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School Super Asks Governor To Make His School District a Prison
quipalicious writes "A Michigan school super asks the state governor to make his school district a prison, highlighting the various rights and privileges that prisoners get and public schooling students don't."
Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it.
In outline, it was the same at the schools I went to. The most important thing was to stay on the premises. While there, the authorities fed you, prevented overt violence, and made some effort to teach you something. But beyond that they didn't want to have too much to do with the kids. Like prison wardens, the teachers mostly left us to ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culture we created was barbaric.
from "Why Nerds are Unpopular"
It is not incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition. Citation: every single link on the first page of search results:
http://www.google.com/m?q=ending+sentence+with+preposition
He misses an important point, kids already get most of those things at home.
And what if they don't? Cutting welfare and cutting schooling at the same time will guarantee that some people who had those at home or at school will get them in neither place. What, we shouldn't provide for the poor because they had to have done something to deserve it?
Also, I must say $7000 per student per year actually sounds like quite a lot to me.
It is. Less than half of that goes to education. Things like No Child Left Behind take up the rest. The unfunded mandates, paperwork to go with them, standardized tests, and all that require massive administrative overhead. We've gotten to the point where more money is spend on overhead than the children, and it's only getting worse.
And, since the anti-school crowd focuses on teachers (teacher unions, teacher pay, teacher tenure, etc.) the anti-school crowd is doing a pretty good job of directly harming children in their quest for tax cuts for the rich. They aren't even focusing on the real waste (all the administration required by the long list of standards and requirements on public schools that aren't laid on private schools), but instead focus on things purposefully designed to increase overhead while harming the children. It's a concerted effort to sabotage public school in order to push vouchers.
Learn to love Alaska
If you are tough on crime, this means, presumably, that you are arresting more people. Now, this means that the people locked up do not commit any more crimes while locked up (after is a function of whether your prison system makes sense or is just a relic of medieval thinking).
The number of youth turning to crime, according to you, is a function of the number of criminals around them when they are growing up. Now if this were true, the crime rate would be significantly affected by the imprisonment rate, all over the world. But we find this to not be the case. Although locking people up does keep them off the street, it is a very costly and inefficient way of combating crime.
Which is why the most likely explanation for the drop remains legalised abortion. It is not growing up around criminals which matters in particular, but growing up in difficult circumstances. Abortion prevents births in bad circumstances and allows mothers to only carry their pregnancy to term when it makes sense to them.
Indeed, the drop would be observed not 12 years after the measures, but 17-18 (the human violence peak). Guess what happened at the end of the seventies?
It seems like the districts we spend the most on are the WORST ONES. For example, D.C.'s public schools spend over $24,000 per student, yet they graduate fewer than half. Meanwhile, the students in the voucher program went to private schools costing less than $14,000 per student and I don't think any of them failed to graduate. The voucher program cost less money and was more successful, so naturally OBAMA KILLED IT. Draw your own conclusion about this man.
That one would not depend on who is President. The most powerful group opposing vouchers is the NEA. Not only is the National Education Association the largest union in the USA, it's also the most powerful and most politically well-connected. They say "jump", the politicians ask "how high" and are careful to ask that nicely. If these people don't like you, you're really going to have one hell of a time having a career in politics.
Just about anything that would substantially improve the USA's schools would also reduce the power of the NEA and they will not tolerate that. The welfare of the students is their last concern. The perpetuation of their jobs and of the union's power is the primary concern. Vouchers would make private schools more accessible to more families, making it easier for private schools to compete against state schools. Whenever unfettered competition is allowed, the state schools do poorly both academically and in terms of expense. The NEA knows this. The movement towards private schooling would mean that merit and actual ability to teach become more important than how much seniority a teacher has acquired. It would end up weakening their power base.
Remember that these are people who will take to the streets and protest over salary but not a peep is heard about the fact that we're teaching the students crap, that in so many places fewer than half of them graduate, that they read and write at pathetically low grade levels, that other basic skills are lacking, etc. If that doesn't explain their priorities, if that doesn't tell you who these people are and what they are about, I am not so sure what would.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Believe it or not, I actually think that the two ($17,000 / 50%) are linked. If a kid doesn't want to learn, there is NO amount of money or effort that will change it. In this case, the harder you try, the harder it is to make any progress. You can't fix broken people who like being broken. This is a cultural problem.
The only way to fix this is to fix the culture that allows this. But you can't because I can almost guarantee you is that this is a minority (ie not white) district, and if anyone mentions the culture is a failure they will be labeled "racist".If it is racist to suggest that such a culture is letting its children down, then yeah, I'm a racist.
Let's help the damned kids and quit the stupid political correctness that says certain cultures are okay when they are failing their children. Next time someone calls racism when calling the ghetto/barrio/urban culture to task, stand up and be counted. To allow this kind of thing is the REAL racism.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Parental involvement is the most significant single indicator of student success.
That's true, but how can a semi-literate parent help his kid learn how to read? How can someone barely numerate help his kid learn how to do math? How can a parent working two jobs involve himself with his kids much? And then there are the kids with alcoholic parents, or the kids in foster care.
And I discovered when my kids were in school that the educators' idea of "parental involvement" was joining in fund raising efforts, but try to engage the teachers in dialogue and you're just getting in the way.
Things haven't changed much if any since the 1950s. In 12 years of public school, I had three good teachers (luckily my first grade teacher was excellent). The rest were mediocre to downright incompetent. Once I learned to read I didn't learn anything in school I hadn't already read until I reached college. One high school English teacher gave me an F on a paper because she thought I made up the word "hierarchy". A science teacher gave me an A on a paper because he didn't understand it, it was way over his head. And this was a middle class town. Ironically (or maybe not so ironically), the town's now a crime-ridden ghetto.
Public schools suck, at least in Illinois.
Free Martian Whores!
Right.
Except that we never address the real issue, culture, because to do so would get labeled "racist" ten seconds after it is mentioned. Is it racist to point out that certain cultural values are not supported by then norms we are trying to establish (like valuing education).
When a black or Hispanic kid who's family has been here in the US for generations under performs a Mong (Vietnamese) kid who's parents can't speak English, the problem isn't "racism", it is cultural. And tossing more money at black or Hispanic education isn't solving the cultural problem.
The only thing that will fix this situation is for people to realize that the Ghetto/Bario/Urban "culture" is one of ignorance and failure and to not tolerate it at all. But even saying that I risk being labeled a "racist". It isn't racism to want people to succeed and to point out that failures of the culture don't deserve respect..
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.