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[Tangent: It's interesting that those who support the "public option" for health care insurance reform do so because they believe that private profit oriented insurers should be forced to compete with non-profit, government backed, insurance. But, it seems that most who support this approach for health insurance seem fearful of making non-profit, government backed public education compete with private enterprises. And the inverse also seems to be the case. Curious indeed...]

The argument against vouchers isn't one against competition, it's one of limited resources. The argument is that with vouchers, tax money is being redirected away from public school system towards private schools. Now this wouldn't be a problem if the lack of funds ended up with simply one underperforming school being eliminated due to lack of students, but rather what actually happens is that total pool of money allocated for all schools in the district is reduced, and thus all schools, but the good and the bad are adversely effected, and that a (perhaps quickly occurring) tipping point is reached where the entire public school system begins to collapse. Now before someone says, "Well good! Private schools are better performing!", a 2006 Dept of Ed report found no significant difference between private and public school performance, once results were controlled for statistical population. (Keep in mind that private school families tend to be wealthier and more engaged than poorer families, and so when poorer students attend the private schools on vouchers, the population of self-selected over-achievers begins to be diluted by newly arriving average and under-achievers.) Also there is doubt that each voucher provides enough financial support to the private school to educate the newly arrived student.

In short, the vouchers shift just enough money away from the public system to hurt it, but not enough to support the private system, while at the same time not actually providing an educational benefit. A lose-lose-draw situation.

Personally, I'd like to see public schools to be funded equally per pupil out of a general state fund, instead of the current system of using property taxes, thus ensuring that that schools attended by the poor are underfunded, dilapidated, and thus guaranteed to underperform, while the schools in the rich part of town get two of the best of everything. It's simply unconscionable that we have schools like the one Ty'Sheoma Bethea attends. (Don't count on stimulus funds to fix it either.)

Remember that when you deal with the average member of the population you're dealing with someone who reads and writes somewhere between a grade 7-10 level.

To add some data since a lot of people forget this, the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy found that 43% of the 16+ U.S. population had low literacy. The web population is probably fairly close to this, but lower.

From the one link: "People with lower literacy can read, but they have difficulties doing so. [...] They must read word for word and often spend considerable time trying to understand multi-syllabic words. [...] Lower-literacy users tend to satisfice -- accept something as "good enough" -- based on very little information because digging deeper requires too much reading."

So around 1 in 3 browser users will fit that description, and error/warning dialogs need to be written with this in mind.

Yes, and until that image of nerds/geeks is changed, we will continue to lag behind.

It's not "cool" to be smart, and so each generation grows up caring more about popularity than tackling the hard subjects and learning something worthwhile.

Mmmm... I don't think the perception of "coolness" has anything to do with it. I think we're simply getting what we pay for. If the incentives of our schools are primarily based on producing high-quality athletes, then we will continue to get great athletes. If the incentives for our schools were to produce high quality mathematicians, engineers, and scientists, then we would get great mathematicians, engineers, and scientists.

What kind of compensation does a high school's football coach receive compared to the pay of it's academic teachers?
How do scholarships compare for Athletic Merit vs. Academic Merit?

OK, I'm so passionate about this topic, I bothered myself to search for something to cite while at work. I correct myself, and update the worst school Internet access from 95% to 97%... in 2001!!!

So this means practically every school in America has Internet access. The statistic is staggeringly surprising to me still, three years after I learned of it.

Notice too, how "rural" schools are listed at 100 percent access (rounded up from more than 99.5). The lowest access is actually "city".

Perhaps more pertinent to this conversation is how many kids actually have access to this nearly 100% Internet access rate. Well, that is addressed in another table, which lists percentage of classrooms that have Internet access. Again, the worst demographic in 2001!!! is at 79%, which is still "most" in my book. Certainly the numbers in this list, while already pretty high, even for 2001, have only gone up as of the 2006 study I wanted to cite in my previous post.

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002018.pdf Go to the "Tables of Estimates and Standard Errors" section, pages 14 and 16.

Ok, I should have looked this up first, http://www.tpl.org/tier3_cd.cfm?content_item_id=22900&folder_id=630 claims to be the Nation's Largest Elementary School with 1974 student. Not quite thousands and not exactly typical. Rarely in any other place than NY would you see a population density where that could even happen yet you speak of it as a common place occurance.

Actually, according to http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/dt05_096.asp, there are 65k elementary schools in the US and the average student population is 476. Florida has the largest average size at 737 and that is still well below your "thousands" statement. Even then there are only 15 states that have average sizes over 500 and 21 have less than 400 students on average.

According to the National Science Foundation, an EdD is academically equivalent to a PhD in rigor.

http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ous/international/usnei/us/edlite-structure-us.html

Playing hunches IS the whole purpose of qualitative research! That's why you start with your hypothesis and spend the rest of your degree plan trying to validate them...oh wait, that wasn't right? ;-)

The US spends approximately 3.4% of its GDP on public primary and secondary education

I've heard numbers like this a few times, and was just wondering where it comes from. At the risk of doing a [citation needed] type post, would you mind providing a link to where you are getting this number? I'll buy that it might be the US Federal Government input into education funding, but that is very misleading. Most of the US Education spending is done at the State level.

Since I was willing to JFGI, it seems your claim is either out of date or downright wrong. The wikipedia page on Government Spending puts the Percent GDP spent on Education at 6%. Their citation comes from usgovernmentspending.com which, puts total government spending in 2006 on education at $786.8 Billion, or about 5.88% of the 2006 GDP (13.06 Trillion, number from Google). That site claims to have aggregated the data from the US Federal GPO report and US Census data. Quite frankly, I'm not willing to chase the numbers back that far and am willing to accept the aggregator's claim, unless a problem can be demonstrated.

In short, the idea that US spending on education is lacking is a myth. Yes, Federal spending on education is lacking, that is because education is not a Federal function, its a State function.

The US also has one of the worst student to teacher ratios in the world, averaging out to 16, but in lower income schools averaging over 35.

Ok, I found the first number you mentioned in the PDF you linked to presented as:

In 1999, the United States had the second-lowest student/teacher ratio of the countries presented in primary education - 16 students per teacher. [http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003026.pdf page 28 (44 according to Adobe reader)]

That's a good thing. The lower the student to teacher ratio, the fewer students each teacher has to deal with and the more time which they can devote to each student. As for the lower income number, you're gonna have to give me a page number, I went through the PDF trying to find it and came up empty.

In all, I'm not trying to say we couldn't do more as a country, but it bugs the hell out of me to hear people claim that we are failing our students, when it seems like we are putting quite a bit of money into the system already. While I do think that the No Child Left Behind act may have missed the mark, we do need to start finding ways of getting useful metrics out of the education system. At just shy of 6% of our GDP, and close to 17% of our total government expenditures (assuming the Wikipedia numbers), we're putting a lot of money into it, and yet we're being asked for more every year. It's time for the system to start providing some sort of methodology to review and measure performance, so that we can make better decisions on how money is spent and if we actually need to spend more. Maybe we do, maybe if we just provided a little more money, everything would magically work right. But it's time we had some good numbers to support that.

Cut the teamism. Education has been fucked up long before NCLB. In fact, it is a liberal enclave and the left has used "do it for the children" as a means of gaining power for themselves and the teachers union for 40 years.

Biased much? Did you ever stop to think that maybe the liberals actually want to help the children? Especially since the United States maintains its world position through education (though not for long). And do you realize that conservatives have favored government education mandates and control (through funding) since at least Reagan, except with the extreme right in recent years and its anti-science agenda?

We throw WAY too much money at education. Much of it doesn't go to the classroom and teachers where it should. Rather it goes to administration.

The US spends approximately 3.4% of its GDP on public primary and secondary education. That is less than Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Ireland, UK, Spain, the EU as a whole, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus, Poland, Malta, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, just to name a few. It is, however, about equal with Greece.

Leftist feel-good cirriculums dominate and as such our kids learn to either throw a ball or drop fries.

Leftist? Do you realize that our curriculum is very moderate compared to most of the world?

Science and math skills tank but we have happy little taxpayers who learn to vote in all the politically correct garbage they read in the "picture books" they were given in grade school.

Do you have any figures to back that up? No. How about this: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001.pdf

By grade eight, the United States out performed 37 of 47 countries in Math, being primarily beat by 5 Asian countries (Taipei, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Japan) and equal to European countries (Hungary, England, Russian Federation, Lithuania, Czech Republic).

Also according to this study, the US has been improving average scores since it began tracking (1995). We are behind Asian countries because Asian school systems work harder, having much longer school years (220 days average vs 180 days in the US). Asian schools are often 6 days a week, 8 hours a day.

CUT the funding, limit the course work to what matters, fire administrators, and raise teachers' pay to attract our brightest to the field. Otherwise, stop bitching about education and stop using my tax dollars to fund this toilet.

How exactly are you going to cut the funding AND raise teachers' pay? I agree that we need to raise teachers' pay, but we should do it by increasing educational spending and cutting some spending elsewhere ($16 Billion a year in farm subsidies? $613 Billion a year on Defense? $48 Billion in earmarks?)

The US has been in a slight population boom since 1992, meaning more children to educate (approximately 11% increase). The US still has the largest percentage of the population completing upper secondary education (HS) of all countries in the world except Japan, and over the past forty years it has steadily increased (81% in 1960 to 87%). The US also has the largest percentage of the population completing higher education (college/university degree) in the world at 27 percent.

The US also has one of the worst student to teacher ratios in the world, averaging out to 16, but in lower income schools averaging over 35.

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003026.pdf

Cut the teamism. Education has been fucked up long before NCLB. In fact, it is a liberal enclave and the left has used "do it for the children" as a means of gaining power for themselves and the teachers union for 40 years.

Biased much? Did you ever stop to think that maybe the liberals actually want to help the children? Especially since the United States maintains its world position through education (though not for long). And do you realize that conservatives have favored government education mandates and control (through funding) since at least Reagan, except with the extreme right in recent years and its anti-science agenda?

We throw WAY too much money at education. Much of it doesn't go to the classroom and teachers where it should. Rather it goes to administration.

The US spends approximately 3.4% of its GDP on public primary and secondary education. That is less than Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Ireland, UK, Spain, the EU as a whole, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus, Poland, Malta, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, just to name a few. It is, however, about equal with Greece.

Leftist feel-good cirriculums dominate and as such our kids learn to either throw a ball or drop fries.

Leftist? Do you realize that our curriculum is very moderate compared to most of the world?

Science and math skills tank but we have happy little taxpayers who learn to vote in all the politically correct garbage they read in the "picture books" they were given in grade school.

Do you have any figures to back that up? No. How about this: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001.pdf

By grade eight, the United States out performed 37 of 47 countries in Math, being primarily beat by 5 Asian countries (Taipei, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Japan) and equal to European countries (Hungary, England, Russian Federation, Lithuania, Czech Republic).

Also according to this study, the US has been improving average scores since it began tracking (1995). We are behind Asian countries because Asian school systems work harder, having much longer school years (220 days average vs 180 days in the US). Asian schools are often 6 days a week, 8 hours a day.

CUT the funding, limit the course work to what matters, fire administrators, and raise teachers' pay to attract our brightest to the field. Otherwise, stop bitching about education and stop using my tax dollars to fund this toilet.

How exactly are you going to cut the funding AND raise teachers' pay? I agree that we need to raise teachers' pay, but we should do it by increasing educational spending and cutting some spending elsewhere ($16 Billion a year in farm subsidies? $613 Billion a year on Defense? $48 Billion in earmarks?)

The US has been in a slight population boom since 1992, meaning more children to educate (approximately 11% increase). The US still has the largest percentage of the population completing upper secondary education (HS) of all countries in the world except Japan, and over the past forty years it has steadily increased (81% in 1960 to 87%). The US also has the largest percentage of the population completing higher education (college/university degree) in the world at 27 percent.

The US also has one of the worst student to teacher ratios in the world, averaging out to 16, but in lower income schools averaging over 35.

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003026.pdf

Let's start with the disclaimers: I doubt the best solution is 100% government or free market and 0% of opposite. I do lean more towards free market though.

What you wrote is wrong. Let's look at the US (and all industrialized nations) in the mid to late 19th and early 20th century. For starters, they were industrialized because of the free market. Because the free market brought in the industrial revolution most people finally had more prospects than farming. Not that there is anything wrong with being a farmer, it's just that if that's not what you wanted to do in life, before the industrial revolution, you didn't really have many other options.

Those 12 hour days and 6-7 day work weeks were on the way out by the time the government got involved. Labor Unions had done a lot to change that. But even without labor unions, you eventually get people who wise up and realize that a happy workforce with low turnover is a more productive work force. In fact, it is not the government that decided that 40 hour work weeks should be the norm, it was the free market in the form of Henry Ford.

And as for your illiteracy stats, it was the industrial revolution that brought prices of paper down enough which allowed for people to learn to read and write. Also, you're stats are bunk. Illiteracy rates in 1870 was about 20% and that declines to less than 8% by 1910.

You may be interested in a paper that discusses the results of TIMSS, which is an organization that compares the quality of K-12 education in the US to that of other countries.

You can find the original paper here.

Despite the wealth of information provided by the TIMSS publications, it is fair to say that two specific TIMSS findings have captured the majority of the headlines, and have had the greatest influence on classroom practice and education policy. The most eye-opening results come from the achievement scores of students around theworld. For example, in the little multicultural, multilingual, top-performing country of Singapore, some 46% of the eighth graders scored in the top 10% of the world. And 75% of their students placed among the top 25% of all eighth graders worldwide. Just 1% of their students placed among the bottom 25% of all eighth graders around the world. This is a stunning achievement. Singapore has indeed shown what it really means to have an education system where no child is left behind. Moreover, these performance results have held up with remarkable consistency in each of the TIMSS testing rounds. Just a notch down from Singapore, the next group of top performers have been Korea, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei (formerly known as Taiwan) and Japan (mostly in this order) with Flemish Belgium trailing somewhat behind, but consistently next in line.

The U.S. scores are also worth mentioning. Roughly put, American fourth graders and eighth graders scored somewhat above the international average. But at the twelfth grade, the U.S. scored at the bottom of the industrialized world, and only significantly out-performed two countries: South Africa and Cyprus. No other country fell so far so fast. There was also a more sophisticated twelfth grade test that was reserved for twelfth graders in advanced math programs in the participating countries. On that test, the U.S. was next-to-last; even Cyprus performed significantly better. For completeness, it should be noted that the twelfth grade testing has not been repeated since 1995 and the U.S. plummet just described. This is unfortunate because the lack of follow-up testing forces us to infer whether the American mathematics programs have recovered from the results documented in 1995. Moreover, the real purpose of a K-8 program is to prepare students for subsequent study as opposed to an eighth grade TIMSS test. So our understanding of mathematics education around the world would be greatly enhanced by a schedule of testing that includes grade twelve as well as grades four and eight.4

In view of the absence of follow-up twelfth grade testing, one could speculate that the American TIMSS scores might show that the newest programs are beginning to make a difference. After all, the latest math reforms are often introduced at the earlier grades first, and then extended by one grade level per year. Could it be that U.S. high school students are performing better now because more of them are participating in reform math programs? The answer seems to be a clear no. A variety of studies have documented very little progress in high school math achievement over the last decade. To date, the NAEP scores, for example, have been most notable for their lack of improvement.

And do you know what one of the complaints against Bush's No Child Left Behind was?

That it required pedagogical methods to be scientifically proven [1].

Teachers didn't like that because then they couldn't use anecdote-based or other methods that they would prefer than methods that were "scientifically proven".

Expect similar complaints from the doctors (after all, if they were really scientists, they would've gone into research; there's a reason they chose the career that they chose), and yes, the "O admin" believes in the scientific method just as much as the Bush administration did—it's just the left-wing distortions in the media that made you think somehow Bush stood against scientific progress (remember last year, Bush proposed a relatively generous science budget, but it never got past the Democratic congress).

[1] From Department of Education website, "It only funds curricula and teaching methods that are scientifically proven to work."

A study involving 17 children (ages 12-15) who had established school refusal found the children's individual protective factors were weakened (particularly around peers)...

Yet, when the secular progressives run everything literacy is now less than it was when GOD was actually in the classrooms.

WRONG. Scroll down for the numbers; literacy rates are much higher now than at any time since at least the late 50's. You should also be aware that the definition of literacy is now much more stringent than it used to be; whereas it once meant the ability to read and write one's name, it now means the ability to read and write any simple sentence.

(Note: The CIA World Factbook rounds the literacy rate the nearest percent, so if you're planning to say "literacy in the US is only 99% today," then I'd like to preemptively call you an idiot.)

And I'd definitely like to see a comparison of Secular schools to private religious schools in literacy.

So, if you're gonna complain, complain accurately. We have less literacy now because schools are too busy trying to teach left wing agendas and "social justice", and Islam is good but misunderstood crap.

Wow, you are amazingly full of shit.

Teachers here in CO often have bumper stickers proclaiming: Welcome to Colorado, 49th in funding for schools.

I've lived here for over a decade and have never seen one of those. Moreover, the numbers show that's clearly not the case.

While I admit I'm having trouble finding good sources, I did find one survey that shows that 89% of GLBT people have at least received some college/university education. This is opposed to a mere 20% of the general population for the same year according to NCES.

Good idea, except that it would be illegal for the dean to give any info to the father about why the son is no longer in class.

I bet the son knows this, and made up that story to cover up for failing out or something worse. To someone who knows how higher education actually works, the story is wildly implausible -- but it fits with a lot of conservative mythology about universities and "political correctness." My guess is that Dad listens to a lot of talk radio.

Well excuse my bad math, I went to public school. The proposed budget for K-12 '08-'09 is $48,344,575 (http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/agencies.html) Yes that is a big number, and unfortunately I can not find a reasonably accurate number for public schools in CA... SO I have not done the math.

So, you are aware that you have no clue as to how much schools get, yet you are parroting the same old line that they don't get enough.

I understand that the state collects more taxes, it has a very high income tax. It also has an extremely high upkeep for its infrastructure.

Yes, and these things scale linearly for the most part. So, more population means more infrastructure cost and more taxes to pay for that infrastructure. This isn't a difficult concept.

What I would like to know is where are you getting that there is a Myth about under paid teachers and under funded schools.

How about:

National Education Association
National Center for Education Statistics

The average number of school days per year is 180.3. The average school day is 6.7 hours. That means 180.3 days X 6.7 hours = 1208 hours a year. Now divide the average yearly salary of $57,876. So, $57,876 / 1208 hours = $47.91 an hour. Now, I'm not saying that $47.91 an hour is going to make Bill Gates change careers, but it is certainly reasonable pay for a part time employee.

I have a relative who teaches history in Greenfield CA, he makes less than $40k a year, that includes the summer classes he teaches.

This is how the myth of the underpaid teacher gets perpetuated. Lets do the simple grade school math on this. $40k a year including summer school classes. Assuming that the 25% of of the year that he is teaching summer school accounts for 25% of his 40k salary, that means that his regular salary (which is what the above numbers are calculated from) would be $30k. So, doing our simple math, we get $30,000 / 1208 hours, so that puts him at $24.83 an hour. The average hourly wage in California is $22.11 That puts your relative $2.72 an hour into the TOP half of California wages. Now, even though your reletive is in the top half of wages, he is still $23.12 an hour below the avarage FOR TEACHERS. Now, at this point, you have to ask, 'Why is your relative making close to HALF what other TEACHERS are making?'.

Is your relative lying to you?
Is your relative 'deceiving' you by using creative accounting to make his wages look so low?
Is your relative in an unusually poor area? (Which would mean that cost of living is less)
Is your relative incompetent?
Is your relative a statistical anomaly, and gets trotted out as a way to deceive the public into thinking that his far below avarage wages are normal?

His school has also had to cut programs due to lack of funding.

Good! If schools stopped dumping money into play, they would be one step closer to offering a quality EDUCATION with the largest budget in California government.

Good point, to further it since women are increasing in the Psychology Field at about 3-1, females will be in the perfect position to understand the trends in a growing major in which women outnumber men in completely unbiased ways...

Yeah, I am aware of the I2 project. According to them IPv4, IPv6, and others are supported. Also, their list of 213 participating universities would make that about 5% of the total number of universities. It also begs the question of what subset of the participants are actually running IPv6?

We actually have a pretense of a free market in the US, or at least we did until recently. Lead weights are good for diving but not hot air balloons.

S&L scandal? Lockheed? The nationalization of nearly every industry in WWII (because it was more efficient... but that wouldn't be suitable to your original argument, eh?) No bid contracts throughout the Iraq War? Not even counting the countries we've run over in order to better benefit US business, or the tariffs we've been giving agribusiness for years because they don't want to compete and suffer the same fate as the rest of our manufacturing industries. We believe in the free market when it suits the particular interest of the top tier of businessmen who, through their influence, help formulate policy. (Please deny that major players from the energy market helped formulate Bush policies. I beg you.)

K-12 public school education costs twice as much as private schools per pupil in the US, and private schools do a lot better.

From what I gather from this DoE study, private schools do out perform government schools, but not evangelical schools - mostly Catholic and Lutheran. I haven't studied in detail their performance metrics, but I imagine the fact that parents are invested in their child's education if they're paying for it. Not to mention I don't think there are too many private schools in urban ghettos, so the numbers are probably similar if it's restricted to similar population demographics. And please provide your source on private school costs.

We have the best mortality rates for cancer and heart disease. UK has among the worst

Source? From this source, the Journal of American Medical Association: "The US population in late middle age is less healthy than the equivalent British population for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, myocardial infarction, stroke, lung disease, and cancer."

I never said free markets did solve all problems, but they solve most better than government does.

Such as? If that were the case, why in cases of national emergency are the resources of the country taken over by government? (WWI, WWII, Korea...)

Last time I checked, the US has the most college graduates of any country. Our worst college-educated state, West Virginia, has more college graduates than any country in Western Europe.

That's obviously false.

I laugh at a 100% gas tax. In America, we have this thing called freedom, and we like freedom in our daily lives, which includes driving. Freedom, economic, political, and personal, has allowed us in roughly 200 years to build an economy that dwarfs any other.

Nope. A strong state that has protected resources for US business interests has led to our wealth.

In fact, if California were a country, it would be the fifth biggest economy by some measures. Americans simply want a free lifestyle, not one dictated by central bureaucrats. Our oil dependence has not been utopian, but I don't believe in utopia. You certainly have your own problems in Europe, and most Americans wouldn't trade yours for ours.

I live in the southeast. And yes, a majority of Americans have been asking for socialized medicine, more education spending, more UN involvement in world affairs... pick any poll you like. Freedom and liberty have nothing to do with doing exactly what you want all the time.

Frankly, anyone who would quote a nut like Chomsky is hard to appeal to.

Provide one factual counter example to anything he's ever said, if in fact you've read more than quotes.

But I would submit to you that America did not quickly become the largest economy in the world by employing

There is absolutely no evidence that stretching before exercise weakens muscles (note I used the exact same phrase as the title) so long as you don't over do it.

if you haven't actually read any peer-reviewed articles about it?! You do know about scholar.google.com, right? It's not that hard to check on the people interviewed in the NYTimes article. There are many papers on the subject. Yes, there is still work to be done to answer all the questions, but your ridiculous statement that there is absolutely no evidence that stretching (static) before exercise weakens muscles just shows that you haven't bothered to read about it.

Here's your spoon-fed google search with links to a few abstracts for your edification.

http://www.acsm-msse.org/pt/re/msse/abstract.00005768-200403000-00004.htm;jsessionid=JJgJGzgYVCy4qyLKzfW21kXYSGvYP3tWmM2WDyC6Nr1nvvvH7ykd!-1853705402!181195629!8091!-1

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED448119 [PDF]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9368275

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abridged/325/7362/468

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119251161/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

http://www.cjsportsmed.com/pt/re/cjsm/abstract.00042752-200409000-00004.htm;jsessionid=JJgpcrQvSRyyCn1CG2XnW4WS6vzdsmrXnhG43kmLDT1CyhhCknr9!1600976923!181195628!8091!-1

http://apt.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1519%2F1533-4287(2001)015%5B0098%3AAEOSAN%5D2.0.CO%3B2

Promises about improvement in education by federal politicians are pure pandering.
See this chart.

See how small a percent of education is actually funded by the federal government. It should be obvious that even significant changes to federal spending will have an insignificant effect. They spend in a whole year what they spend in Iraq in less than 3 months.

What you say may be true for FEDERAL spending, but as I am sure you are well aware, k-12 and public colleges are funded by mostly by property and state income taxes.

http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html

We spent over $500 billion in 03/04 on education. In FY2008 the US government spent 515 billion dollars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States

Check the facts, you have (like most people) confused federal and local spending on these issues (not counting iraq the overall education spending throughout the US is roughly simliar to military spending).

Stupid? I think when viewed in the context of overall spending my comments are accurate.

not scientifically groundless.
While more studies need to be done, there ahve been results indicating that games do help the elderly.

http://www.mwsearch.com/Games4elderly.html

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/163960

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ506062&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ506062

http://www.nur.utexas.edu/fachome/gmcdougall/Documents/DallasMorningNews.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18275322?ordinalpos=30&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

I don't know how long ago this was for you, but I went back to school at the age of 26 and was able to get some financial aid via FAFSA. I don't think it will pay for all of your tuition and books unless you are going to a community college, but it can help someone who really needs it. It is EASY to sign up for too and got me about $3000-4000 a semester in addition to free tuition through my local community college. Of course if you have rich parents, a lot of assets, or are working a full-time job that pays well then you might not be able to. But for someone who is starting a new profession and needs the money it is great.

How to fix education in 4 easy steps

1. Make going to school non-compulsory
Kids that don't want to be in school, who have parents that don't care if they are in school, do not need to go to school. They are nothing but a distraction for the kids who want to learn. Any teacher will tell you one disruptive student will ruin the class for everyone. Public schools in the U.S. force kids who have no discipline go to school, then they are surprised when they don't listen to the teachers. The kids know the teachers can nothing to discipline them, the kids know their parents will do nothing to discipline them. I fail to see the disincentive to goof off in class here, and so do the kids, so they will goof off. Schools do not need these children and in public schools, not only do they have to go, but the public schools want them to go so that make that ever important buck from the federal and state government, education be damned. I personally know more than one teacher who cannot kick a particular kid out of their class because the school administrators tell them they can't.

2. Privatize
There is a ratio of teachers to administrators in all schools, public or private. An administrator would be like a vice principal, guidance councilor, text book researcher, sensitivity director. In a private school, the ratio is about 1:7 in public schools it's almost 1:1. Meaning for every teacher there is an administrator. And every time someone says "there's something wrong with our schools" they just tac on more administrators in a blind attempt to "fix" the problem. Administrators fix nothing, ever. Which leads me to..

3. Do away with tenure and teachers unions
The idea that teachers unions somehow are for kids has got to be the biggest lie I've ever heard. Teachers unions are for, teachers. Some people didn't know this, but if you've worked in the LAUSD for more than 3 years you cannot be fired for anything short of molesting a child, it's called tenure. Tenure is for, teachers. There is no way you can argue that keeping poor teachers (tenure) or keeping teachers that have broken the rules (teachers unions) somehow helps the kids. With these two "protective" organization are in place it takes an act of god to get rid of poor teachers. There are no teacher's unions in private schools and the level of education you get in a private school by far exceeds that in a public school. Without tenure, without teacher's unions. So at the very least it's proof that excellence does not require tenure or unions. And there is a strong argument that they do more harm than good.

4. Allow parents to take their kids out of failing schools.
I think it's a travesty that the government is going to force parents to place kids into school that they know are going to be a bad influence on the child. Parents should be able to send their child to whatever school that is reasonably in their area. It's so bad that people actually buy houses in order to get their kids sent to a particular school, and I guess for those who can't afford to move or afford a private school... to bad? That's just wrong. If we are going to be forced to pay for schools we should at least be able to select which one we're going to send our kids too, or at least let us get our money back so we can send them to a private school. The only obstacle that stops this 'voucher' system is the teachers unions. I would love to hear how the lack of a voucher system helps kids, because I'm pretty sure it only helps teachers at failing schools.


I have no belief that any of these things will change, teachers unions are far to powerful. It a huge union with almost limitless money, but it's a self perpetuating bureaucracy with the honest belief that teachers should be paid more than any other profession in the world. More than doctors, lawyers etc.. no matter how much anyone else thinks teachers deserve.

That's only partially correct. A school can release directory information, including name, and dates of attendance unless the student opts out. http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

I wouldn't want other students out there thinking that they are automatically protected. They do have to actually DO something to have directory information protected under FERPA.

http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/librarysearch/

There's a URL for everything ;)

Perhaps you should get to know the NCLBS s little better. It marks subjects and leaves it to the states to set levels and measure progress to those levels and the improvments students and schools make. Subjects A, B, and C are actually reasing (isn't that where the book should be?) writing (perhaps reports on it) and arithmetic. It provides some funding to organize testing but the bulk of the funding is to reducing class sizes by employing more teachers, school choice programs, and actions within failing schools. It in no way dictates the curriculum or mandates course material. That is all left to the states. The only requirements that the NCLBA makes on curriculum is that improvements to the students progress to states standards be substantial and maintained.

The intent and laws for the NCLBA is that states set standards and measure the students performance to those standards. It then requires an increase in performance up to the point that students are measuring to those levels for the curriculum set by the sate. If a school doesn't make the grade, the parents have an option to bus the kid to a school that does make the grade negating your imaginary intercity problem.

It always amazes me that critics of the NCLBA have very little clue about what it actually does or it's intended purpose. Instead the make shit up or believe unrelated shit that someone told them because they don't like the idea of accountability. I don't want this to turn into a massive discussion of the NCLBA but it would do you a load of good to read the actual legislation and learn something about it from a source that isn't actively working to undermine it. You can start here and you can access the bill here. I don't mean to sound like a dick but this information is readily available and had you invested a minority of time to it, you wouldn't have foolishly made your post.

I'm glad that you have a personal awareness of individuals with disabilities. Here is some stuff I found looking on the google scholar:

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/17/11/aa.pdf
"Taken together, findings indicate that computers are neither a cure-all for problems facing schools nor mere fads without impact on student learning. When used properly, computers may serve as important tools for improving student proficiency in mathematics and the overall learning environment of the school".

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/qjec.122.3.1235
"A computer-assisted learning program focusing on math increased math scores by 0.47 standard deviation." The paper presents the results of two randomized experiments conducted in schools in urban India.

I never said that computers were a panacea either; they are simply tools, just like a pencil or a piece of paper. There is no reason to call the laptops a failure and end their distribution.

Before NCLB the federal government has some requirements to give money. NCLB changed those requirements, without allocating more money. School districts are allowed to tell the DoE to take their money, take their standards, and stuff them both into the same shredder.

The recent report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel is mandatory reading for anyone concerned about math education in the US. The report details exactly how things are going wrong. Our school district (where I have kids in grades 5, 7, and 9) uses a program called "Everyday Math", which is atrocious. (The University of Chicago should be embarrassed.) The emphasis is on breadth rather than depth, and there is a "spiral" so you learn a little bit every year about a lot of different topics. Students frequently have to write little essays explaining how they got the answer. (The linked report explains that spiralling is poor pedagogy, and that good math students can't always write an explanatory essay -- they just know what to do.) The high achieving families all have their kids tutored at the local Kumon center so they can learn their multiplication tables. The low income families just suffer the consequences of inferior education. The school board and district administrators are clueless, having just agreed to try out 3 different math programs in 3 different middle schools. How on earth will they evaluate the results?

In our district, the nonsense stops in high school (which is administratively separate), and and I actually think my ninth-grade daughter is learning more math than I did at the same age. But you have to survive elementary and middle school math to get to the high quality teaching. It's such a waste.

http://www.ed.gov/

Compare that to kids in the average US city, where 50% do not graduate high school.

The Army is certainly a lot smarter than the general population.

(Note: I just checked Wikipedia and it seems that both New Zealand and the US are listed as 99.0% literate

True. Article doesn't say what spreadsheet package he used.

The only way to find out would be to buy the journal article, thrillingly entitled "Modeling the Milky Way: Spreadsheet Science".

There is no need to guess at the dollar amounts. They are published on the web. See here for the 2007 numbers. They are providing 5.3 million awards. The average award is $2620. That award does not even come close to paying for extravagant schools. According to this, there are 17 million enrolled students in 4 year colleges. So Pell Grants are helping about 30% of students.

There is no need to guess at the dollar amounts. They are published on the web. See here for the 2007 numbers. They are providing 5.3 million awards. The average award is $2620. That award does not even come close to paying for extravagant schools. According to this, there are 17 million enrolled students in 4 year colleges. So Pell Grants are helping about 30% of students.

Acording to this 2006 US goverment report:

http://nces.ed.gov/Surveys/PISA/pisa2006highlights.asp

US students ability on math and science fell bang in the middle of all participating countries (22 better than the US, 22 worse, 12 similar).

If you restrict the comparison to the OECD (generally more developed) countries, then the US looks a bit worse with 31 countries doing better, 20 worse and 5 similar.

Most people will agree that practice makes perfect. If you ask them which is more important, practice or talent, they will say that talent determines the degree of ultimate achievement. This, and other recent research, says they're wrong. Talent is highly over rated. Studies of experts and expert behavior show that a certain kind of practice produces talent.

Just doing something a lot doesn't necessarily produce better ability. For instance one may play an hour of chess every day for years and never get much better. What is needed is 'deliberate practice'. Deliberate practice is methodical and involves learning from feedback. It is reflected in the old adage: "Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect."

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ768512&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ768512

Ericsson cites a study of musicians studying at university. Their professors were asked to rate the students' chances of making it as a symphony musician. The correlation with previous practice was very strong. Those who would become symphony musicians had practiced 10,000 hours before they got to university. The second group, who wouldn't likely make it had practiced 7500 hours or less. A third group who would become music teachers had only practiced around 2500 hours.

Ericsson gives many examples of research that point out that deliberate practice is by far more important than 'talent'. Most people having trouble believing that.

Not only did the U.S. aid in Japan's economic recovery, we did our best to update and enhance their educational system.

A few years ago when I was doing research on teaching methods, I read a book reviewing results of the 1999(?) TIMMS study, and it was noted that the teaching methods used in Japan that have given their students such an edge (~1-1.5 years ahead of similarly aged U.S. students) came from research on educational methods around the 1950's.

I should mention that this edge does not come from the extremely high-pressured environments of Japanese high school (which has not been shown to be any more effective than other systems), this educational edge comes from teaching elementary school students through discovery, which is exactly the sort of learning the OLPC encourages.

Slashdot - We respond to more full articles and posts without reading them before 8:00 than most communities do all day.

Parent that I replied to (and quoted) said: "The Pell students represent the lowest income". The pell grant program is not a loan program. It is a grant that you do not pay back.

To be clear here neither the original article, the parent I replied to nor even my reply is really a comment on the "goodness" of the programs that are being impacted. We are however discussing the impacts of cutting off this funding in certain cases. I am just arguing that we should avoid the doublespeak that we criticize leaders for using.

Note in the interest of full disclosure:

The original full article is talking about both student loan and Pell grants being impacted.

I received some Pell grant money when I went to college.

school is only 6 hours a day, 5 days a week for most high school students. the rest of the time should be spent on homework, fun stuff, and hobbies. it's those hobbies that can get people ahead, like your computer hobbyist example.

too many years of "borrow and spend" republicans slashing support for schools using the very lame excuse about "cutting back money going to the school bureaucrats"

http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlit e-chart.html looks like funding support for schools continues to go up every year to me.

10%? Where are you getting your numbers? According to the department of education, the graduation rate for 4-year institutions is about 56%.

link see page 3.

Apparently American education fails to inform students that Soviet Union was not considered a "third-world" country and that many actual third-world countries have lower rates of violence than US. In any case, I am sure 100K US students raped or severely beaten up in 2004 all just were not well adjusted and had it coming.

Your comments are correct in essence, but mask a bit of the complexities. The actual definition of AYP varies from state to state, as does the state tests used to measure AYP, as do the "cut scores" separating "basic", "proficient", "advanced" and "minimal", as do the minimum number of students in a given category before that category makes the school "fail". (In Wisconsin, it is 40 students in a category -- I've seen a lot of schools with 39 special ed kids! In some states, it's as small as 5.) So, despite being a national program, the variation between states is incredibly large.

There was recently a study done by the Federal Department of Education, looking at comparing state set standardized tests to a national test (NAEP) that is given to a representative sample of students. Two facts emerged: 1) state standards vary all over the place, 2) the state standard doesn't have a damn thing to do with the educational attainments of the students. High state standards just make AYP hard, low state standards make it easy. (That's my reading of the graphs, not a real statistical statement -- but see for yourself at nces.ed.gov.)

As to your reading of the impact of failing AYP, I agree. It basically sets up schools for failure and opprobrium. Eventually, when the standard is 100% "proficient", I can guarantee that every public school will be labeled as failing. Then, whether the alternatives are better or not, public schools will be trashed. Oh well, I'm glad I went to public schools while they still existed.

I thought about this the other day, anyone know if they've ever tried splitting the smarter/average/dumb kids up into their own classes permanently from 5th or so through 12th, as in they hardly ever see the other groups anymore except between classes and at lunch? I would be curious if the social structures in each group would clash, or if the system would work.

That is known as tracking. Tracking, that is, grouping students by ability through all classes rather than judging ability by subject, was usually referred to as illegal in education courses I took or in schools in which I taught, but I cannot find a citation to back that up. The closest I found was here, which alludes to the potential for civil rights violations.