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.
My son and daughters go to the supposed worst schools in the Portland Area (Milwaukie). It's all about a kids home life.
Anyone can give a child IXL math problems and some worksheets. Education in this country is **** poor, not because of schools but because of unintelligent and uninvolved parents.
If you can believe it, I had a friend of mine with a Bachelors Degree ask for help on his high school daughters Algebra I homework. I'm not talking systems of 3 variables, just find x type stuff. He could not do it. Schools don't make smart kids and Universities don't make a highly educated population, contrary to popular belief. It's the individual and the people they surround themselves with. Furthermore, Education and intelligence don't always equal success. If you can't talk to people and build relationships what good are you?
Hillsboro's problem is they have too many ESL students, that is our problem here in North Clackamas too.
School administrators and school boards like to redraw school district lines to be more inclusive and diverse. Too many middle class white kids in your district? No problem! Just redraw the lines and include the lowest income sections of the city. Hell, if you can't find enough low income families, offer to take another city's low-income students, especially the minorities. Thought you moved to a good neighborhood with good schools? Give it a few years for them to redraw the district.
They won't be happy until they reach a racial/socioeconomic quota and they will stop at nothing to get ESL kids getting good test scores. Everything else falls to the wayside. Nevermind, smart white American children or Asian children they are the least of anyone's concern.
Honestly, Oregon schools have never been all that great. To let you know I am not just dogging Oregon schools. The only place I have ever been where I have said "these are amazing schools.".... North Dakota. Arizona, Oregon, Texas all have crap education systems from what I have witnessed!
They won't be happy until they reach a racial/socioeconomic quota and they will stop at nothing to get ESL kids getting good test scores. Everything else falls to the wayside. Nevermind, smart white American children or Asian children they are the least of anyone's concern.
Honestly, Oregon schools have never been all that great. To let you know I am not just dogging Oregon schools. The only place I have ever been where I have said "these are amazing schools.".... North Dakota. Arizona, Oregon, Texas all have crap education systems from what I have witnessed!
I went to high school in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The school wasn't amazing but we all had pretty good genes. There were a lot of hockey neanderthals, too. They were the problem students. There weren't any ESL students. I think Grand Forks had a handful of good teachers because teaching was one of the only jobs for a semi intellectual person outside of the university.
I would be surprised to learn that parents there were really more involved with their kid's educations. They were mostly like typical Americans who pay lip service to the importance of education but really prefer sports. I remember my dad helped me with my homework a total of one time, and didn't know how to do it, and he's a doctor! He did, however, push me to quit piano lessons and stop fooling around on the computer so that I would have more time to focus on football, basketball, golf, etc. That said, I did have piano lessons, and a computer.
My apologies for being off topic. I have followed this thread because I am surprised Portland area's schools are so poor, even in suburbs like Hillsboro. I guess my point was I don't think ND parents are necessarily more involved than OR parents. My Korean friends from LA who went to MIT have completely different level of parental involvement. Parents forcing them to practice violin 2 hours a day, practice SATs since age 12, working extra jobs to be able to send kids to math camp, etc.
I went to high school in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The school wasn't amazing but we all had pretty good genes. There were a lot of hockey neanderthals, too. They were the problem students. There weren't any ESL students. I think Grand Forks had a handful of good teachers because teaching was one of the only jobs for a semi intellectual person outside of the university.
I would be surprised to learn that parents there were really more involved with their kid's educations. They were mostly like typical Americans who pay lip service to the importance of education but really prefer sports. I remember my dad helped me with my homework a total of one time, and didn't know how to do it, and he's a doctor! He did, however, push me to quit piano lessons and stop fooling around on the computer so that I would have more time to focus on football, basketball, golf, etc. That said, I did have piano lessons, and a computer.
My apologies for being off topic. I have followed this thread because I am surprised Portland area's schools are so poor, even in suburbs like Hillsboro. I guess my point was I don't think ND parents are necessarily more involved than OR parents. My Korean friends from LA who went to MIT have completely different level of parental involvement. Parents forcing them to practice violin 2 hours a day, practice SATs since age 12, working extra jobs to be able to send kids to math camp, etc.
Of topic..... naaa..
Oregon parents are pretty bad. My wife deals with them more than I do, and gives me the horror stories.
I have all but completely stopped taking my kids to the river or the park in the summer time anymore because I know some gothy looking tattoed trashy fat woman with a pitbull will be there cusing at and playing mind games with her kids. It seems more and more these days that Portland is just a bunch of fat short bearded drunken men with tattoos and women who look like them without beards. There is also a terrible secret that Portlanders are trying to hide regarding education. That secret:... shhhh....., they secretly don't give a crap about school. I'm serious. The numbers are bad, because parents don't actually care. You can say hey Johnny you better get a good report card but very few parents here actually follow up.
I guess my point was I don't think ND parents are necessarily more involved than OR parents. I have friends who are bad parents and the majority of bad parents aren't bad, they just aren't involved. Mommy can't be bothered to look up from Pintrest on her iPad for 2 seconds and dad stares at ESPN Sports Center like mind less zombie while he drinks beer. (craft beer makes it acceptable to drink beer at inappropriate times.) Sorry, but you don't need to be drinking 4 pints and acting buzzed every night in front of your kids. What message does that send to them?
I have never seen the behaviors exhibited by parents in Oregon and Arizona in North Dakota. Sure we all have village idiots and those who want their son to be johnny football, but or the most part I never saw public indecency and outright deceit. I never saw anyone looking like a freak hanging out smoking and spitting on the sidewalk and itching their crotch like it's cool to dig in your crotch because it's counter culture or something. But I see that all the time here.
I never saw anyone causing a scene in public or talking about sexual exploits loudly at a restaurant. I see it here all the time. The last week we at a restaurant at Sharis (like a Dennys) and I finally had to go to the table next to mine and ask them very politely to stop talking about felching, snowballs, batwings dicks, rape, abortions and using 4 letter words every other sentence. One of those bros had the audacity to tell me that my kids were going to hear sometimes, kids hear it from the parents. I hear 20 somethings use that excuse every time I call them out on it. I'm getting tired of it. Even with out kids present, you should just know these are not acceptable things to talk about. You're in public and most of you look over the age of 25 probably 30, so act like adults.
That would never have happened in Minot. Maybe at 2 am but not during family dinner time at a family restaurant. I hear this stuff all the time, everywhere I go, I can't believe what passes as acceptable conversation in public these days. I had the girl at subway today tell me about her ovarian cyst...are you kidding me? These days I'm afraid to engage people in conversation for fear of TMI or the eternal loop of poor me sob stories.
It's all part of the Idiocracy we are becoming.
You say to yourself, well this is off topic. But it isn't. Bad schools are a direct reflection of a regional societal ill. One that starts in the home from an early age. Oregon has a free lazy spirit and blase attitude toward hard sciences and math that does not translate to academic success and it never has and never will. Add a large ESL population hell bent on not learning English and you have the disaster that is Oregon Public Schools.
It's less about pure intellect and more about behavior, initiative, responsibility, and ethic of reciprocity.
It's true people in ND are pretty straight laced. Anyone who trends to the contrary is flushed out. Until relatively recently there weren't many jobs so most local weirdos (and most non-weirdos) simply left the state, never to return. There are three times as many people in the Portland MSA than there are in the state of North Dakota. Portland probably absorbed many of our malcontents over the years. My roughneck friend with the "Oil Field Trash" tattoo likes to take his 10 days off per month in Portland to go skateboarding and hit up the strip clubs.
Alcoholism is a big issue in North Dakota. Grand Forks has one of the worst binge drinking problems in the country. Drunk driving is accepted unless you kill someone. I've seen a guy drink five shots, three Budweisers, and have the bartender throw him his keys so he could drive home. As the joke goes, "if he catches them, he's good to drive." Sadly two of my friends have died from liver failure before age 40. They were decent students and college graduates. One cultural trait is that even though many people are drunks there is a strong pressure to not act out in public or be "weird" so many with alcohol issues outwardly seem like average boring folk. At worst they tend to be average hunyucks with a wardrobe of RealTree camo and Polaris jackets.
I wonder how the oil fields will affect the population in the future. There is now a class of rough people who make more money doing blue collar labor than anyone ever did with a master's degree. My sister made $17 dollars an hour running the state's public health service. Now there are ex cons getting paid $28/hr to point a hose at an oil derrick all day. What message does that send to young people in school?
I don't know if I believe in genetic determinism but perhaps the idiocracy types you mention are multi generational remnants from when Portland was for loggers and longshoremen. Math and science are not that important if you make your money chopping down trees or loading them to be shipped down the river. It seems like in the past Portland was likely a lot rougher than it is now. Maybe the tattooed pit bull owners were meant to be dock workers but there are no longer docks to load. Those strip clubs have been there for a long time.
I went to high school in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The school wasn't amazing but we all had pretty good genes. There were a lot of hockey neanderthals, too. They were the problem students. There weren't any ESL students. I think Grand Forks had a handful of good teachers because teaching was one of the only jobs for a semi intellectual person outside of the university.
I would be surprised to learn that parents there were really more involved with their kid's educations. They were mostly like typical Americans who pay lip service to the importance of education but really prefer sports. I remember my dad helped me with my homework a total of one time, and didn't know how to do it, and he's a doctor! He did, however, push me to quit piano lessons and stop fooling around on the computer so that I would have more time to focus on football, basketball, golf, etc. That said, I did have piano lessons, and a computer.
My apologies for being off topic. I have followed this thread because I am surprised Portland area's schools are so poor, even in suburbs like Hillsboro. I guess my point was I don't think ND parents are necessarily more involved than OR parents. My Korean friends from LA who went to MIT have completely different level of parental involvement. Parents forcing them to practice violin 2 hours a day, practice SATs since age 12, working extra jobs to be able to send kids to math camp, etc.
Oregon has one of the worst graduation rate and dismal SAT scores in the nation. That does not mean all blame rest at the high school level.
Knowing substitute teachers within the Beaverton school district, I hear things such as 5th grade students reading comprehension is at a 3rd grade reading level compared to other states.
Can the Oregon school system be fixed? Absolutely! Will it be fixed? Absolutely not. The river, De-nial, flows strongly here.
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.
