America; World leader in prisoners, 21st out of 26 in graduation rates (drugs, dollars)

[70Ford]

This is a good read. It's long, but if you have some time, it's fascinating. Terrible, as well. The rate that African Americans and Latinos go to lockup is very high compared to Caucasians. http://naacp.3cdn.net/ecea56adeef3d84a28_azsm639wz.pdf

Couple of excerpts:

Over the last few years, the budget battle between prisons and universities for state discretionary dollars has been won by prisons in virtually every state in the county. In 2008, the Pew Center on the States looked back at state spending patterns between 1987 and 2007 and found that after adjusting for inflation, funding for higher education grew by a modest 21 percent, while corrections funding grew by 127 percent, six times the rate of higher education.

Over the last 40 years, as prison budgets were on the rise and states, cities, and counties assumed the increased costs to run prisons and jails, parents and students assumed more of the costs to run the higher education system. As research by Postsecondary Education Opportunity shows, since prison populations began to surge in the 1980s, states and local governments have taken on less—while students and parents have taken on more—of the costs of attending college and university

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Basically the money that the state might've had available for your kid's educationorpublic life improvement programs is now going to the prison system to pay for the guard to watch that dude that bought a bag of weed.

That sucks.

The United States used to be number one for high school graduation. But times have changed. In 2009, the U.S. ranked 21st out of 26 OECD countries when it came to high school graduation rate, according to Andreas Schleicher, Deputy Director for Education for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Graduation Rates Increase Around The Globe As U.S. Plateaus | WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio


Prisons are a 70 Billion dollar a year business according to the NAACP document.

[Kracer]

"money that the state might've had available for your kid's educationorpublic life improvement programs "

Well that statement tells us taxpayer money can be wasted in a socially acceptable way.

Professional edu strategies are a larger waste of taxpayer money and far better to spend money with a low expectation of return on investment than to accept actually believe there is an infinite linear relationship between money spent and quality edu.

[Oldhag1]

If we want to improve high school graduation rates we need to face the fact that not everyone is meant to go to college and have stronger vocational education programs in the public schools. Most nations that supersede our graduation rates have them.

[RCCCB]

We used to have the No Child Left Behind Bush deal which made the teachers somewhat responsible to teach and have the kids know something before getting to graduate.
Now that was reversed and we are going to get kids with straight F's getting passed all the way through high school. So the High School diploma means nothing now. Just means you were in a child care facility for 12 years.

I for some reason think we should improve high school graduation rates not with just rubber stamps for failures, but I think we should actually have the kids be qualified to graduate for real. I guess that makes me a horrible person.

Reversing the No Child policy which was the only thing accounting for actual learning was wrong.
Politicians don't mind sinking such a program because they can then falsely graduate a ton of failures but count them as successful graduates. (which is BS)
The teachers UNION sucks and needs to be disbanded.

[thebigr]

This will you show you that the Progressive/Liberal teaching method does not work. What should we do? Maybe try another method. Plus the "War on Drugs" is a waste of money so we could maybe try something completely different.

I met a person the other day who use to be in construction for many years, he is going to school now to become a corrections officer. Always an opening for that position.