Posted by peajay on 4/8/2011 9:27:00 PM (view original):
Is the public school system actually broken?

From Gene Lyons at Salon.com:

Whether it's New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg or Microsoft's Bill Gates, the guy with the thickest wallet is assumed to have all the answers.

Even when that person's badly misinformed. Consider Gates' recent speech to the National Governor's Conference. "Over the past four decades, the per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled," the great man claimed, "while our student achievement has remained virtually flat ... To build a dynamic 21st-century economy and offer every American a high-quality education, we need to flip the curve."

Alas, this is well-meaning demagoguery. Sure, costs are up. But so is overall student performance. According to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) -- the "gold standard" of educational testing -- American kids have actually done better in reading and math since about 1980. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute summarizes the data:

"American students have improved substantially, in some cases phenomenally. In general, the improvements have been greatest for African-American students, and among these, for the most disadvantaged. The improvements have been greatest for both black and white 4th and 8th graders in math. Improvements have been less great but still substantial for black 4th and 8th graders in reading and for black 12th graders in both math and reading."

You'd think this would be good news. But like TV evangelists, education reformers peddling miracle cures often exaggerate others' sins.

www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/04/06/michelle_rhee_lyons/index.html

It is interesting that in the same article that claims kids are doing better, it also claims that people are lying to make kids look like they are doing better.

So the American school system is doing great? There is no problem?

What they are saying is some of the kids that are doing the worst are doing better.

As an example of what they are trying to sell. Lets say there are 10 people. 9 of them made $100 last week and made $102 this week. The 10th made $40 last week and made $45 this week. Salon would tell you there is no problem, as the 10th person is making great strides.

We are far behind in education in this nation and we need to fix it!

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Family/Parents%20Corner/failing_educational_system.htm

The fact is we have allowed liberal principals to run the American Education system for 50 years and it has been a dismal failure! Lets try some simple Conservative solutions. If they do worse we can always go back, but it is hard to imagine anything doing worse!

They do great policy analysis over at jesus-is-savior.com--I'll be sure and check it out!  Good link.

At least his source isn't TruTV again.

1 It was a site that quoted a book I wanted to reference.

2 So now we can add any religious site to the sources we cannot reference? Why dont you just ban everything but moveon.org and get it over with.

3 Court TV isnt a reliable source?

In a nation that is way more interested in American Idol and Dancing With The Stars, it is not surprising to me that our education system is in shambles.  In some places anyway.  From my own anecdotal perspective, the ability to learn is directly proportional to the interest in learning.

Get schools out of the indoctrination business and into the inspiration to learn business.  Encourage the parents to be involved and responsible for the kids' interest in learning. 

I have 3 young kids; two are elementary school age and one is a 4-year old reader.  They've been both home-schooled and in public schools (in Washington State and in Georgia).  Their learning has always been correlated with how much involvement we have - not in whatever fancy curriculum is being thrown out there.  The number one factor has always been our interest as parents in what they are learning about.  We have the choice as to whether the TV is on 6 hours a day or 1 hour (after homework is done).  Their grades are far less important to me than their interest in learning.

Encourage families to stay together despite how parents feel about each other on a given day, week, or month, and fight for your kids.  They need a family the way it was meant to be, if at all possible.

Oh, and encourage kids to compete. 

You are clearly a Religious fanatic who knows nothing about the theory of Education.

We need to just keep piling more and more money on the pile, and replace any kind of objective grading with a sefl-esteem promoting system that grades kids on their feelings.

And in case I was being too subtle I find your ideas great. We need to replace the Department of Education with you!

So the left dropped this.

Lets see if some of the Lefties can explain why our education system is doing so poorly.

I am assuming you think its Reagan or Bush's fault!

Posted by swamphawk22 on 4/12/2011 5:52:00 PM (view original):
You are clearly a Religious fanatic who knows nothing about the theory of Education.

We need to just keep piling more and more money on the pile, and replace any kind of objective grading with a sefl-esteem promoting system that grades kids on their feelings.

And in case I was being too subtle I find your ideas great. We need to replace the Department of Education with you!

Yes, I'm sure when padna said "Get schools out of the indoctrination business", every liberal reading understood that to mean he wanted creationism taught in schools.

Just like comedy, you should leave sarcasm to the bears.

I agree with Panda 100%.

One of the ways the left attacks the "Home Schooling" movement is to tie it to religious fantacism. I think everyone who isnt out of touch with reality got that.

I agree that a solid education begins at home. The left has been trying to divorce the family from Education for 50 years now. They want control of the kids.

Some of your recent rants have been hilarious...keep it up!

I count two lies in the preceding post.

Is one of them "Some of your recent rants have been hilarious"?   Because I find them excessively annoying.

Posted by antonsirius on 4/26/2011 4:51:00 PM (view original):
I count two lies in the preceding post.

So step up.

Name the lies and explain why they are lies.

Put up or shut up!

"One of the ways the left attacks the "Home Schooling" movement is to tie it to religious fantacism."

"The left has been trying to divorce the family from Education for 50 years now. They want control of the kids."


I stand corrected, there are actually three lies in there - two in the last quote.

Here is an example of the press attacking home schooling for religious issues. And remember I said one of the ways, not the only way.

http://inch.org/articles/2010/06/04/index.php

The second part is a little harder to prove.

On issues like sex ed and LGBT issues the NEA has encouraged the family being left out of the loop. The left supports more federal control of Education because it is harder for a group of parents to fight Washington than it is to fight your local scool district. Scool lunch and breakfast programs create a fundemental link between school Administration and kids. They are receiving food from the schools.