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If you can't feed your children, why do you have custody?
Is it your suggestion that the role of government be expanded and that government bring children under their fold to be taught the values goverment feel is appropriate and facilitates the needs of Washington?
Is it your suggestion that the role of government be expanded and that government bring children under their fold to be taught the values goverment feel is appropriate and facilitates the needs of Washington?
I suggest incompetent parents who can't or won't provide for their children not be enabled en mass to continue to be custodians.
The education system has morphed itself into being like the Special Olympics where everyone is a winner, everyone goes to college, everyone is smart. In doing that they've had to dumb down the standards so that the lowest is the goal that can be achievable by all.
I hope one day the think tank that controls all this wake up and realize that some kids are smarter than others. There doesn't have to be one single bar or one single goal to get all these kids into college.
What was wrong with placement tests and kids put in the appropriate class based on those results..social stigma perhaps ? Just seems to me if you put all the higher achieving kids in one class then you have the opportunity to go beyond the normal curriculum and really challenge them while the lower achieving kids all placed in another class can get extra help while not holding back the rest of the class.
But I guess the simple solution is not PC in this day and age.
You are absoultely right about throwing money to the schools. Most indeed doesn't go where it needs to go.
Exactly. "Throwing money to the schools" does nothing to insure that it is spent effectively.
That doesn't mean that more money never improves education. It just has to be spent wisely. As has been said, most of the money spent on schools doesn't go to the teachers. We lose a lot of good potential teachers to other occupations because ~30k starting and ~60k cap is not an appealing wage for most professionals.
Another effective area to spend money on would be improving the school lunch system. Kids cannot learn at their optimum level on processed, fried foods and MSG.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that the biggest factor in school failure is bad parents. Maybe we could provide incentives for those parents to get their asses in gear somehow...
While the U.S. spends more than many of the other countries mentioned, teacher pay is lower on average and class size is just about the same or larger on average (generally; some exceptions exist, such as South Korea where I live currently -- taught in the U.S., SK, and Japan, and the truly public schools are crap [I work at a private-public, which is hard to explain], but have short hours so the middle class/rich parents can pay for an average of 3-8 supplementary schools the kids go to in order to really learn various subjects; every country has their problems).
The question becomes: What are we spending it on? Is it working?
The problem is: The folks that decide that don't get to decide it based on the merits of the situation (they sway with the public view, skewed by various interest groups, random media, and common misconceptions) and these folks aren't actually qualified to be deciding it on their own ideas anyway.
The solution is: Americans need to get a little less uppity and argumentative and come together better to find a solution, rather than blame-mongering. Who cares who's to blame? Let's just fix it. Let's find highly qualified professionals from diverse backgrounds to research the problems in a blame-free way (so we can really see them without everybody covering them up), take our time understanding them, formulate a plan to address the most crucial specific issues in the system, implement the plan, and see if it works based on a set of criteria created to monitor it. We don't really KNOW the solution. Our scrambling and pretending to know has only made it worse. We have to try, in the same way scientists try, as objectively as we can, no matter how much we care. Nobody goes around blaming scientists and calling them "bad scientists" for not curing cancer yet. Nobody blames the petri dishes or the people who have cancer either.
The bottom line: We do love our blame, and we're so worried about our pennies, so that isn't going to happen.
If the "voucher" system was the answer then ALL of Minnesota's schools would be excellent. Voucher systems are not the answer. Minnesota has had statewide open enrollment for 20 years and the bad schools are still bad and the great schools are still great. It has done nothing to improve the bad schools but it has given a lot of kids a choice of where to go to school. The problem is, parents are parents and if you don't care if your kid gets an education in an inner city school you won't care if your kid gets and education in a good suburban school. Those that need to use the program the most, don't take advantage of the program. Until you address the issue of FAMILIES and PARENTS not caring about how their children do in school, schools will not improve. The proof of that is very easy to see-find a good school and you find parents that care, look at a bad school and where are the parents??
Colorado also has statewide open enrollment, and the outcome is similar to that in MN.
One problem with OE as a solution to school problems is that in this state, the parents must provide the transportation out of district. This does restrict OE to kids whose parents can get them to and from school during work hours. Another issue is that not all schools can accept OE students, b/c they are full of students in that attendance area. I support improving all schools.
I disagree that parents are to blame for not caring how their children do in school. It absolutely appalls me to see teachers (I know you are not a teacher golfgal) posting that. I'm glad my kids aren't in school any more. I shudder to think what the teachers thought of me.
I believe the battle is won or lost long before the first day of school so how can we blame teachers?
I raised mine in a house where television was not allowed on school nights with the exception of the 6:30 news or something very special like a Presidential election, attempted assassination of Reagan and that sort of thing. Had to be something special.
The idea of kids in school wasting time watching a moronic sitcom with laugh tracks makes me nauseous. What a horrible waste of time.
My wife would take them to the library nearly every day from the time they were toddlers. All knew how to count, all their letters and some reading before they went to kindergarten. Mom would read to them constantly and they even had some waterproof books they read in the bathtub.
Big whoop. My DH and I did those things too, and we had a child who didn't learn to read until she was in 3rd grade. She got special reading help through 5th grade.
Quote:
All teachers had my phone number at work, along with my cell phone number, to call anytime if they had a problem. I never got a call because the kids knew the last thing they wanted was for dad to get a call from a teacher reporting behavior problems.
Who shows up at parent teacher conferences? Only the parents that don't need to be there. I am proud to say I never missed a single parent/teacher conference.
Having parents' phone numbers is SOP in my district.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
You are so right..I went to every Open House, Back to School night, parent/teacher conference from K-12 for my son. Being in the same district the same parents showed up over the years. I would say it was a strong showing from K-3 and then started dwindling off. By HS there were just a handful of parents that would show up for Back to School night where you met the teachers and got an understanding of the kids curriculum.
Parents are definitely a part of the problem but I would not say 100%.
There's plenty of blame to pass around on a system that has undergone changes over the years. Educating kids doesn't seem to be the topmost priority anymore IMHO although they say it is.
The parent-teacher conference situation was roughly the same at my kids' schools. I disagree with nicet4, though, that it's the parents who don't need to show up who go to the conferences. All parents need to show up. The schools could make these conferences better, and thus draw more parents, too.
While the U.S. spends more than many of the other countries mentioned, teacher pay is lower on average and class size is just about the same or larger on average (generally; some exceptions exist, such as South Korea where I live currently -- taught in the U.S., SK, and Japan, and the truly public schools are crap [I work at a private-public, which is hard to explain], but have short hours so the middle class/rich parents can pay for an average of 3-8 supplementary schools the kids go to in order to really learn various subjects; every country has their problems).
The question becomes: What are we spending it on? Is it working?
The problem is: The folks that decide that don't get to decide it based on the merits of the situation (they sway with the public view, skewed by various interest groups, random media, and common misconceptions) and these folks aren't actually qualified to be deciding it on their own ideas anyway.
The solution is: Americans need to get a little less uppity and argumentative and come together better to find a solution, rather than blame-mongering. Who cares who's to blame? Let's just fix it. Let's find highly qualified professionals from diverse backgrounds to research the problems in a blame-free way (so we can really see them without everybody covering them up), take our time understanding them, formulate a plan to address the most crucial specific issues in the system, implement the plan, and see if it works based on a set of criteria created to monitor it. We don't really KNOW the solution. Our scrambling and pretending to know has only made it worse. We have to try, in the same way scientists try, as objectively as we can, no matter how much we care. Nobody goes around blaming scientists and calling them "bad scientists" for not curing cancer yet. Nobody blames the petri dishes or the people who have cancer either.
The bottom line: We do love our blame, and we're so worried about our pennies, so that isn't going to happen.
Find another country that is required by federal law to educate ALL students, including those that can't feed themselves, clothe themselves, etc. No other country in the world pays for these expenses out of individual school district budgets. I think you would find that if you took out the special education budgets that US schools probably spend LESS per student then most countries.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana
Colorado also has statewide open enrollment, and the outcome is similar to that in MN.
One problem with OE as a solution to school problems is that in this state, the parents must provide the transportation out of district. This does restrict OE to kids whose parents can get them to and from school during work hours. Another issue is that not all schools can accept OE students, b/c they are full of students in that attendance area. I support improving all schools.
I disagree that parents are to blame for not caring how their children do in school. It absolutely appalls me to see teachers (I know you are not a teacher golfgal) posting that. I'm glad my kids aren't in school any more. I shudder to think what the teachers thought of me.
If a child grows up in a home where the parents don't care if they got to school, do their homework, get descent grades, they aren't going to do well in school, therefore, the parents have set the standard for what they expect, which is nothing. Did you not care if your kids went to school, got good grades, etc? How many parent/teacher conferences did you attend?
We still expect our kids to be the ones to talk to teachers about problems, we certainly don't do any homework for our kids, etc. but we DO expect that they go to school, get good grades and go to college and as a result, they do well in school. Had we not cared, I know our oldest at least would have flunked out of school long ago and certainly would not be heading off to college. Our other two would probably just slid by doing just enough to pass.
Find another country that is required by federal law to educate ALL students, including those that can't feed themselves, clothe themselves, etc. No other country in the world pays for these expenses out of individual school district budgets. I think you would find that if you took out the special education budgets that US schools probably spend LESS per student then most countries.
If a child grows up in a home where the parents don't care if they got to school, do their homework, get descent grades, they aren't going to do well in school, therefore, the parents have set the standard for what they expect, which is nothing. Did you not care if your kids went to school, got good grades, etc? How many parent/teacher conferences did you attend?
We still expect our kids to be the ones to talk to teachers about problems, we certainly don't do any homework for our kids, etc. but we DO expect that they go to school, get good grades and go to college and as a result, they do well in school. Had we not cared, I know our oldest at least would have flunked out of school long ago and certainly would not be heading off to college. Our other two would probably just slid by doing just enough to pass.
In addition, one can consider the fact that in order to incent businesses to keep jobs in the US vs. outsourcing them overseas, the tax base that schools once operated on has been considerably slashed and shifted toward property taxpayers, while people have either lost their jobs, or are no longer able to keep up with bills that they once could. The demand for services goes up, up, up, and the funds by which to cover them goes down, down, down.
It's easy to pick apart a teacher salary. It's also easy to paint a bullseye on parents and justifyably so in many cases but not all. There are many parents who spend a lot of time at the kitchen table with their kids. I just don't think they post much on message boards.
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