The Radical Right has waged its war against public education

des said:

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.

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This sounds very much like the school our precinct uses for voting. If the kids aren't primarily Spanish-speaking, then they're Hmong.

The NCLB has been an absolute nightmare. Our school is obviously on the failing list.

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In the last year my daughter went to her middle school, it was the only middle school that passed NCLB. The following year, they had an average of 40 students in each class. I've been in that school, and I've no idea how they can jam so many kids in without violating fire codes.

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.)

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Which of course makes my local elementary school automatically fail. There is a big special needs portion of the student body. The fact that the rest of the kids begin below average and leave above average is not acknowledged.

The whole schoool is required to do meaningless improvement plans that just take time from teaching.

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Sounds like our lovely QBE in Georgia. Most of the best teachers have already left in the past 5 years. The ones that are left are just waiting to hit their 25 years, take their pension, and run away from teaching.

Nothing really works but they feel they have to do something.

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Sounds dreadfully familiar. And trying to do everything, they lose focus and accomplish less than nothing.

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.

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Even if it weren't a neocon plot, it has an effect they would be proud of. Well well, when the next generation is so bleedin' ignorant they can't qualify for a decent job, and therefore don't have the money to buy the neocons goods, I suppose they'll be just delighted. Maybe then they can move to the Riviera and leave us all alone. sheesh

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.

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I would happily take up teaching once the kiddies are gone, and having the background in the sciences I do, it would be very easy for me. But I am unwilling to put up with the nonsense of working in the public schools, fighting just to be allowed to teach the kids anything, when quite frankly in 2 hours a day of tutoring I could net just as much.

In all honesty, I'd rather spend my time pioneering in some less developed country and teaching kids there for no money. I could make more of a difference that way.

Anade said:

Oh, I go to American schools, and I will tell you exactly what the problem is. The majority of American children and teens are spoiled, immature, and generally just rotten to the core. Since they have not seen suffering, like in some other countries, since many have never lifted a finger in their lives, they feel they don't have to excel in school. They expect comfort all of their lives...I mean, come on, we live in America!

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This is certainly a big component, Anade. That and the parents who wish not to be too bothered by having to spend time being involved in their kids education.

There's another big change I've seen, though. Much of the curriculum hasn't changed that much since I was in grade school (though they have junked it up with some additional stuff of dubious merit).

Truly, I don't think teacher quality has changed all that much. We had our klunkers too, as well as great teachers, and many were really just...mediocre.

The really huge changes in the past 3+ decades is that when I was going to school:

1. Classes were not continually disrupted by discipline problems. (Honestly, I think there might be some merit in having Djamila drop by a class with her shoe just to get some kids' attention.)

2. Kids did not come from "broken families" (as we called it then). Oh, that's not to say everyone lived like Leave It To Beaver, there were kids with alcoholic parents and such, but I can't recall a single kid that spent time shuttling with his or her suitcase between parents' houses. I can tell you from my years as a GS troop leader that it isn't too hard to guess with some accuracy those kids who have divorced parents. They seem generally less able to focue on, being pulled in 2 directions simultaneously. (I'll probably take some hits for mentioning the observation at all, but anyone assuming I'm judging those who've divorced are doing just that -- assuming.)

I would suggest that the neocons, and indeed, no political faction, can be blamed for either of these problems. If someone wants to point a finger -- point it at my generation. We're the ones responsible.

Spoiled. American kids are spoiled. They don't know how good they have it here.

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This is one of the reasons I hope my son gets accepted to do his Year of Service in another country. I wouldn't call him spoiled, but he doesn't have a very clear view of how real people live in the world either. I think it would be the best education he could possibly get in his life to do something like that.

des said:

Most of the money goes to big testing companies and the rest isn't funded.

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It's worth keeping in mind what business the Prez' brother is in.

Each state has the ability to shape and determine the tests. If I was governer of state X and I felt this was true and desired to counter the problem, I would make the standard so low that a goat would pass.

I don't know of any "liberal plan" to lower standards. I don't know how much the teacher's unions have to do with calling the shots. OTOH, I
am probably biased, but I wouldn't want to be a teacher without a union.
The contract violations against teachers are many and include all sorts of
stuff from making us work extra hours, giving us extra kids (while pretending they aren't), disrupting various elections (I am speaking intraschool type, say for a head teacher), add meetings, or any other thing they can do to violate our contract. I would also say that the worst schools
in the district are the ones with the highest amount of this type of thing going on, so that should tell you something.

--des

Radio Frequency X said:

It's just as bad as the liberal plan of lowering standards at a higher cost to the tax payer. There aren't any good education plans out there because the Teachers Union is calling the shots when it actually comes to legislation. SATs are a failure because they aren't addressing the problems, they simply saying they no longer want bad results.

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des said:

I don't know of any "liberal plan" to lower standards. I don't know how much the teacher's unions have to do with calling the shots. OTOH, I
am probably biased, but I wouldn't want to be a teacher without a union.
The contract violations against teachers are many and include all sorts of
stuff from making us work extra hours, giving us extra kids (while pretending they aren't), disrupting various elections (I am speaking intraschool type, say for a head teacher), add meetings, or any other thing they can do to violate our contract. I would also say that the worst schools
in the district are the ones with the highest amount of this type of thing going on, so that should tell you something.

--des

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I don't have a problem with the teachers having unions, I have trouble with the Teacher's Union. I have a problem with the people, not the Union.

Radio Frequency X said:

It's just as bad as the liberal plan of lowering standards at a higher cost to the tax payer. There aren't any good education plans out there because the Teachers Union is calling the shots when it actually comes to legislation. SATs are a failure because they aren't addressing the problems, they simply saying they no longer want bad results.

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I get frustrated when people try put the blame on the unions, as if taking away teachers' voices in their own contracts and work force will help the public education system. Administrations and parents are just as guilty. http://www.edutopia.org/community/spiralnotebook/?p=179

There have been plenty of alternatives put out there to this education-killer. One very obvious change is to look at each individual school and give it a REALISTIC plan for the future. NCLB tries to clump all schools in the country together.

If they want to kill public education, they can debate about it, not ruin children's education with their neo-conservative politics.

GeneCosta said:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004639.php

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Oooh. *me pulls up a chair

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.

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If the Radical Right, as is called here--and I think it's a rather apt name, I'm afraid--would stop trumpeting their agenda and take an honest, open-minded look into today's public schools, they'd see all kinds of problems that have little relation to common political lines (and let's get honest, quite a few people on the Left do it too). Stressed-out students, petty violence, overworked teachers, disrespectful parents, students' lack of self-esteem and personal vision, and a host of other issues stand as almost infinitely more important than whether students are learning evolution or creation, abstinence or safe sex, and whether they have the right to pray. They just don't matter that much. If you teach a student how to think critically for himself or herself--which public schools and many private schools fall well short in doing--then he or she can navigate these political issues nearly autonomously, which is what a successful school should do for a student in the first place.

Case in point, I remember the very day that Cobb County's infamous evolution-sticker case was overturned by a district court. The teachers I talked with on that and immediate future days didn't even mention it, let alone where they stood on the issue; they were far more concerned with classroom management, getting their assignments graded, talking with some parents, etc. It was if it never happened. It simply did not matter to them.

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.

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I'm not too sure what conclusions to draw from this. My main question, though, is whether this study took income and race into effect, or whether it took the results straight-up. To do the latter, IIRC, would be a grave statistical mistake.

A student's acceptance vs. rejection of evolution has a negligible effect on his or her test scores, assuming the student does not reject evolution to a point of refusing to study it entirely, a prospect that I see as unlikely but not impossible.

In terms of academics, it's hard to lump all public schools and especially all private schools into two big clumps and compare them. There's as much diversity within these groups, particularly private schools, as there is in public schools.

http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP111.pdf
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/2005/2005464.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

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I may take a look at those articles when I have the time.

Here's my take on the schooling matter: Strictly on the administrative side, US public schools will be forever doomed to fall short as long as they are run under a top-down authoritarian system. Power corrupts regardless of its application. As long as teachers have to spend what little energy they have left from managing their students on appeasing the powers-that-be, they will be stranded in a state of just being content to get by. As a result, you have what appears to the public eye as lazy, ineffective teachers, whereas the reality is that they're not getting the support they need to do a whole lot better. This is one of the major reasons why teachers unions have to exist. It's sad that so many people honestly believe that these unions serve merely to stand in the way of a better educational system, when in fact improving public schools is one of their core tenets. Where the unions differ from some people--people across the political spectrum--is that they believe in improving schools by proactively investing in teachers and relying on higher yields in the students, instead of reactively holding one of the most overworked group of people in America over the coals in hopes that good can spontaneously arise from evil.

I would have thought it was the other way around, that you'd have a problem with the union, not the people! Of course there is not one teacher's union, there are thousands of separate unions. There are two large union groups, the AFT and the NEA. They have little influence on what goes on in the classroom. For instance, they have not been able to decrease class size very much. We have a class size limit that was regulated thru negotiation (and to some extent law). However, the administration uses a system of averaging to get by the letter and spirit of this agreement.

Conservatives are very fond of attacking unions and teachers, but have little interest in the administration of schools or in the structure of schools. I feel that teachers are often scapegoated for schools, otoh, in study after study teachers, as a profession, retain very high popular approval. True there are many idiot teachers, because there are many teachers. It is hard to get rid of bad teachers, it's true, but I'm not very convinced of who is in the position to figure out who those bad teachers are. Administrators tend to like teachers who follow the rules to the letter, so the "trouble makers" (who may actually be more creative) would be singled out for being removed. One teacher is very well-liked by the administrators where I work. His board is perfectly set up with the standards and so forth. However, neither my partner nor I have ever seen him teaching! Test results would unfairly identify teachers of brigher, middle or higher income kids as good, and teachers of disabled and poor students as poor. In high income schools, administrators and teachers disliked by parents tend to go away. This doesn't work in low income schools. We often get the administrators and teachers chased away by high income schools. OTOH, we also have wonderful teachers that don't get very much credit. We are constantly blamed and so forth at staff meetings. The morale is horrendous. There are mental health implications. In one low ranking elementary school about half the teachers are seeing someone from employee assistance.

Someone else stated that the states can make their own standards so anyone can pass. Well anyone is pretty strong. WE have kids have IQs of 60 taking these tests. I doubt seriously that you could make a test that these kids could pass. If you had a test with 50 questions that said "mark 'd' in each box", we literally have kids that could NOT do that. Yes, there are definitely kids that involved. In fact, there are kids that can't even pick up there heads, feed themselves, or make speech sounds (I know as I have worked with this population). Theoretically if they made up more than 1% of the school, according to NCLB, some of those kind of severe profound kids would have to take the test.

Of course, this all begs the questions of:
Whether kids or teachers *should* be spending all this class time in high stakes testing? Do we think it is a good idea to be eliminating art and music because they aren't tested? Do we think that millions of dollars in money for education are best used to line the pockets of large test makers?
Do we really think that kids are best evaluated thru convergent testing (one answer is right)? Do we think it is fair for kids who are disabled and non-English speaking to take these tests?

--des

Radio Frequency X said:

I don't have a problem with the teachers having unions, I have trouble with the Teacher's Union. I have a problem with the people, not the Union.

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BTW, one of the complaints on the right is that teacher unions oppose voucher systems and charter schools (although there are teacher union run charter schools). On the latter there is a pretty mixed review. There are some wonderful charter schools and some that are much worse than the schools they are replacing. There have been numerous studies on this.
I am not personally anti-charter schools, but I know their limitations.
There are a few charter schools that take the most difficult kids. Of course, ultimately, should they survive their allotted organizational grace period (not a sure thing by any stretch) they would have to pass the same standards as public schools-- and would fail as they have these difficult kids. Many charter schools in our area are on the failing schools list. Most schools that aren't probably will be.

Voucher systems are more complex. Theoretically they would allow any child to go to any school, but in practice the only schools that parents that have them can afford are Catholic and other church related schools. Some of these are good schools, but others aren't any better either. Some schools to benefit lately are very right wing Christian schools. There would be no way kids could attend any kind of school they want. The top prep schools would not be taking vouchers as they wont' come close to the tuition. Sometimes the schools are better just because they are able to take kids they want to take. While taking away public funding, they are able to pick and choose. Therefore the parents that are least active (no doubt the most difficult kids) and those that are disabled (most expensive to educate) are left in the public schools. Therefore, it is strange to think of this in any NCLB terms (it isn't currently), since it would leave the neediest, poorest, most disabled kids in a system with less money.

Charter schools are public and have to take these kids. Some of them reach out in poor communities, so I don't have an issue with them in that respect.


--des

You must spread some Karma around before giving it to des again.

Thanks, I think?
Someone did (give me karma that is). I don't feel really attacked. I do get tired of the weariness complaints against teachers and the unions. (Not because I think the unions are so great, but that it is the only pitiful little help we have against the often oppressive administrations and their most ridiculous requirements). Each day I deal with high school kids on a third grade reading level or lower (some legimately so though usually should have been picked up years earlier). I'm not complaining about that as it is my job, and I do love teaching reading. It's just that about 50% of the time I can't teach anything. Either there are kids with zero interest in learning who interupt the kids who really want to learn-- and there's nothing we can really do about them; some silly administrative mandate (do this ridiculous thing); attend this ridiculous inservice; take this amount of time to deliver tests to kids who won't pass them anyway; do these administratively heavy education plans; etc. etc.

I think the average teacher could teach a lot better if he/she could actually
be allowed to teach!!


--des

Mercy Not Sacrifice said:

You must spread some Karma around before giving it to des again.

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NoahideHiker said:

I'm all for the voucher system. Competition breads performance. I don't give two flyin' figs about agendas. I care about freedom to choose.

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Ain't it the truth.

The problem I have with the public school system in the U.S. today is: it has become a political football.

Everybody's got an agenda, and educators and politicians alike seem to have no qualms about acting-out their latest and greatest ideologies and social experiments in the public school arena.

The result is our kids' education takes a back seat to political agendas. It's just wrong. It wasn't always this way, either.
And another thing I hate is the lack of accountability. I heard a team of educational experts tell a large group of concerned parents, after assessing the problems of the local school district, that it would take a minimum of 5 years to reverse those problems and produce a quality educational experience for the kids. That's riduculous. Kids in school don't have 5 years for educators to tinker around and re-invent the wheel. But this is the kind of garbage in-garbage out education we are offering kids now.

Public education in this country is a joke. I love hearing anecdotals to the contrary, how nice. But the sad fact is public education has failed at least one generation, maybe two. When it's your child's future that's at stake, you deserve the right to educate them yourself if the public schools aren't capable. That's the bottom line for most parents. It's the results that count, not someone else's agenda.

Shoring up the status quo isn't of any interest to me, btw.

MercyNotSacrifice (I just got the joke, having just seen the message. Thanks.)


The problem with the below, "this is just a political football-- educators, etc. just acting out their lastest schemes" argument is once again it is blaming the "educators". Let's just say most educators are teachers.

I'm going on a diverting rant, so excuse:
There are some educators who indeed to think up new lastest and greatest experiments--- though, I'd have to say that without some of these you would never have things like "hands on science", multisensory diagnostic
phonics, concrete math programs, learning simulations, language labs, and a host of other things that make things better. Some people figure out how to teach people with various disabilities, how kids might understand some subjects better (that doesn't mean they aren't sometimes dead wrong) You see not *everybody* is just looking out for the latest and greatest, they are actually looking for what will work better (and it often does-- but sometimes it does not.) What is wrong, imo, is taking some untried idea and moving it out ahead of really looking at it. This happens and shouldn't be done.

So anyway, when one talks about all these teachers who are just making things difficult and all political, you need to think that in most cases you are just lumping your kids teacher in there with "all those nameless teachers". In fact, they have done studies showing that by and large people like their kids teacher and that stats show that teachers are still highly respected. Makes you wonder when you see comments like the stuff below. What people generally mean is those "other" teachers, someone nameless that they can blame.

I'll tell you what you can blame instead. Just if you need to blame something.
Blame misguided and stupid legislation like "No Child Left Behind".
Blame society which puts a very low cost value on things like paying teachers and keeping teachers in teaching (this will become an increasing problem-- younger teachers are not staying in teaching).
Blame policies which allow bending of rules that help kids (such as class size).
Blame more money spent in test scores and testing than in teaching.
Blame more interest in administrative idiocies than teaching.
Blame cutting out art and music.
Blame paper work demands on teachers.
Blame taxing strategies that make rich schools richer and poor schools poorer.
Blame a bit on the "ME" generation, and the raising of little princesses
and princes and on a generational attitude the mistakes are terrible and bad for self-esteem.
Blame some parents who don't discipline their children and back up any wrong or even terrible thing their child does.
Blame some parents who don't know the value of education.
Blame silly ways to measure accountability (actually I think there is a LOT right here)

I hope this makes you feel better.
I agree to the idea that their are bad and incompetent teachers and said why I think it is very difficult to get rid of them, but essentially it is because their supervisors are not teachers (perhaps were never teachers) but are administrators. Very little of the problems below are really the fault of educators (read teachers). However, I think it is a little too much to claim that public education has failed a whole generation. I think that there are parts of the "generation' that have been failed, and probably more than just this one. (I think back to those grand Sputnik years when the performance and skills of nonwhite and poor children were barely considered at all. It once was, that we didn't consider those schools and children in whatever calculations we made about education.)

Also I would favor any voucher system that would immediately give any and all children enough money to attend any school and not just a handful of Catholic and "Christian" schools. Just make them take everybody-- all discipline problems, all special ed students, etc. I can tell you no one has (or will) ever suggest such a thing. And no schoool would want all those kids either.


--des

Moon Woman said:

Ain't it the truth.
The problem I have with the public school system in the U.S. today is: it has become a political football.

Everybody's got an agenda, and educators and politicians alike seem to have no qualms about acting-out their latest and greatest ideologies and social experiments in the public school arena.

The result is our kids' education takes a back seat to political agendas. It's just wrong. It wasn't always this way, either.

Public education in this country is a joke. I love hearing anecdotals to the contrary, how nice. But the sad fact is public education has failed at least one generation, maybe two. When it's your child's future that's at stake, you deserve the right to educate them yourself if the public schools aren't capable. That's the bottom line for most parents. It's the results that count, not someone else's agenda.

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The real problem with schooling in America today is that kids like me don't care about it anymore. You ask a kid here in America what they wan't, they'll say "Oh, I want an iPod" or "Oh, I want some new shoes". We have been indoctrinated by the greatest machine of propaganda ever conceived, the television, that we should spend all our money on material goods and forsake everything else. One of the many by-products of capitalism.

There are, as always, exceptions to the rule, kids who actually care about their education, but that demographic is dwindling. Kids aren't the only ones to blame, parents are just as liable. If you can't push your kid to get good grades, to pursue their education, you're contributing to the problem.

To interpret my post as any kind of an attack on teachers would be an error.

Just read "A Nation at Risk" (sourced in my post, published by the Department of Education) and subsequent reports from the DOE itself for a more in-depth review of public education in this country.

As to other remarks: children haven't changed. Society has changed and public schools have changed. The fact is, children respond negatively to inferior education and inferior child-rearing.

We're going on a second generation of poorly educated parents raising poorly educated children. If any schools can't competently teach children they shouldn't be in business. The fact that local governments rape property owners to fund their own incompetence should come as no surprise. Too bad the real consequences are carried on the backs of children.

We voters have only ourselves to blame.

Moon Woman said:

And another thing I hate is the lack of accountability. I heard a team of educational experts tell a large group of concerned parents, after assessing the problems of the local school district, that it would take a minimum of 5 years to reverse those problems and produce a quality educational experience for the kids. That's riduculous. Kids in school don't have 5 years for educators to tinker around and re-invent the wheel. But this is the kind of garbage in-garbage out education we are offering kids now.

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There are a number of problems with this statement.

First, so-called "experts" such as the ones mentioned here (no offense, but who exactly are the ones in this case?), are often woefully ignorant of the conditions that teachers much endure on a daily basis. Teachers are expected to work upwards of six hours straight without a single break (this is a common scenario, BTW), endure sometimes extremely disrespectful students without flinching, motivate students to do all of their work and do it right, teach lessons according to the political milieu of the day, raise sometimes badly underachieving students to an impossibly high standard, and do all of this on a salary that sometimes barely keeps them going.

Second, the allegation that accountability does not exist is simply false. Teachers may not be easy to remove from their positions, but when it comes to defending the day-to-day operations of their job, they are some of the most scrutinized people on the planet, particularly by parents on personal vendettas. Unlike students and teachers, disrespectful parents are limited by no code of conduct other than the basic laws of the land, and as a result, teachers are completely defenseless against them. Because of this, and the common lack of administrative support that teachers receive, they must rely solely on their own negotiating skills and whatever help their coteachers can give them.

Moon Woman, I honestly suggest that you listen to des and I and understand how many misconceptions that you have been fed about schools in general. We understand that if you ask 500 people about education that you will get 500 different answers, but I think you may wish to review what actually goes on at schools vs. commonly circulated myths. A simple level of respect will go a long way with us teachers.

des said:

I'll tell you what you can blame instead. Just if you need to blame something.
Blame misguided and stupid legislation like "No Child Left Behind".
Blame society which puts a very low cost value on things like paying teachers and keeping teachers in teaching (this will become an increasing problem-- younger teachers are not staying in teaching).
Blame policies which allow bending of rules that help kids (such as class size).
Blame more money spent in test scores and testing than in teaching.
Blame more interest in administrative idiocies than teaching.
Blame cutting out art and music.
Blame paper work demands on teachers.
Blame taxing strategies that make rich schools richer and poor schools poorer.
Blame a bit on the "ME" generation, and the raising of little princesses
and princes and on a generational attitude the mistakes are terrible and bad for self-esteem.
Blame some parents who don't discipline their children and back up any wrong or even terrible thing their child does.
Blame some parents who don't know the value of education.
Blame silly ways to measure accountability (actually I think there is a LOT right here)

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:bow:

I wasn't necessarily responding to your post, but to the mood in general. For instance, that it is mostly the teachers or teacher's unions that are responsible.

Yes, I think kids have changed. The thing that I have noticed the most is the belief among quite a few of them that they have little if any personal responsibilty for anythign (their own learning, their behavior, their choices). If you try to discipline a kid these days, they complain that you aren't discipling so on and so, just them. Or perhaps a litany of other things including racism.Many times the parents will back up their kids on these things. I know of several teachers who got carted off by security for molesting kids (I teach in high school), the kids were lying. I think that kids now also want a lot of sugar coating on their educations-- many believing that classes should be easy and fun. I suppose child rearing and society have changed so that you could say kids haven't *really* changed.

I have been involved in many criticisms of educational policy or techniques, esp. since I teach reading. There have been some very half baked ideas going on with reading. There is some encouraging changes in this area.

I don't think property taxes are an equitable way of funding schools. Unless there are complex redistribution formulas (and even then), wealthy neighborhoods often have excellent schools with the latest equipment and materials, more supportive administrators, etc. while poor neighborhoods have crowded classes, shoddy equipment, a depressing physical plant, etc.
I teach in a low income school in a barracks type building with the charm of a super max. There aren't any windows. The furniture is falling apart.

Yes, I think there is a crisis. But I think the solutions are very complex. It means in some cases you would get to kids very early in life, perhaps before the typical pre-K programs.

--des

Moon Woman said:

To interpret my post as any kind of an attack on teachers would be an error.

Just read "A Nation at Risk" (sourced in my post, published by the Department of Education) and subsequent reports from the DOE itself for a more in-depth review of public education in this country.

As to other remarks: children haven't changed. Society has changed and public schools have changed. The fact is, children respond negatively to inferior education and inferior child-rearing.

We're going on a second generation of poorly educated parents raising poorly educated children. If any schools can't competently teach children they shouldn't be in business. The fact that local governments rape property owners to fund their own incompetence should come as no surprise. Too bad the real consequences are carried on the backs of children.

We voters have only ourselves to blame.

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Mercy Not Sacrifice said:

There are a number of problems with this statement.

First, so-called "experts" such as the ones mentioned here (no offense, but who exactly are the ones in this case?), are often woefully ignorant of the conditions that teachers much endure on a daily basis.

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Oh really. The fact that a teacher doesn't know anything about "A Nation At Risk", perhaps the most famous, well-researched and well-respected document ever produced by educators on this nation's educational system is just... amazing. Here's the link again, as you obviously didn't bother to read it.

http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html

(Hm, I could be tempted to say that makes my point... but attacking teachers was never my point in the first place).

Subsequent reports 5, 15 and 20 years later were equally disheartening. I'll let you Google them yourself.

I'm sorry but the propensity to place blame here is unfortunate (and of little concern to me really). If you would bother to read my posts as they were written, I have no interest in maintaining anyone's status quo or protecting anyone's agenda.

If something is broken beyond fixing I say scrap it and hand it over to someone who has an interest in quality education: something this country was able to do for many generations quite effectively and with relatively little cost compared to today.

As it stands now, public schools are erratic performers at best from one district to another. That's a fact. After a while the "why" becomes redundant. It's not about why anymore, or who is to blame anymore, it's about performance. No one is dissing teachers, btw. If you continue to take the conversation personally after reading "A Nation At Risk" and other documentation provided by the Department of Education I would ask you to keep in mind the fact that "educators" as a term within such conversations includes decision and policy-makers, school boards and administrators.

When and if the day comes that public schools' primary goal is to specialize in excellent education once again rather than babysitting, social experimentation, detention centers for juvenile delinquents, rehabilitation, free meal programs, and one-on-one care centers for the developmentally disabled, then perhaps they would enjoy more genuine support and enthusiasm from the public they depend on for financing.