You may contend it didn't exist, but I went to a SUNY school free with one.
I am not contending it did not exist. It was a long time ago. I had a new york state scholarship along with a private one, but I don't remember the New York one being a Regents scholarship. It may have been. I graduated high school in 1962 and took a full load of regents courses. I took a bunch of scholarship exams, so I don't remember which ones. I had a letter of commendation from the National Merit Scholarship, but missed out on the actual scholarship for that one. I did use my scholarship for tuition at a private New York school (there was a SUNY campus there and a private liberal arts college - the SUNY part was the Engineering school where my dh went).
What I am contending is that not all New York high schools were that great. In many New York schools, kids took regents courses, but did not pass the regents exams and had no chance at scholarships at all. Even in the same county, there was a lot of variation in terms of the education kids got.
Maybe the Courts will finally rule to stop affirmative action soon and kids will get into colleges based on ability, not race or other "extra credit"
Ironically, White women have benefitted from the practice more than people of color. It is common sense given that there are roughly as many White women as there are people of color in the United States. See, there's an example of thinking and learning for yourself or you will be swayed to and fro and fall for anything you are told. Who wins out when it comes to affirmative action?
nana053, there still is variation in terms of education not just in NY, but nationwide. I think NY generally did and to a degree, still does a good job at giving an opportunity for student to succeed, but it is up to the student. I think it is good that some areas are have more options like Albany's Green tech or Syracuse City's Institute of Technology at Central High. One is a charter, while the other is a public school that has the a graduation rate that has been at or above national and state rates the past two years. Hopefully those results will continue at the next level.
Last edited by ckhthankgod; 10-25-2012 at 07:45 AM..
For those saying funds get diverted to special education student from regular students,well then what about "gifted" programs?
Doesn't gifted programs for gifted students take away resources from regular students too?
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