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NCLB is designed obscure the truth about education in America with gimmicks. I was a statistical analyst in charge of producing NCLB reports for the state of CT. The NCLB regulations and reporting were the reason I left the education field altogether. The statistics are both unsound and completely incorrect given the sample base and intent.

Here are the major issues with education right now in Florida (and most states):

1. There is a significant achievement gap between high/low poverty schools and white/minority schools. That gap has increased due to NCLB.

2. Highly Qalified Teachers: There aren't enough. Another component of NCLB requires schools to move toward 100% highly qualified staff. The gap here is the same as the achievement gap. The rich/white schools get better teachers.

To quote a report by the Florida Department of Education to the feds regarding their progress toward "HQT = 100%":

        "The percentage of classes taught by HQTs is above 90 percent in all categories except high-poverty secondary schools. At the secondary level, there is a six percentage point gap between high- and low-poverty schools."

http://www.ed.gov/programs/teacherqual/hqtltr/revi ew/fl.doc Link to the doc quoted above, from the US Department of Education. Every state has to submit hundreds of narrative documents like this every year in order to qualify for funding.

Teach teachers how to teach. Make parents responsible for their children.

If somebody stinks, their contracts aren't renewed. Is there a problem with implementing something like this stateside? Again, just curious.
Yes, you generally can't fire teachers in America.

Trying to figure out what actually works in education is actually a very major problem. Suppose you have a motivated teacher who develops a unique curriculum. What you often find is that its the teacher making the difference (because he or she's very motivated and is a great teacher), not the curriculum. Which is why the Department of Education is very big right now on properly controlled experiments for new programs. They've compiled a database of what works (called the What Works Clearinghouse):
http://www.whatworks.ed.gov/

From my own experiences:
The #1 thing a school can do to improve it's performance is change its demographics. Get more upper class kids, and your test scores will go through the roof. While that doesn't sound practical, that's the one guaranteed way to improve school performance. And schools are certainly penalized if the demographics shift the other way, which I consider singularly unfair. A lot of the major downturns in 'bad' districts I've worked with are the result of demographics shifts.

On a more practical level, I think that the attitude of the students is the #1 obstacle to learning. Kids certainly aren't stupid, but they'll sink to whatever level is expected of them. If they're not college bound, then they basically don't do anything in high school, because they don't care. On the other hand, if you can make a kid believe that college is necessary for his future well being (and many kids think they're all going to be rich multimillionaires and never have to do a lick of work in their lives)... then magically everything falls into place. I personally support the idea of getting as many kids into AP classes as possible, as the expectations in AP classes are set at the proper point.

If you can get through to kids and get them to internalize high goals, that is the #1 thing that would help education in America.

The only thing stopping everyone from taking AP classes is the fact that we're losing most of our failing kids in middle school. If kids aren't properly motivated and educated in middle school, they'll fail in high school and have greatly reduced chances of going to college or excelling in college.

The work levels - I do not have anything solid there, I have to admit. It's accepted as a truism by Europeans that the increased cost of healthcare in America (double that of the UK, per capita, covered in a previous Slashdot story), the high levels of job dissatisfaction, the very high number of workplace shootings, the very high number of overweight slobs, the absurdly high number of drug addicts, the inability of America to pay more than a few months (at best) unemployment benefit, the total inability of 95% of the population to get out of the poverty trap, the rapid decline in attention span (games and TV are not the cause) and the obsession in American business with maximal production per unit time rather than optimal production per unit cost, are all a product of unhealthy and excessive work habits amongst Americans.

Some of the underlying theory of optimal vs maximal work may be found here.

I'm unaware of a Georgia-specific law that supersedes this, but I'd be very surprised for any law to say that it trumps a court order unless it was some national security PATRIOT-type super-secret bullshit.

You can get as angry as you want but I'm just looking at facts.

No, you're making them up, and that's why I'm angry. In this day and age when information is available by just typing a couple of keys, people are not only still ignorant, but making up their own facts as well. For example, by taking 30 seconds and looking up the stats on Google, you'd see school violence has been decreasing for a long time. You might want to claim isolated incidents show things spiraling out of control, but anecdotes don't reflect reality. Oh, and BTW, violent crime rate is down across the board. Teen pregnancy is down. Alcohol and drug abuse are down. I'll let you spend the short amount of time necessary finding that information. So, if we follow your "logic", and fill it in with facts, removing god from school was a good thing. Big surprise.

Truth be told: They are in California! California taxpayers pay more to public schools than any other state, per capita CA is in the top 5.

Jesus people like you hurt my brain. Not because Karl Rove doesn't deserve a bashing (he does), but because you, and so, so, so many like you, are utterly fucking ignorant of 1) What the responsibility of the federal government is and 2) Where your taxes go. Sometime's I wish someone would submit the US Constitution as a Slashdot article, but no one RTFAs anyways (and I guess you're the ultimate proof of that.)

I despise the current administration as the next Libertarian, but get your facts straight about education funding. The federal government is not (and nor should it - look at how the "No Child Left Behind" crap flopped) responsible for funding K-12 education. If you want to complain about the misappropriation of funds to the Iraq War and the lack of science in our federal government, look at NASA, not the public school system.

Or that summary is. If he said that the school is required to protect directory information, he needs to check the law.

FERPA is quite clear on this.

http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index .html

"Schools may disclose, without consent, "directory" information such as a student's name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance. However, schools must tell parents and eligible students about directory information and allow parents and eligible students a reasonable amount of time to request that the school not disclose directory information about them."

It's possible that he means something else, or that I misunderstood, but in my time at student affairs, this came up a few times, and "directory information" was exactly what the link I posted says. Does he maybe mean something else?

If he doesn't, then the law disagrees with him.

In the science education disciplines, they are called 'student OPINION surveys" by anyone who has studied them - specifically because they indicate only how good of an opinion the student has of the instructor. This has been shown to be influenced by many factors, most of which actually supersede 'value added to learning'. If you think the Sci Ed folks are simply being apologists, consider a parallel example: medicine. Malpractice claim rates for doctors who spend more time with their patients drop drastically. This is independent of how good a doctor is (as measured by various criteria - survivability, actual mishaps, etc.) Simply by being perceived as more personable and interested in the patient, the patient assumes skill and evaluates them accordingly. This occurs frequently in education as well - teachers who are personable and easy are scored far better than teachers who challenge their students and make them think. Slashdotters may have a higher proportion of folks who like their education to be thorough, but the wider population chooses Easy, especially when they won't be judged for the choice (i.e. anonymous surveys) or when they aren't asked for a truly reflective consideration of the class (again, anonymous surveys as typically written). That said, I'm currently in a teaching fellowship that puts Ph.D. STEM (Sci Tech Eng Math) students into K-12 classrooms, and in my 3 years I've frequently seen the principal drop by. I've been in a wide cross-section of urban schools in Pittsburgh, some high performing, and some which were closed due (in part) to systemic issues. One thing I've never run into is a teacher who didn't care (though some were quite poor science teachers) and didn't put in a lot of time. Teaching efficacy is far more difficult to accurately track than most folks think (and much harder to MEANINGFULLY quantitate) than most new STEM folks anticipate naively (myself included!)

People love the idea of tying teacher pay to efficacy, but this idea is not new and has failed every time. I'm a scientist first, so rather than doing a bunch of hand-waving, here's a few quick e-citations:
"History of Teacher Pay and Incentive Reforms" Protsik, Jean
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/s ervlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED452600
"Merit Pay and the Evaluation Problem: Why Most Merit Pay Plans Fail and a Few Survive" Murnane, Richard J., Cohen, David K.
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/s ervlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED380894
There are plenty of peer-reviewed examples out there, too, but I'm short on time (after writing all of this) and I'll leave it to those interested to track them down. In short, the literature says merit pay is neither a new idea nor an effective one, based on its attempted implementations worldwide from 1710 to date. There are ideas on how it might be made to work, and reasons given when each of the many attempts failed, but in the end the controversy centers around this: how can teaching/learning be meaningfully measured and attributed to individual teachers? If you can solve this question, you've got an excellent career in politics ahead, and I invite you to fix the Middle East while you're at it.

In the science education disciplines, they are called 'student OPINION surveys" by anyone who has studied them - specifically because they indicate only how good of an opinion the student has of the instructor. This has been shown to be influenced by many factors, most of which actually supersede 'value added to learning'. If you think the Sci Ed folks are simply being apologists, consider a parallel example: medicine. Malpractice claim rates for doctors who spend more time with their patients drop drastically. This is independent of how good a doctor is (as measured by various criteria - survivability, actual mishaps, etc.) Simply by being perceived as more personable and interested in the patient, the patient assumes skill and evaluates them accordingly. This occurs frequently in education as well - teachers who are personable and easy are scored far better than teachers who challenge their students and make them think. Slashdotters may have a higher proportion of folks who like their education to be thorough, but the wider population chooses Easy, especially when they won't be judged for the choice (i.e. anonymous surveys) or when they aren't asked for a truly reflective consideration of the class (again, anonymous surveys as typically written). That said, I'm currently in a teaching fellowship that puts Ph.D. STEM (Sci Tech Eng Math) students into K-12 classrooms, and in my 3 years I've frequently seen the principal drop by. I've been in a wide cross-section of urban schools in Pittsburgh, some high performing, and some which were closed due (in part) to systemic issues. One thing I've never run into is a teacher who didn't care (though some were quite poor science teachers) and didn't put in a lot of time. Teaching efficacy is far more difficult to accurately track than most folks think (and much harder to MEANINGFULLY quantitate) than most new STEM folks anticipate naively (myself included!)

People love the idea of tying teacher pay to efficacy, but this idea is not new and has failed every time. I'm a scientist first, so rather than doing a bunch of hand-waving, here's a few quick e-citations:
"History of Teacher Pay and Incentive Reforms" Protsik, Jean
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/s ervlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED452600
"Merit Pay and the Evaluation Problem: Why Most Merit Pay Plans Fail and a Few Survive" Murnane, Richard J., Cohen, David K.
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/s ervlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED380894
There are plenty of peer-reviewed examples out there, too, but I'm short on time (after writing all of this) and I'll leave it to those interested to track them down. In short, the literature says merit pay is neither a new idea nor an effective one, based on its attempted implementations worldwide from 1710 to date. There are ideas on how it might be made to work, and reasons given when each of the many attempts failed, but in the end the controversy centers around this: how can teaching/learning be meaningfully measured and attributed to individual teachers? If you can solve this question, you've got an excellent career in politics ahead, and I invite you to fix the Middle East while you're at it.

I think I've found the full-text of an article on this research, but I haven't found the full text publicly available where I can link it. I think the actual research may first have appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but the article I'm finding is here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7174873&dopt=Abstract

or here:

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb =true&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&ERICExtSearch_Searc hValue_0=EJ270965&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_ accno&objectId=0900000b80083931

or here:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j .1460-2466.1982.tb02514.x?journalCode=jcom

Like I said, though, no full text. Sorry.

Like hell it is. Educational expenditures have never been higher, even on a per-capita basis. We spend more on education than almost any other country, and get less for our money than almost any other country.

What's more, the school districts that spend the most, like the District of Columbia, tend to be the shittiest at actually educating their inmates.

This country needs to spend less, not more, on our schools.

We need to get rid of bloated administrative overhead.

We need to increase class size, get rid of computers and other distracting frippery in the classroom, and jettison all attempts at building "self-esteem" among little delinquents who don't deserve a particle of it. Let them earn self-respect on their own, through hard work with plenty of drills and rote memorization.

We need to bring back paddling, dunce caps, and shame.

We need to abandon "mainstreaming". Students with severe behavioral problems are causing terrible disruption of classes. They belong in segregated classes and schools. Tough shit for them, but they can't be permitted to ruin the whole educational experience for everyone else. No more social promotions, either. Either pass the requirements, repeat the year, or get the fuck on with your life of digging ditches.

We need to break up the cartel that controls education. Someone with a degree in math or business is far more qualified than the dregs and losers and nitwits that the typical College of Education churns out. He shouldn't have to sit through months of educrat babble and bilge in order to teach in a school. Teacher licensing is nothing more than rent-seeking and featherbedding and guild-gilding. Tenure should be totally abolished. Vouchers should be implemented nationwide. Worthless teachers and administrators should be hounded out of the profession. Worthless schools should be boarded up.

Most of all, we have to CRUSH the teacher's unions. These lazy, stupid, greedy lard asses put the education of our kids about tenth on their list of priorities, far behind fattening their bloated salaries, gold-plating their lavish pensions, padding the length of their 3-month summer vacations, salting the calendar with "inservice" junkets, diverting public money to shiftless in-laws and mobbed-up vendors and left-wing non-profits, and working the phone banks for whichever Democrat makes the most promises to shovel even more taxpayers' money onto the gravy train.

-ccm

The US already spends more per student than Canada, UK, France, Germany, Japan and the other G8 nations.

Funding is not the issue.

http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/intlindic ators/index.asp?SectionNumber=1&SubSectionNumber=3 &IndicatorNumber=67

According to the figures in the report mentioned here:
    http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.htm l
with an executive summary here:
    http://www.skillscommission.org/executive.htm
here in 2002 dollars is the cost per student in the USA:

Year Cost Fourth Grade Reading Scores
1984 $5400 211
1988 $6100 212
1992 $6800 211
1996 $6950 213
1999 $7300 212
2002 $8977 217

Again from the DOE:
    http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index .html
"Total education funding has increased substantially in recent years at all levels of government, even when accounting for enrollment increases and inflation. By the end of the 2004-05 school year, national K-12 education spending will have increased an estimated 105 percent since 1991-92; 58 percent since 1996-97; and 40 percent since 1998-99. On a per-pupil basis and adjusted for inflation, public school funding increased: 24 percent from 1991-92 through 2001-02 (the last year for which such data are available); 19 percent from 1996-97 through 2001-02; and 10 percent from 1998-99 through 2001-02."

Those figures don't quite agree with the ones you list -- the DOE claims 24% increase adjusted for inflation and enrollment in public schools over that time period. I'm not sure where the difference is (perhaps more money spent in private schools?)

Link for the above mentioned US DOE statistics on total K-12 spending:
    http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index .html
The specific chart:
    http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlit e-chart.html#2

And a related essay by someone else also commenting on Shuttleworth Foundation's SchoolTool project:
    "School system needs revolution, not evolution"
    http://ninjamonkeys.co.za/index.php/2005/03/07/sch ool_system_needs_revolution_not_evolu
From that essay: "The Shuttleworth Foundation has been investing a lot of money in school administration and computer labs. Both of these projects are worthwhile efforts. The former allowing teachers to spend less time administrating and more time teaching, and the latter allowing kids to get involved in computers which are a critical aspect of nearly every high paying job today. But more money needs to be invested in creating engaging learning materials and in creating an environment to help students learn real life skills."

The direct link to SchoolTool itself:
    http://www.schooltool.org/

A related essay by me on this topic:
    "Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools"
    http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTech nologyHasFailedSchools.html
From there: "Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change."

Link for the above mentioned US DOE statistics on total K-12 spending:
    http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index .html
The specific chart:
    http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlit e-chart.html#2

And a related essay by someone else also commenting on Shuttleworth Foundation's SchoolTool project:
    "School system needs revolution, not evolution"
    http://ninjamonkeys.co.za/index.php/2005/03/07/sch ool_system_needs_revolution_not_evolu
From that essay: "The Shuttleworth Foundation has been investing a lot of money in school administration and computer labs. Both of these projects are worthwhile efforts. The former allowing teachers to spend less time administrating and more time teaching, and the latter allowing kids to get involved in computers which are a critical aspect of nearly every high paying job today. But more money needs to be invested in creating engaging learning materials and in creating an environment to help students learn real life skills."

The direct link to SchoolTool itself:
    http://www.schooltool.org/

A related essay by me on this topic:
    "Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools"
    http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTech nologyHasFailedSchools.html
From there: "Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change."

CFLs have terrible color rendering ability because their spectrum consists of narrow, tall spikes. It can never be filtered to approximate daylight because there are no practical wavelength-specific filters that can be used. On the other hand, the smooth spectrum of a blackbody (incandescent) can easily be filtered to match daylight, and high end incandescent bulbs (SoLux, etc.) produce actual daylights spectrum.

Human productivity is increased by the presence of daylight: http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content _storage_01/0000000b/80/22/64/ac.pdf

If you match daylight spectrum with a light, you would get the same effect. This can only be done with an incandescent, not fluorescents, not high intensity discharge lamps, not LEDs!

My computer averages 400 W (running SETI etc.). My audio system alone goes over 2 kW. For 400 Hz and higher frequencies I'm using glow discharge plasma based on Alan Hill's patent. The power supply for that draws 1800 W continuously.

There is plenty of energy to be had--breeder reactors and several extensions such as the waste transmuter developed at CERN allow most nuclear waste to be reprocessed for more fuel. As uranium mines wind down a thorium-based fuel cycle will provide plenty of long term energy supply, far more than is needed for the offspring of the multibillion dollar international ITER project to have begun operation. However, the greens insist on inadequate sources like solar and wind power because those things force conservation and that way they restrict progress. Environmentalists are at best Luddites and at worst fanatical misanthropes.

i posted this lower in the thread so it will probably be buried. check out #3, item (d).

link:http://www.ed.gov/notices/pia/nslds.pdf

they sell to 'servicers' of educational institutions and i am guessing y'all signed off on it. if you are pissed about this issue a good question might be how someone is classified as a servicer.

regards.

section 3, item (d)...

"To provide financial aid history information, the Department may disclose records to educational institutions and servicers."

it is supposed to make money by integrating with the 'servicers.'

my guess is it is not too hard to be considered a servicer of an educational institution.

link:http://www.ed.gov/notices/pia/nslds.pdf

i don't post quotes all that often. someone let me know if i just broke a law.

If there were Americans to fill these spots, I wouldn't doubt that they'd be filled by Americans.

If we can't fill our jobs with our own people, then there is something seriously wrong with our education system that needs to be addressed immediately. Basic economics indicates that opening the job market up to competition would be the fastest and most effective way to make this happen.

Actually, I'm blaming failing state controled services IN ALL ARENAS on corporations not paying for the services they use. Education of workers should be a primary value of any long range thinking company that needs skilled workers- yet for the past 20 years we've had a tax revolt removing money from the schools and making sure corporations pay a significantly lower percentage than they did in the 1950s. Education is just the most visible.

If it were not for the work of that generation, and the creativity they displayed, our world would be a far different place.

Poke fun at Fortran all you want, but dammit I use code today to drive a statistical website that was written in the 60's, and it still runs great.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/nde

Both will graduate High School with upto two years of college credits, something not even offered in public schools.

But it's getting harder and harder to do the job with so much pressure from the outside. I teach at a school that has some of the highest SAT scores for my state, the most AP classes, a great graduation rate in spite of our diverse and transient population, but we are labeled as a school on probation under the wonderful No Child Left Behind Act.

The other, write your politicians and tell them No Child Left Behind is bullshit, incessantly. Did you know that by 2014, schools are supposed to have all students at a level of proficiency in Math, Science and English, including kids who just moved to your school, who have parents that think education is a waste of time and don't make their child go to school, or who have only been in the country for three years?

In the 1997-98 school year, Washington DC spent $7,138 per pupil in primary and secondary school. This was, of course, 10 years ago--estimates these days go from $9,500 to $13,000 per student, depending on where you look. This is not only sufficient for a quite decent private education, but even (in some places) a quite decent private college education. And yet this is still primary/secondary school we're talking about.

Regardless of where our education expenditures rank against other categories in the GDP, this could still be considered excessive spending, even if the results were acceptable (which, arguably, they aren't). It would be difficult to argue that increased spending would improve the results. If the increase continues, it would simply be cheaper to send all schoolkids--at least, the ones in DC--to one of the cheaper Ivy Leagues to learn their letters and numbers.

If http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml/ wasnt bad enough to push the stress limits of an already completely fucked up education system, lets throw in some wild theories about whats causing stress in todays children. Maybe it isnt "homework" but the straight from school to the factory education model we use to teach children today. I've had the unfortunate experience of working as a corrections officer and a factory worker, and I can tell you that there are frightening similiarities between the three. The problem that is well known about the education system is its inability to let children accel at their own pace, when in fact, all the current system does is keep the smartest right in line with the dumbest. At least back in the day before political correctness, the dumb ass of the class was left way behind and the rest were forced to rise to an artificial standard... today we have "No Child Left Behind".... I cant wait for the re-runs "Ow my Balls"...

well FERPA for one. It's at the National level for schools that recieve federal money.

Also note that the DMCA does not require the release of information back to the copywrite holder. It simply requires the removal of the offending material by the ISP (the university in this case). Now if they serve a lawfull subpoena then there isn't much the school can do, but most of the time the RIAA/MPAA just sends DMCA noticies and try to bluff their way to get information. Like I said before, we had just completed a FERPA review because of circumstances and the lawyers were sensitive to this type of issue at the time. Once the policy was established it was easy to maintain it.

I am definately not a lawyer.

What a load of crap. You honestly think it's difficult to live on $40k+ working 9 months out of the year???

http://www.osba.org/lrelatns/salary/rankings.htm

* The average salary for teachers in 2004-05 was $47,750, about 2 percent higher than in 1994-95, after adjustment for inflation.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2006). Digest of Education Statistics, 2005 (NCES 2006-030)
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28

Man... I thought it was just allergies that had my nose all plugged up... Oh wait... It is... $8,468 as of 2003. So I was off a bit, but not by much. Not enough to to be completely "full of shit".

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

As to where it comes from... That's a very good question... Since you only make $42k/yr, I'm guessing you have no clue how progressive the US tax system really is. (I don't mean that as a slam against your earnings either, I made far less than that in the not too distant past...)

1 - http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june0 6/dropout_06-27.html
2 - If there are 300,000,000 Americans evenly distributed between ages 1 and 100, this number is realistic.
3 - http://www.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ConsumerGuides/dropout.h tml
4 - http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ewp_08.htm

It could be that students in private school are just nicer and richer (explaining why teachers want to work there, and why students are more successful later).

Multiple studies have shown that there is almost no difference in education outcomes between public & private schools - public schools do slightly better in math, private schools do slightly better in reading (2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2006 Department of Education Report).

See here: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2 006461.pdf

It doesn't say the national average or any other meaningful statistics. It's just those 100 schools.

...hasn't really changed all that much since the Eisenhower administration.

I've seen a lot of, "Here! [point-point-point] This is what's going wrong!"

It's not a failure of any one thing; the system is based on a very-old model that hasn't really been addressed in over 50 years.

In that time, various de-regulation and isolationism of independent states, counties, regions and districts have all deconstituted the original model with "improvements". After a while, these changes bring everything "out of synch".

Just the fact that nationwide statistics show certain states to have over 50% of their schools "in need of improvement" is an indicator of a greater, and very complicated problem.

Another astonishing fact is that progress has been made in Education Theory, but implementation of the new systems is slow, sporadic and even completely ignored in favor of the status-quo.

Back in the town of my alma-mater, there's a shining example of these new practises which has gained national attention.

What's keeping other schools from following this example?

If anyone is going to point fingers, keep aiming higher... higher than that... all the way to the top.

If only more folks would get involved during the primaries, we wouldn't be left with such crappy choices come November.

Please, your honor. Indulge me. I will bring this to relevance presently.

Change in education happens when a change in administration causes changes in the national priority and therefore in the national budget. If the quasi-socialized Public Education System doesn't have the funds to make change, they keep on keepin on. (and that's the problem)

"There are not enough engineers with the appropriate skill sets."

That would be the skill set that includes an MS in Software Engineering and a willingness to work for $10/hour.

"The IT work force is not skilled enough and almost never can be skilled enough," said Robert Cresanti, undersecretary of commerce for technology

And just why would that be, Mr. Cresanti?

Lack of education? I'm sure that college costs rising 6.3% from last year for public colleges, and 5.9% for the very expensive private colleges has nothing to do with it.

Oh, but college enrollment is off. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the media drumbeat announcing that entry level engineering positions are being offshored, reducing interest in college majors leading to software and IT positions. [1][2]

Of course, even getting into these college programs requires a high school education with a strong grounding in the fundamentals of mathematics and science. This seems to be a problem area for United States high schools. [3]

Or are you just proclaiming that the US Commerce Department thinks this is an area Americans just can't compete in? Perhaps American nationals should just know their place in life and stick with "Would you like fries with that?" Hey, even H1B Visa Guy has to eat somewhere. At least your suppliers of Freedom Fries will be secure in their ability to find new employees.

1. http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2006/0,4814 ,111202,00.html
2. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos110.htm#outlook
3. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/25/news/scienc e.php
4. http://www.ed.gov/inits/TIMSS/overview.html

A school MAY disclose education records without consent when: * The disclosure is to school officials who have been determined to have legitimate educational interests as set forth in the institution's annual notification of rights to students;

Sera

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb =true&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&ERICExtSearch_Searc hValue_0=EJ370876&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_ accno&objectId=0900000b80060cbb

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/research/povertyre search.html#crucial

http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/madon/so cialpsychology280/extrareadings/Genes.htm

      http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Turk heimer%20psychological%20science.pdf

In the U.S. educational system there is currently a very strong bias towards math.

Really? On PISA and similar assessments the US is usually average or below average. The TIMMS 2003 study apparently does show that "in 2003, U.S. eighth-graders improved their average mathematics and science performances compared to 1995", but the US is just catching up.

We had a number of US exchange students on my school for a few months when I was 15 (late 80s; Netherlands), and their skills in mathematics and science didn't impress us at all. I remember seeing a video of their school, and concluding that they waste all of their budget on a beautiful new building with some sort of theater, and small classes (mine was >40).

Myth #7: A Ph.D. means something.

Reality: The only thing a Ph.D. means is that you're not a moron

Actually, according to IPEDS, BYU graduated about 80 Ph.D.s in 2004. So, apparently, you can be a Ph.D. an a mormon. You're less likely to be a Methodist though (SMU only had 39 Ph.D.s in 2004).

Oh. I misread that didn't I?

Except 90% of education is financed at the local and state level. Your conclusion certainly still holds true, though.

What everyone is not understanding is that you can't post student papers anywhere period. It's against the law. There's this little thing called FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index .html, and you can not post or use student content in this way. If the student decides to post their paper they can, but you are blatently breaking the law if you do this. We are dealing with this currently at the college where I'm a systems administrator, and we are having to make quite a few changes to the way we do our online education in order to comply.

Basically, the bottom line is that you must treat all student content as if it were their transcripts. That means it must all be encrypted, and only available to the public if the student expressly gives permission. Or you must give a means to suppress this information if the student has invoked their right to privacy.

The student also owns all the copywrites to their work, regardless to what it is. If you post student work without their permission you can be sued for violation of FERPA, and for copywrite violation.

From the article:
Horton, 30, of Dorchester, didn't get the job after her credit report showed $18,000 in deferred student loans. "My credit wasn't perfect, but I never thought my student loans would go against me," said Horton. "The company said I could reapply once I had two years of excellent credit, but there is no way I am going to be able to pay off those loans that quickly."

As someone with massive student loan debt (easily into the 6-digit range), I think the key word there in her case is deferred student loans. I've had some pretty stringent background checks for working in secured areas where there is concern about employees being compromised ("sex, drugs, and serious debt" being easy ways to get compromised), and my debt hasn't been an issue (neither has my sex or drugs). The reasons for deferment of her loans seems like why she is having problems getting employment, and since we don't know about her reasons, why is everyone jumping to some ridiculous conclusions?

And here's a link to the actual study.

I'll make it easy for you. I live in the U.S. The U.S. tracks degree attainment in the Digest of Educational Statistics which has a chart called Bachelor's degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by sex, racial/ethnic group, and major field of study: 2003-04.

I'd argue that there are few IT jobs that require more than a bachelor's degree to do them. According to that chart, there were roughly 60,000 computer and information science degrees awarded in 2003-2004, and 15,000 or 25% of them were awarded to women.

I'll make it easy for you. I live in the U.S. The U.S. tracks degree attainment in the Digest of Educational Statistics which has a chart called Bachelor's degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by sex, racial/ethnic group, and major field of study: 2003-04.

I'd argue that there are few IT jobs that require more than a bachelor's degree to do them. According to that chart, there were roughly 60,000 computer and information science degrees awarded in 2003-2004, and 15,000 or 25% of them were awarded to women.

Difference of IQ in races. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

It has been shown that a slight difference in IQ can have a vast difference in the success of a human(on average): http://www.eric.ed.gov/sitemap/html_0900000b8000d9 11.html . If you introduce too many humans with a lower genetic IQ than the mean of the population, then problems will arise. Lower IQ persons are more likely to commit crime, less able to perform skilled jobs. Thus the crime numbers will increase with . In addition a greater disparity in income will exist amongst the population, which in itself causes problems.

While not all immigrants will have a IQ lower than the population mean, the majority of the countries where they orginate from are.

While this post may be of a derogatory nature for most people, I am not an immoral person in real life. I treat everyone with the same equality on a personal level, but understand the affect of genes on a communal level.

Did anyone read the list, go take a look http://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/GEN0606A .pdf
Search for evolution, you'll be amazed...

But in fairness, there are other subheadings in other fields (e.g., see "26.09 Physiology, Pathology and Related Sciences") that have similar jumps in numbering, probably because of harmless rearrangement and desire to preserve past numbers that have remained the same. For example:

26.0907 Cardiovascular Science

26.0909 Vision Science/Physiological Optics
26.0910 Pathology/Experimental Pathology
26.0911 Oncology and Cancer Biology

The missing one used to be the category 26.0908 Exercise Physiology.

This compares with:

26.13 Ecology, Evolution, Systematics and Population Biology
26.1301 Ecology
26.1302 Marine Biology and Biological Oceanography

26.1304 Aquatic Biology/Limnology

Where the missing one is 26.1303 Evolutionary Biology.

I'm sure reorganization like this happens all the time. It is still a rather big goof.

But in fairness, there are other subheadings in other fields (e.g., see "26.09 Physiology, Pathology and Related Sciences") that have similar jumps in numbering, probably because of harmless rearrangement and desire to preserve past numbers that have remained the same. For example:

26.0907 Cardiovascular Science

26.0909 Vision Science/Physiological Optics
26.0910 Pathology/Experimental Pathology
26.0911 Oncology and Cancer Biology

The missing one used to be the category 26.0908 Exercise Physiology.

This compares with:

26.13 Ecology, Evolution, Systematics and Population Biology
26.1301 Ecology
26.1302 Marine Biology and Biological Oceanography

26.1304 Aquatic Biology/Limnology

Where the missing one is 26.1303 Evolutionary Biology.

I'm sure reorganization like this happens all the time. It is still a rather big goof.

"Recent news reports have suggested that Evolutionary Biology is not an eligible major under the new SMART grant program. This is incorrect and in fact the opposite is true. Evolutionary biology is a major eligible to receive SMART grants under the 'Ecology, Evolution, Systematics and Population Biology' category of majors.

"The misunderstanding occurred as the result of a draft document that omitted evolutionary biology from a list of majors put forth for use by colleges. As soon as the omission came to our attention, we took steps to correct it. However, regardless of its omission on that one document, evolutionary biology was and continues to be SMART grant eligible.

"The Department is making the necessary correction which will be in place before final guidance on AC/SMART grants is issued."

What is interesting about this is that it doesn't stick with the "clerical error" bit. (Which, if you look at the PDF, is ridiculous -- the line, and just that line, is blanked out. Tough to do accidentally.) Now this sounds like a draft that was not meant for the public. That suggests this sort of nonsense is at least being talked about. Sad.

They have reduced education and social spending (mostly through crippling unfunded mandates). They have left the science budget the same but selectively trimmed spending on some subjects e.g. Global Warming.

You are either clueless, or making this up.

Education spending has shot up under the Bush administration.... as has social welfare spending.

But when it comes to spying on Americans and invading others no amount is too high and no law apparently can stand.

So, to summarize, you disagree with the policy, and don't understand the law.

This isn't flamebait, I'm being serious,

No you aren't being serious. You are getting things wrong that are trivial to get right.