Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
You can read the whole thing or just go near the end, where it says "Compare your school district with its neighbors" and type your school district in the box.
From a lookup, I can see that say, Syosset, is better locally than... Kings Park, and a bunch of other districts I've never heard of. This isn't done by "neighboring districts" at all, unfortunately.
Anyway, after a few lookups, this data is consistent with what we already know as good schools. It uses a different measurement but it's not nearly detailed enough to discern any difference between two districts that we know rank differently.
Americans, as a nation are obsessed with ratings and this article is just another drop in a huge bucket of similar articles. Here is what's really wrong with U.S. education regardless of class, race, economic status and location:
1) Multiple choice testing. One's mind develops very differently when you need to pick one answer out of four or so instead of coming up with your own answer and back-testing it. This affects critical thinking, logical reasoning and problem-solving abilities. As a result, you have a high percentage of people who can get from point A to point B as long as they are told what A and B are and which steps to take and very low % of people who are able to identify what A and B are and how to get from A to B.
2) No emphasis on memory development and yes, there are very specific things that exist in educational programs in other countries to develop memories, namely, memorization of rhymes.
Teachers don’t teach. They present information.
Kids are like parrots and retain and repeat said information.
Results are, a bunch of helpless morons who cannot process anything that isn’t inside the box.
And they are taught that they are perfect and special just because they made it past the birth canal.
^ Honestly, I don't think either of you are seeing what they're doing in schools today. I look at my kids' homework (and some classwork) daily. It's not ONLY reciting information and it's not ONLY multiple choice questions. Who cares if tests in sections may be that way (the common core assessment wasn't, btw), the work they do to get to their understanding of the material isn't just the above.
Whether you think the change of curriculum was for their own benefit (line pockets) or not, there's got to be some realization that we've been measuring behind other countries and they're actually doing something about it. I see more critical thinking involved compared with what we learned. Kids at younger ages are forced to work harder than before. Those parents who don't understand it (or don't want to) are quick to judge it, unsurprisingly. I'm happy with how they're teaching, or rather, what is being presented as lessons or homework. What's up for debate is whether certain regions in the US are better at it than others.
We are i nthe pat med school district. compared to other long island schools its bad but to the rest of the country its average .Make me feel better about staying in the district. does have its good points. my son got prek for free. Also michael hynes rocks.
Teachers don’t teach. They present information.
Kids are like parrots and retain and repeat said information.
Results are, a bunch of helpless morons who cannot process anything that isn’t inside the box.
And they are taught that they are perfect and special just because they made it past the birth canal.
The reason we appear to be behind so many other countries is because we educate all of our students, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or special needs. This is not always the case with the countries we are being compared to. Our education system isn't perfect and certainly could use improvements, but the statistics are skewed regarding how far behind we are.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
