The Radical Right has waged its war against public education (punishment, rejecting)

[GeneCosta]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/arc..._09/004639.php

As I mentioned last year, NCLB mandates that each state has to set standards for student achievement, and by 2014 every single student must meet those standards. Any school with less than 100% success is deemed to be failing.
[...]
This is part of a pattern from conservatives, who realize that their domestic agenda is actually pretty unpopular and can be passed only if people don't realize what they're getting. NCLB is an example of this kind of stealth legislation, and both last year's Medicare bill and this year's "ownership society" are additional examples. In the end, though, NCLB may turn out to have been too clever by half, as parents rebel against being labeled failures instead of meekly accepting the verdict of the federal government.

The Radical Right wants to convince enough people to pull their children out of the public school system so that they can educate them with their lies in the private schools and at home. If enough people buy into a lie, they will be able to defund the public school system and freely teach their own perverted science and psychology. Young-Earth ID would be passed off as real science, hitting your child would be the first line of enforcement, and Christian attrocities would be downplayed in order to restore the Church's name. Unfortunately we've seen too many mainstream Christians buying this idealogy as truth, the same Christians that are concerned with their children's education and religion, not just one.

Among the most unrelenting contemporary critics of public schools are members of the Christian Right, some of whom seek the destruction of public education. The theories of child rearing espoused by the Christian Right are analyzed in this article. They emphasize physical punishment, the breaking of children's will, and obedience to authority. Such theories cannot be supported by modern psychology. Furthermore, these child-rearing practices are totally incompatible with the constructivist models of learning that form the basis for the educational reforms undertaken by science, mathematics, and social studies educators. The school curriculum used in many fundamentalist Christian schools was also analyzed and found to be limited, biased, and sometimes untrue. The arguments made against outcomes based education and whole language programs were found to be confused and chaotic. The antagonism of the Christian Right to these programs is based on a fear of losing control over their children's thinking, rather than any compelling empirical data. It is concluded that many among the Christian Right are unable to engage in politics that make a common school possible. They may be unable to compromise and live with educational decisions rejecting a pluralistic democracy keeping separate church and state.

Studies find that public schools generally outperform private schools, with conservative Christian schools trailing behind. This holds true even after Bush's NCLB policy has been enforced for the past 6 years, a policy that secretly plans to defund the public schools by putting up impossible expectations.

[NCSPE study summary] Findings reveal that demographic differences between students in public and private schools account for the relatively high raw scores of private schools on the NAEP. Indeed, after controlling for these differences, public school students generally score better than their private school peers.....Conservative Christian schools, the fastest growing private school sector, are the lowest performing private schools.

http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP111.pdf
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard...05/2005464.asp
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/3/31/13544/0640

"Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people. Let us dare to read, think, speak and write". --John Adams

[Booko]

Originally Posted by GeneCosta

The Radical Right wants to convince enough people to pull their children out of the public school system so that they can educate them with their lies in the private schools and at home.

As it happens, we've decided to homeschool our daughter starting next fall. That has nothing to do with conservative politics, though, and certainly nothing to do with educating anyone with lies.

If you want to find out what real homeschoolers are like and why they do it, go chat with some folks who do this on a homeschooling forum somewhere.

I know homeschoolers, and the ones I know are not religious kooks.

We've decided to continue Ellen's education at home starting in 11th grade because a) it doesn't serve her needs well for what she wants to aim for in life, and b) Georgia ranks 50 out of 50 in the U.S. We live barely a mile away from the best HS in Georgia, and the school has many things going in its favor, but none of those are related to anything Ellen will be heading for in life.

On the political side, I believe a strong and effective public school system is essential to our nation.

ID would be real science, hitting your child would be the first line of enforcement, and Christian attrocities would be downplayed in order to restore the Church's name.

You really do need to get a bit of a reality check on the homeschooling, Gene. This may have been early homeschooling, but that was a long time ago. Things have changed quite a bit.

Studies find that public schools generally outperform private schools, with conservative Christian schools trailing behind.

And homeschooled kids generally outperform them all.

Unfortunately, homeschooling will not work for everyone, in fact I think it work for a minority of kids. So strong public schools are always going to have to be there.

"Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people. Let us dare to read, think, speak and write". --John Adams

This is precisely why we're taking up homeschooling. So Ellen can get better at all of these.

[GeneCosta]

Hello, Booko.

This is not an attack against private schools or homeschoolers. I know quite a few myself.

I hope no one mistakes my intentions for something else. I am merely defending the public school system, faulty yes it is, but too many times we don't give it credit!

[Djamila]

You're going to drag me into the street and beat me, but my first gut reaction to this information was "Pfft... as though American students need any additional help being ignorant."

I think, when you have the wealthiest and most powerful country the world, and it is being slaughtered in standard tests by countries like Slovenia, with a nation-wide population smaller than most American state capitals, then you have a very, very severe problem.

I've never attended an American school so I can't imagine what the source of this problem is, but it's something that... it's very dangerous for people to respond to this situation, for example reading my post right now, by getting defensive. It's a natural response but you really must fight it and try to change the situation.

Education is simply too important, it's the entire future of your country, and it needs to be maintained to the highest standard possible.

In Bosnia, right now, our problem is not scores. We're consistently in Europe's top 20, a full 30 places above the US's average ranking in some subjects. The problem for us is nationalism.

Children from different regions of the country are being taught completely different history courses - up to an including some regions praising war criminals found guilty of war crimes and charged with genocide.

And that has to be one of our greatest fights right now. Education is the future of the state, it's so important for people to remember that and just do something.

[robtex]

Gene great finds on the links and articles.

[Guitar's Cry]

Originally Posted by Djamila

I think, when you have the wealthiest and most powerful country the world, and it is being slaughtered in standard tests by countries like Slovenia

I have some serious doubts about the effectiveness of standardized tests in determining intelligence.

I do agree that the US does need to focus more attention on education. This includes treating its educators better. It does not include the devaluing of public schools that GeneCosta's OP stated. I attended a public school and I like to think that I'm a well-educated fellow.

[nutshell]

Originally Posted by Djamila

You're going to drag me into the street and beat me, but my first gut reaction to this information was "Pfft... as though American students need any additional help being ignorant."

Standardized testing has little to do with performance. That's why America tops out in most things even if we aren't #1 on the tests.

[des]

I teach special education (reading) at a large public high school in a poor area. The kids are largely Hispanic and speak Spanish as their main language, though most speak English at least informally. Numerous studies have shown it takes about 7 years for kids to aquire the formal English required for education, and esp. in testing.

The NCLB has been an absolute nightmare. Our school is obviously on the failing list. (Only two city schools are not, of course with a requirement of 100% passing the test, it is only a matter of time til they won't be). All kids (except perhaps two or three) take these tests. There are kids with IQs of 60 who are takign these tests. We have autistic kids takign them and also kids who are emotionally damaged. (This is required as according to the law only 1-2% of the school can be allowed not to take it.) Hispanic kids are takign it. (There is a hispanic test, but you can only take it for two or three years-- see above. Then again not all kids are literate in Spanish anyway.) The kids I teach read mostly at a 3rd grade level. We use a highly structured program (based on Orton Gillingham). If we work with them all year, if the kids are not too turned off, if their attendance is good, if they do not have severe dyslexia we can get good results (perhaps 2 grade levels up in a year). Of course it is a lot of "ifs". These kids take the tests too and I see a lot frustration as they are required to take thsi seriously and so forth.

Many teachers do tons of test prep (we won't as it won't do them any good anyway). The whole schoool is required to do meaningless improvement plans that just take time from teaching. They shuffle around from experimental plan to another that doesn't work. State and federal people cruise the hallways. They make us put up so much stuff on our boards (this standard and that) that we violate fire marshall rules. They institute methods from corporations. Nothing really works but they feel they have to do something. Special ed. teachers spend long periods of time doing IEPs-- these are actually not much concerned with kids (I have written them in the past where they were all about the kids, goals, etc. but these now are so geared to this test and that that there's no room or time for other stuff.)
Teacher moral is very low. We have several teachers out for mental health
leave.

The wierd thing about NCLB is that the end idea is to make schools private. Many schools now have tutoring programs run by private agencies (instead of the school themselves). These agencies usually have less need to document, etc. than we do. I agree that it is kind of neocon plot.

With the new congress there may be some way of turning this program around. There are good things in it. But so much bad, I have heard of teachers quitting because of it. It is up for reauthorization this year, and I am planning on doing something.


--des