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If that weren't enough, children and expectant mothers are exposed to more lead, cadmium, mercury, MSG, aspartame, and other toxins that have been linked to learning disabilities and decreased IQ. There are many arguments over the source of these and how badly people are affected, but we're exposed to all of them and children are far more susceptible than adults.
That may be however, if something is not being taught how can you expect children to learn it? The reason most state test pass rates are high compared to NAEP is because state tests need to be passed where as NAEP is icing on the cake.
They do attempt to teach math and reading to meet state standards, though, and can't even do that well enough even with all the instruction time mentioned in an earlier post. The states manipulate the scores needed to 'pass' their tests to ridiculously low levels - the Wobegon article clearly states that students need to answer only 1/3 of the test questions correctly to be deemed 'proficient' (to pass, IOW) in some states - to hide how ineffectively many schools are operating.
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Therefore if ones only goal as a school is to pass state tests in order to avoid funding loss and potential administrative restructuring all the time will be spend teaching to the state test while subjects covered by the NAEP may receive less attention because they are seen as tertiary. The problem is that with high stakes testing teachers often do not teach to the class, or to the individual students or even to what they feel will best prepare them, but in many cases they teach to a test and that is all.
That was a potential problem that was explored when NCLB was still in the legislative process. Several of us did express concerns that setting NCLB requirements at a bare minimum level, without the requirement that ALL students need to make yearly educational progress regardless of prior competency level, would result in schools providing nothing beyond the bare minimum required to pass the NCLB tests. The committee, admittedly made up of legislators, not educators, did not believe that would be a problem and thought our concerns were unfounded. They were wrong.
NCLB could be revised to require academic progress for ALL levels of students - but as seen by the quote in the following article, the educators who work with and lobby the government are against that.
"At an educators' meeting in Washington last fall, conversation turned to whether the federal government should support programming for this nation's most gifted and talented high school students. Educators overwhelmingly said that top students in secondary schools need no assistance, much to my dismay. Priority must be given to those not meeting the minimal standards in science and math, they reasoned." Joann DiGennaro - Gifted Minds We Need to Nurture - washingtonpost.com
Educators continue to hold that belief even though international comparisons show that our top students lag their peers in other countries.
"An international assessment of math problem-solving skills of 15-year-olds in 2004, along with more recent studies, found that the United States had the fewest top performers and the largest percentage of low performers compared with other participating countries. By the time students reach 12th grade in math and science, they are near the bottom or dead last compared with international competition, according to the Education Department."
I feel that schools are “lousy” because there is not enough competition. In most work places, you can be replaced in a blink of an eye. If you see a new employee working just a little bit harder, you work harder to keep your spot. I don’t think that teaching should be on such a tenure basis. I think that teachers should be given online learnings anytime there is new information out there. I think that there should be random checks, so many per state, where random teacher’s knowledge is tested. If they fail, they should be demoted, moved out and the next eager person who wants to work hard to keep that spot to take their place. I think that there should be online forums for every school district where parents and teachers alike can interact. If they’re at home with basic knowledge of a disturbing situation that has occurred at school, they can go on and ask more about it. How many parents had red flags about teachers but just have not been able to see the full scale of what the teacher is doing? What a great way to help parents get involved without having to take days off work, day care for younger siblings, time away from homework, or family time to do so.I think that there are untapped resources that schools could be tapping into. Lets look at our oldest population, the ones enjoying retirement in our communities just itching for something to do. Set up volunteer programs where they can come into the schools and help with the lower grade levels. They could be immensely helpful with early literacy, handwritting, and students who might need a little extra help in other subjects. This would be a great answer to large classroom sizes without having to hire more teachers.
There's where your plan falls apart. Teaching conditions and salaries aren't attracting loads of "eager hard working persons." Your suggestion might get rid of some dead wood, which wouldn't be a bad thing. The trouble would be finding enough competent replacements. The education "market" just isn't attracting very many. Letting the substandard teachers go would just decrease the pool of teaching talent, and the students from the released teachers' classes would simply be crammed into the remaining teachers' classes. That wouldn't result in any improvement. It would more than likely have the opposite effect.
Very often when kids fail in school it is because they are being pushed from grade to grade in elementary school regardless of their level of achievement. The reason for this is financial. By the time they get to middle school some are not equipped to do the level of work required and they begin to fall behind. By the time they reach High School the pace quickens again and it is now impossible for them to keep up as they were never really taught the basics in elementary school. More than 1/2 of the money going to schools never even makes it to the classroom. It is squandered by administrators. Our local high school supervisors have a payroll of well over a million dollars a year, but the schools have not been painted in 20 years. The waste and corruption is disgusting. Failure is a part of life, but children should be given every opportunity to succeed in life. A system that is failing, as is the case with the present one, is not acceptable and needs to be changed.
Some school systems are failing. That's for sure. I do see things like that coming out of some schools. You know, kids being pushed from grade to grade making 'barely passing' grades. When I was coming up if you didn't make the grades you deserved you weren't moving up. Maybe that is what is going on in some school systems.
OK but $1mil for a yearly payroll? That's nothing. It must be a small school. Lets say the average salary at my old HS for teachers was $30k...there were probably 30 teachers in all (Some made more and some made less. My mom was making close to $40k when she retired after 30 years).....That's $900k just for the teachers' salaries and not including the school leadership who were probably making between $50k and $100k each. The school superintendent was making somewhere in the neighborhood of $90k. And my school was just a 2A sized school. (I said this before but my graduating class was less than 70.)
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Originally Posted by John23
Logically....shouldn't *anyone*, regardless of their parents, upbringing, socio economic status, race, religion....if you're in school for 16,800 hours...shouldn't you be able to graduate half way decent in math, english or history?
No.
I'm serious. You are not entitled to just "get it". You cannot just show up and expect the education that's being thrown at you to magically sink in if you aren't paying attention, don't care about it, and <sorry again> don't have the capacity to learn what you are being taught. That sucks...I know but lets be realistic here. I knew some kids in HS that cared more about going to the fight down at the cotton gin or how to make the best spit wads than they did sitting through a lecture on biology.
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Originally Posted by John23
Even if you have the worst parents in the world, shouldn't you be able to comprehend english, after being in school for that long? How much longer do you need?
No. If you have the worst parents in the world and go to school not caring about being educated....heck...you may not ever learn to tie your shoes. Velcro for life. (Figuratively speaking)
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Originally Posted by John23
How did people in the 19th century ever learn anything? They didn't necessarily have comfortable lives by todays standards. They didn't have the 3 bd, 2 ba house, with 2 cars in the garage, electricity, access to libraries, books, the internet.
The "results" are an abomination, and make no sense logically.
Well that's a good question. In the 19th century formal education was not something that was as readily available as it has come to be in modern times. If you weren't upper middle class or above you may never set foot in a classroom. There were an unbelievable number of people walking around who couldn't read....especially in rural communities.
Over time formal education filtered down to the lowest of classes to the point that there has become as sense of entitlement (I don't mean that negatively). It is now said that EVERY child in the US is ENTITLED to have an education provided to them. I agree with that sentiment 100%!
But....I say this about all classes of people...."You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink." The school bus only drops them off in front of the school....The teacher tries to teach the whole class equally....70% probably get it....20% may not care....10% could be at a total loss.
It would be the fault of the system to keep moving them up. But what do you do if you hold them back year after year with the same result? I'm asking.
I'm serious. You are not entitled to just "get it". You cannot just show up and expect the education that's being thrown at you to magically sink in if you aren't paying attention, don't care about it, and <sorry again> don't have the capacity to learn what you are being taught. That sucks...I know but lets be realistic here. I knew some kids in HS that cared more about going to the fight down at the cotton gin or how to make the best spit wads than they did sitting through a lecture on biology.
What I dont understand....the standards are set so low, and you're in school for so long, you'd think anyone with an average IQ could graduate. Not mastery of a subject. Mastery being an Olympic athlete, or a national spelling bee champion.
True, there is a portion of middle school or highschool students that dont pay attention, care more about spit wads, etc. But those numbers dont match the high drop out rate, or the number of kids who get low grades.
If you took an average class of 30 students, maybe 5-10 are in the back with spit wads, making paper airplanes. It doesnt account for the mediocre grades (with standards already set low) of the other 15-20. And the other 5 in the class are A students.
-Not necessarily, magically sinking in. But you're in school for so long, you'd think eventually something would sink in.
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Originally Posted by drjones96
No. If you have the worst parents in the world and go to school not caring about being educated....heck...you may not ever learn to tie your shoes. Velcro for life. (Figuratively speaking)
People have come from worst conditions than most american students, and they've been able to achieve/become educated. They didnt need stressful testing, nclb, etc. I think american students have been so coddled, they cant imagine being educated in poor conditions.
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Originally Posted by drjones96
Well that's a good question. In the 19th century formal education was not something that was as readily available as it has come to be in modern times. If you weren't upper middle class or above you may never set foot in a classroom. There were an unbelievable number of people walking around who couldn't read....especially in rural communities.
Over time formal education filtered down to the lowest of classes to the point that there has become as sense of entitlement (I don't mean that negatively). It is now said that EVERY child in the US is ENTITLED to have an education provided to them. I agree with that sentiment 100%!
But....I say this about all classes of people...."You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink." The school bus only drops them off in front of the school....The teacher tries to teach the whole class equally....70% probably get it....20% may not care....10% could be at a total loss.
It would be the fault of the system to keep moving them up. But what do you do if you hold them back year after year with the same result? I'm asking.
The problem is, the bar has been set so low, it's like jumping over a 1 foot fence. When the bar is set lower in something, usually more people achieve.
What to do if you hold them back year after year....why are all kids going at the same pace?
Esp a subject like math....if you're failing early in middle school, why continue along at the same pace as the more advanced kids from grades 9-12? It doesnt make any sense.
With the horse analogy, you can lead a horse to water, but cant make him drink. But the horse trough has been gradually raised through the years and now it's right up near his chin. It shouldnt be very hard to drink.
I think the horse has been sedated and weakened, and can't drink when the water is right in front of him. And 50 or 100 years ago, the horse was more active, his mind was more alert, and had to jump over high fences to come up to drink.
John, you and I must be talking about apples and oranges. The school I went to seemed to have higher standards than what you are speaking of. Maybe things have changed in the past 15 years but I seriously doubt they have changed to the extent that you are speaking of.
I hear about kids coming out of HS in inner cities being completely illiterate. I'm pretty sure everyone I graduated with could read....even the folks who were at the bottom of the ranking. But as I said before, my class sizes were realatively small. So it would be easy to pick out weaknesses among the groups and work on them. Whereas in large inner city schools where class sizes can be so large it's more difficult to tend to everyone's individual needs.
As I said earlier my school broke up the class into two basic groups. "College Prep"....and then there was everyone else. Everyone could basically start out in the College Prep group unless they were deficient in some things in Jr High....but they could catch up if they tried really hard. The college prep group took more advanced courses in order to prepare for college. Nothing was "dumbed down". It was hard. I specifically recall my HS Chemistry being equivalent to Chem I in college....same for HS Calculus and Calc I. Meanwhile the non-college prep folks were taking the lower level classes. Where I had to have 4 years of math they had to only complete Algebra I or II. Where I had to have 4 years of English they only had to complete up to the 2nd year of English that I had. The result was I was ready for college....and they knew the basics well enough to pass the state's standardized test. If you couldn't succeed under this plan then you should have been in special ed....and that is also what could happen if you started failing the remedial courses over on the non-college prep side. Basically....they wanted everyone to do the best within their own ability.
John, you and I must be talking about apples and oranges. The school I went to seemed to have higher standards than what you are speaking of. Maybe things have changed in the past 15 years but I seriously doubt they have changed to the extent that you are speaking of.
I hear about kids coming out of HS in inner cities being completely illiterate. I'm pretty sure everyone I graduated with could read....even the folks who were at the bottom of the ranking. But as I said before, my class sizes were realatively small. So it would be easy to pick out weaknesses among the groups and work on them. Whereas in large inner city schools where class sizes can be so large it's more difficult to tend to everyone's individual needs.
As I said earlier my school broke up the class into two basic groups. "College Prep"....and then there was everyone else. Everyone could basically start out in the College Prep group unless they were deficient in some things in Jr High....but they could catch up if they tried really hard. The college prep group took more advanced courses in order to prepare for college. Nothing was "dumbed down". It was hard. I specifically recall my HS Chemistry being equivalent to Chem I in college....same for HS Calculus and Calc I. Meanwhile the non-college prep folks were taking the lower level classes. Where I had to have 4 years of math they had to only complete Algebra I or II. Where I had to have 4 years of English they only had to complete up to the 2nd year of English that I had. The result was I was ready for college....and they knew the basics well enough to pass the state's standardized test. If you couldn't succeed under this plan then you should have been in special ed....and that is also what could happen if you started failing the remedial courses over on the non-college prep side. Basically....they wanted everyone to do the best within their own ability.
Things have changed quite a bit in those 15 years. Many states have made their high school graduation requirements more demanding (3 years math, 4 years English, 3 years science, etc.), with the result that nearly all students take college prep courses - the consequence of such is that many of those courses have been dumbed down.
Here's a suburban Chicago take on the problem:
"It's pretty horrifying," said Jennifer Presley, who has studied the issue of college readiness for the Illinois Education Research Council at Southern Illinois University. "We've turned graduating from high school into an almost meaningless benchmark for people, and you're seeing that in the data." ...And employers say they're seeing it on the job, as applicants who aren't ready for college increasingly aren't ready for work either." Daily Herald | Chapter 10: Only 1 in 5 high school graduates are ready for college
If you took an average class of 30 students, maybe 5-10 are in the back with spit wads, making paper airplanes. It doesnt account for the mediocre grades (with standards already set low) of the other 15-20. And the other 5 in the class are A students.
In a lot of inner city schools I think it is more like 15-20 sit in the back goofing off, assuming they how up for class in the first place. 5-10 are average students and 2-3 make A's and B's
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Originally Posted by John23
People have come from worst conditions than most american students, and they've been able to achieve/become educated. They didnt need stressful testing, nclb, etc. I think american students have been so coddled, they cant imagine being educated in poor conditions.
Many inner city school students just don't really make a connection between a good education and a higher standard of living, so it's not important to them. By the time some of them are old enough to figure it out they are already too far behind in the game.
There is also a very real problem here in some inner city schools that to be smart is not a good thing. Acheiving sucess through sports or music or crime is considered "smart", working hard is for "fools". My son attended a rough inner city high school for a year. It did not take him long to figure out that the smart kids get targeted. I think for a lot of those kids they just find it easier and safer to dumb down and blend in.
I think those kids from other countries and worse conditions come from a background where an education has a high value, unlike here where too many troubled families place little or no value on schooling.
By most definitions, anti-intellectual is synonymous with moron. So that'd be equivalent to saying, "Jennifer Aniston is perfect flawless." But... well, she may actually be worth the repetition.
Part of the problem is the ideology that “kids need time to be kids.” While I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly, we believe that children should be given anything they don’t find “easy.” We treat our children with the thought that they are too young to grasp a subject. You can look at any subject and see many holes in the curriculum that leaves most kids lacking. Lets look at 1st grade spelling for a second and compare my nephew’s class with my daughter of the same age:
While my daughter is advanced, I think she may have a rare form of dyslexia that makes it difficult for her to spell although she can read at college level. She’s still writing things backwards and reading some words funny. Her dad was the same way and the state‘s best specialist quit her job after “failing“ my husband, her hardest student in her entire career. I tried to have basic spelling in her home school kindergarten class. Although I would have her spell a simple word 100 times or more over the course of a week, at the end of the week she could not spell it. But other words she had not problem. It reminded me of reading some things written by my husband. So I gave her spelling test and she correctly spelled ‘president’ and ‘prehistoric’ but could not spell words like ‘rain.’ I immediately stopped the spelling program as to not wear at her confidence and vowed I would find a program that would work. I thought about what she did well, and that is math. She sees things well when there is a pattern. So I search for a spelling program that was based off pattern vs. theme and came across sequential spelling. Now she can spell words like ‘gnome’ ‘rhyme’ and ‘misunderstanding.’
My nephews class however, is pretty typical. They teach words based on when they enter the curriculum, with the idea that they can not understand words that are not. Their homework includes writing each word ten times every day after school. It is spelling curriculum based solely on memorization and in no way meant to teach them patterns that help them to spell much larger words. My sister gets frustrated over them spelling nonsense words. That would drive me nuts. How confusing for children, especially like mine who might possibly be dyslexic? The concept is like having kids memorize all their math facts to a 12,000 but never teaching any patterns, carrying or borrowing with the concept that they can not understand how to do it.
I believe that most children could graduate high school with their AA if the school’s made it an expectation. If you make an expectation and set clear goals on how to reach this expectation, than it becomes a possibility. Does it mean through endless drive? No. It means we take a close look at the programs we are using and find a better way of doing it. Look outside the box for more ways to obtain funding (often done by cutting costs, such as: how much money could be saved if each year for the next 5-10 years, you have a “project” where high school students learn about alternative energy by setting up solar panels for the school to use. A few each year and pretty soon you have cut costs by eliminating electric bills?) to pay to teachers and encourage their drive and every school could probably better manage time. What are untapped resources in your area? Again, I will mention our retired community just itching to help their community, like in early literacy programs, maybe small teaching programs that teach skills like sewing, ect that doesn’t cost the school anything and I believe students could help too, maybe by having electives where 30 or so students head to lower levels to help with student teacher ratio. How about a “closest to the student” committee that brainstorms ideas on how to do this, with a variety of students, elementary, middle and high school, parents, retired citizens, as well as teachers and other school administrators. Instead of having grades, have levels that kids can move through at their full learning potential. Fast learning kids could be grouped together in I bigger classes because they would need less individualized help while on the opposite end, classes could be smaller with more time spent on an area. Because this is done by level vs. age, kids would be less fidgety because they would not be bored or left feeling less adequate because they are learning slower. Just get together a couple times a month and come up with fresh ideas and put these plans into fast action.
Last edited by flik_becky; 04-07-2009 at 01:42 PM..
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