Bravo John Stossel!

[Alaska Darin]

There's only so much time in a day, folks - the schools can't teach your kid everything from how to wipe himself to how to do calculus.

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The educational community and motherment share a pretty good amount of blame for this phenomenon. They started seizing more and more subjects to call their own (to the demise of the fundamentals they're supposed to be teaching) and now B word because there isn't enough time in a day and suprised because the expectations that they've brought upon themselves can't be met. They're simply reaping what they've sown.

[The Avenger]

The educational community and motherment share a pretty good amount of blame for this phenomenon.  They started seizing more and more subjects to call their own (to the demise of the fundamentals they're supposed to be teaching) and now B word because there isn't enough time in a day and suprised because the expectations that they've brought upon themselves can't be met.  They're simply reaping what they've sown.

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So it's the schools/teachers that are clamoring to teach more and more topics? That's news to me....

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

-Ever wonder why the only government expenditure you actually get a vote on is the public school budget? You don't get to vote for the police, fire, town road budgets, do you? In a climate why people are tired of taxes they take the opportunity to vote down their taxes whenever they can. Add in people who feel that they shouldn't have to pay any school taxes because they don't have kids or don't have kids in public school, and you often have a hard time passing the budget. Funny how these same people complain about how class sizes are too big and the kids come out of the system stupid.

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Had you watched the show you would have learned that America spends more than many other nations per student, but with a lower result.

 

These numbers are old, but illustrate the point perfectly.

 

Dollars per snot-nose.

 

Money is not and never has been the problem in American education. The problem is that the money is not linked to the student through vouchers. There is no choice. There is no efficient market to solve the problems of education.

[RuntheDamnBall]

There are a number of things wrong with the education system today, but to lay all the blame at the feet of teachers, big government and the teachers unions in wrong.

 

Here are some of the problems, as I see them:

 

-Not enough parents care about their child's education. Many think they send their kids to school and they shouldn't have to particpate at all in their child's education. They don't help kids with homework, they may not even care if their kid does their homework. I believe the biggest reason a kid fails in school is that education is not valued or practiced at home.

 

-Public schools have to educate EVERYONE. They don't get to select only those students who want to learn, come from families that understand and support education, and have the desire to learn. They have to take kids from all walks of life, including those kids who have much bigger concerns about learning (gangs, drugs, poverty, bad home situations, etc.). I don't think I'd have had a very successful education if I lived in poverty and went home to an abusive home every day. When you have to teach EVERYONE, this certainly brings down the average.

 

-Ever wonder why the only government expenditure you actually get a vote on is the public school budget? You don't get to vote for the police, fire, town road budgets, do you? In a climate why people are tired of taxes they take the opportunity to vote down their taxes whenever they can. Add in people who feel that they shouldn't have to pay any school taxes because they don't have kids or don't have kids in public school, and you often have a hard time passing the budget. Funny how these same people complain about how class sizes are too big and the kids come out of the system stupid.

 

-There seems to be a growing call to teach EVERYTHING in school. Your kid didn't learn about sex? The schools should have taught him. Kid doesn't know how to register to vote? School should have tagught him. It seem that the rule is that if the subject matter could be included in a book, the schools should teach it because "its book learning". There's only so much time in a day, folks - the schools can't teach your kid everything from how to wipe himself to how to do calculus.

 

Are there bad teachers out there? - you bet. The teachers unions protect bad teachers because, well, they're union members. These things don't help. But to say that this is the fault of teachers is a slap in the face to every good teacher out there (and there are plenty) who works hard to make sure your kid is learning as much as he possibly can given the situation (hey, somebody's got to, right?).

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Good, rational post.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

Good, rational post.

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Why? Because it supports a system that is obviously broken and corrupt? To place the blame on the shoulders of parents is illogical for one reason: most children spend mre time per week in a CLASSROOM than at home.

 

Teachers should be teaching. And if they're not effective, they shoudl be fired. I don't care what their intentions are. They must perform. And right now, they have no incentive to.

[X. Benedict]

Money is not and never has been the problem in American education. The problem is that the money is not linked to the student through vouchers. There is no choice. There is no efficient market to solve the problems of education.

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Vouchers would not necessarily create an efficient market for education.

Check your local school budget, most large expenditures aren't on a per pupil basis, for example, heating a school or busing. Vouchers create a situation where the taxpayer is fully subsidizing a school and all its expenses as well as the students who opt out. For example, the price of educating 20 students may be $140,000 at $7000 a head, but the price of educating 30 students in the same grade level may only be $150,000.

 

Is it cheaper to have your family live together? Or to divide it up into two apartments? If somebody new moves in with you, your expenses don't rise proportionally per capita. Why should I pay for a paraeducational system when the heating, teachers, bus, building, and labor are already paid for?

 

The failure of voucher proponents is they fail to demonstrate how this saves money?

[Bill from NYC]

Why? Because it supports a system that is obviously broken and corrupt? To place the blame on the shoulders of parents is illogical for one reason: most children spend mre time per week in a CLASSROOM than at home.

 

Teachers should be teaching. And if they're not effective, they shoudl be fired. I don't care what their intentions are. They must perform. And right now, they have no incentive to.

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In my district the 9 member school board control the budget and negotiate raises with teachers. All 9 board members had their campaigns financed by the teachers union. They gave the teachers a 5% yearly raise, cut supplies to students 35%, and gave each teacher a laptop.

Then, they accused anyone who opposed the budget as being anti-kid.

 

The above is only one of many horror stories.

[RuntheDamnBall]

Why? Because it supports a system that is obviously broken and corrupt? To place the blame on the shoulders of parents is illogical for one reason: most children spend mre time per week in a CLASSROOM than at home.

 

Teachers should be teaching. And if they're not effective, they shoudl be fired. I don't care what their intentions are. They must perform. And right now, they have no incentive to.

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Joe, you remind me a bit of the President on 24 who screams from the top that he "wants results!!! doesn't care how!!!"

 

Teachers should be teaching. When they have to be surrogate parents also, it brings everyone else down. That is definitely happening here in New York. In NY state, teachers have to have a master's degree and undergo a pretty strict certification process. It's no quick decision on the part of most of these folks to become teachers to get the summers off. It's tough work, and the less it's appreciated the harder it's ever going to be to get good people to teach.

 

I have several good friends who are young, teaching, have invested tens of thousands of dollars and unfathomable amounts of time in their profession. While they get great marks from their superiors and are good teachers (I've seen them in action), the unprecedented amount of help these kids need -- they are not prepared for LIFE, let alone fractions -- has a few of these friends wondering if they want to commit to this, even though it's what they've always believed in, what they've always believed they wanted to do.

 

There is only so much blame you can place at the foot of the teachers. Kids may spend a lot of the week in school (still, 8 hrs a day is not a majority of time) but they will spend more of their lives with their families, and those families need to provide preparation, encouragement, discipline, and care to their kids. If the kids don't get it at home, the teachers are left holding up a hugely unfair portion of the equation.

[The Avenger]

Why? Because it supports a system that is obviously broken and corrupt? To place the blame on the shoulders of parents is illogical for one reason: most children spend mre time per week in a CLASSROOM than at home.

 

Teachers should be teaching. And if they're not effective, they shoudl be fired. I don't care what their intentions are. They must perform. And right now, they have no incentive to.

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Looks like you're completely absolving parents from any responsibility to teach their kids or foster a home environment where education is valued. Yes sir, it's all the teachers - they don't do their job and that's why my kid is stupid. Johhny doesn't know how to read because he's got a bad teacher, not because his parents let him roam the streets after school instead of doing his homework.

 

By your logic, inner city schools must just be filled with terrible teachers because the kids test so poorly. It has nothing to do with the fact that these kids have no home life and nobody making sure kids are going to school, doing their homework and staying out of the trouble. Kids in affluent suburbs do better because they have better teachers, not because they have good parental support and come from homes where Dad's a doctor and Mom's a lawyer and education is valued.

 

If only we could clone the teachers of Scarsdale and let them teach everyone...

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

Joe, you remind me a bit of the President on 24 who screams from the top that he "wants results!!! doesn't care how!!!"

 

Teachers should be teaching.  When they have to be surrogate parents also, it brings everyone else down.  That is definitely happening here in New York.  In NY state, teachers have to have a master's degree and undergo a pretty strict certification process.  It's no quick decision on the part of most of these folks to become teachers to get the summers off.  It's tough work, and the less it's appreciated the harder it's ever going to be to get good people to teach.

 

I have several good friends who are young, teaching, have invested tens of thousands of dollars and unfathomable amounts of time in their profession.  While they get great marks from their superiors and are good teachers (I've seen them in action), the unprecedented amount of help these kids need -- they are not prepared for LIFE, let alone fractions -- has a few of these friends wondering if they want to commit to this, even though it's what they've always believed in, what they've always believed they wanted to do.

 

There is only so much blame you can place at the foot of the teachers.  Kids may spend a lot of the week in school (still, 8 hrs a day is not a majority of time) but they will spend more of their lives with their families, and those families need to provide preparation, encouragement, discipline, and care to their kids.  If the kids don't get it at home, the teachers are left holding up a hugely unfair portion of the equation.

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Oh, I concur that parents share a great deal of responsibility in their child's education. Of that there is no doubt. I'm already teaching my daughter to read and to do simple math. But I EXPECT, nay I DEMAND that when I send myc hild to school, she should be LEARNING something rather than having to work at the pace of the least intelligent student.

 

The school system went to sh-- when they decided to allow remedial and re-tarded students into mainstream classrooms. What it meant was rather than pursuing excellence with the brightest students, the districts dumbed everything down so the slow kids could keep up. In the end, all you've done is hurt our best and brightest...and the unions went along with it merrily.

 

My fixes for education:

 

1) Link all education spending to the individual student.

 

2) Break the union and tenure structure.

 

3) Re-segregate schools so that the brightest and most promising get the best.

 

4) Re-introduce vocational education for kids who can't handle academia.

 

You do these four things and all of the sudden, you won't need minority bussing. You won't need Charter Schools. You won't need any of the band-aids of the past because the very system itself will be fixed, and fixed correctly.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

Vouchers would not necessarily create an efficient market for education.

Check your local school budget, most large expenditures aren't on a per pupil basis, for example, heating a school or busing. Vouchers create a situation where the taxpayer is fully subsidizing a school and all its expenses as well as the students who opt out. For example, the price of educating 20 students may be $140,000 at $7000 a head, but the price of educating 30 students in the same grade level may only be $150,000.

 

Is it cheaper to have your family live together? Or to divide it up into two apartments? If somebody new moves in with you, your expenses don't rise proportionally per capita. Why should I pay for a paraeducational system when the heating, teachers, bus, building, and labor are already paid for?

 

The failure of voucher proponents is they fail to demonstrate how this saves money?

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It's not about saving money. It's about providing an education rather than a rubber-stamped graduation.

 

Personally, I could care less what they spend per student. What matters to me is that if I pay taxes to send my kid to school, I should have a choice on HOW to spend my school tax dollars.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

Looks like you're completely absolving parents from any responsibility to teach their kids or foster a home environment where education is valued. Yes sir, it's all the teachers - they don't do their job and that's why my kid is stupid. Johhny doesn't know how to read because he's got a bad teacher, not because his parents let him roam the streets after school instead of doing his homework.

 

By your logic, inner city schools must just be filled with terrible teachers because the kids test so poorly. It has nothing to do with the fact that these kids have no home life and nobody making sure kids are going to school, doing their homework and staying out of the trouble. Kids in affluent suburbs do better because they have better teachers, not because they have good parental support and come from homes where Dad's a doctor and Mom's a lawyer and education is valued.

 

If only we could clone the teachers of Scarsdale and let them teach everyone...

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Read my post below. Of COURSE parents have responsibility in educating their own child. I do it myself. I want my daughter to have every advantage. Why? Because the kids out there who aren't being educated by the schools will one day be the adults providing the services that she will need as a successful person.

 

As I've said before, my wife teaches in the inner-city and the problems with families there are apparent. But I'd wager to say that 70% of the teachers in her school are lifers just hanging on for the last five years to retirement.

 

And it isn't just that way in inner-city schools, either. My mom taught in a suburban school district. Her coworkers and herself retired en masse, but they ALL admitted that they wanted to five years earlier. Guess what? If I was the parent of a student of one of those teachers I'd be pissed off too!

 

Now, if you work in the business world you know that if you're incompetent or ineffectual, you get fired on the spot. Why shouldn't teachers be held to the same standard?

[The Avenger]

Had you watched the show you would have learned that America spends more than many other nations per student, but with a lower result.

 

These numbers are old, but illustrate the point perfectly.

 

Dollars per snot-nose.

 

Money is not and never has been the problem in American education. The problem is that the money is not linked to the student through vouchers. There is no choice. There is no efficient market to solve the problems of education.

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Dollars per capita isn't a very helpful statistic at all - you simply take all the money spent on education as a nation and divide it by the number of students, as if each kid got an exactly equal portion of funds - you and I both know that's not true.

 

In affluent suburbs the kids are getting substantially more resources than kids in inner cities or on indian reservations. The have better facilities, more computers, and can offer a wider range of programs (how many inner city schools offer Latin or AP courses?). By contrast, many schools in NYC still heat their bulding with COAL - where the hell do you even buy coal these days? Somebody's job at the school is to shovel coal into the bolier as was done 100 years ago.

 

I think you wlso have to take into account how other nations track their students. In Japn from very early on you are put on a track to go on to higher education very early. If you show promise at age 6 you get put on a track to go to the best universities in japan and you get the education spending that goes with that. If you don't show promise early you are tracked to learn how to be a factory worker for Mitsubishi and the system doesn't spend as much educating you.

 

Per capita figures assume that everyone gets the same equal share of education spending - that's simply not true.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

I think you wlso have to take into account how other nations track their students. In Japn from very early on you are put on a track to go on to higher education very early. If you show promise at age 6 you get put on a track to go to the best universities in japan and you get the education spending that goes with that. If you don't show promise early you are tracked to learn how to be a factory worker for Mitsubishi and the system doesn't spend as much educating you.

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And that's the way it should be. Let's face it. Not everyone is made for college.

 

And not everyone should have the opportiunity, if they're not really worth it.

 

Cruel, yes. True, absolutely. Just like some people will never be able to bench 300 pounds, others will never be able to understand abstract ideas. Those people should be educated accordingly.

[The Avenger]

Read my post below. Of COURSE parents have responsibility in educating their own child. I do it myself. I want my daughter to have every advantage. Why? Because the kids out there who aren't being educated by the schools will one day be the adults providing the services that she will need as a successful person.

 

As I've said before, my wife teaches in the inner-city and the problems with families there are apparent. But I'd wager to say that 70% of the teachers in her school are lifers just hanging on for the last five years to retirement.

 

And it isn't just that way in inner-city schools, either. My mom taught in a suburban school district. Her coworkers and herself retired en masse, but they ALL admitted that they wanted to five years earlier. Guess what? If I was the parent of a student of one of those teachers I'd be pissed off too!

 

Now, if you work in the business world you know that if you're incompetent or ineffectual, you get fired on the spot. Why shouldn't teachers be held to the same standard?

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So what's the standard by which teachers will be judged? I hear all the time that teachers should be judged on merit - but how do you determine who's a good teacher and who's not? Most people say test scores of the kids, but that doesn't make much sense to me and can be harmful.

 

Now I'm sure your wife is a good teacher, and bless her if she teaches in the inner city. If she did her best to teach her kids but they weren't particularly good students (after school mom/dad weren't home so they hung out on the corner and got into trouble, or there was drug/alcohol abuse in the family, or there was abuse at home, etc.), her kids might not test so well. Is your wife suddenly a bad teacher? If she moved to a job at a great school in the suburbs and her kids tested 50% higher than her city students is she suddenly a 50% better teacher?

 

People love to talk about teacher standards, but it doesn't exist - you can only teach what your given. Bad teachers teaching good kids will do better than good teachers with challenging kids. What it does if push everyone to want to teach is good schools and abandons inner city schools where nobody wants to teach challenging kids.

[X. Benedict]

It's not about saving money. It's about providing an education rather than a rubber-stamped graduation.

 

Personally, I could care less what they spend per student. What matters to me is that if I pay taxes to send my kid to school, I should have a choice on HOW to spend my school tax dollars.

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Well that is different then, I can see your point, but then you are a proponent of vouchers even if it creates an inefficient market. I don't have kids, but why would I want to increase my tax burden for your kids when the largest expenditures are already covered?

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

So what's the standard by which teachers will be judged? I hear all the time that teachers should be judged on merit - but how do you determine who's a good teacher and who's not? Most people say test scores of the kids, but that doesn't make much sense to me and can be harmful.

 

Now I'm sure your wife is a good teacher, and bless her if she teaches in the inner city. If she did her best to teach her kids but they weren't particularly good students (after school mom/dad weren't home so they hung out on the corner and got into trouble, or there was drug/alcohol abuse in the family, or there was abuse at home, etc.), her kids might not test so well. Is your wife suddenly a bad teacher? If she moved to a job at a great school in the suburbs and her kids tested 50% higher than her city students is she suddenly a 50% better teacher?

 

People love to talk about teacher standards, but it doesn't exist - you can only teach what your given. Bad teachers teaching good kids will do better than good teachers with challenging kids. What it does if push everyone to want to teach is good schools and abandons inner city schools where nobody wants to teach challenging kids.

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OK, let's address this issue:

 

Very few teachers ever have stupid classes year in and year out. So, a LONG-TERM evaluation is possible, IMO, one that takes into account grades and scores over say a 5 year period.

[The Avenger]

And that's the way it should be. Let's face it. Not everyone is made for college.

 

And not everyone should have the opportiunity, if they're not really worth it.

 

Cruel, yes. True, absolutely. Just like some people will never be able to bench 300 pounds, others will never be able to understand abstract ideas. Those people should be educated accordingly.

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That sounds great, but when they come to you and tell you that they've evaluated YOUR 6 year old and determined he's headed for factory work, you'd go nuts (and you should). The reality that some people have more inherent capability to learn does not jive with the American ideal of equal opporunity for all, so there is no ability to funnel spending to kids who will ultimately learn more.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

That sounds great, but when they come to you and tell you that they've evaluated YOUR 6 year old and determined he's headed for factory work, you'd go nuts (and you should). The reality that some people have more inherent capability to learn does not jive with the American ideal of equal opporunity for all, so there is no ability to funnel spending to kids who will ultimately learn more.

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They used to do it in the district where I went to school. In fact, you had to take an evaluation when you moved into the district. I sh-- you not.

 

And yes, kids were put on tracks of vocational, general or college prep education.

 

And it worked. The kids who couldn't handle academia almost always ended up in vo-tech where they could learn a useful skill.

[The Avenger]

OK, let's address this issue:

 

Very few teachers ever have stupid classes year in and year out. So, a LONG-TERM evaluation is possible, IMO, one that takes into account grades and scores over say a 5 year period.

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I still say your wife, in her inner city school teaching kids of parents who nevr got an education or have low-paying jobs, comes out as a "worse teacher" over 5 years than an average teacher in Scarsdale who gets kids of doctors and lawyers. It's the quality of the student that test scores measure, not necessarily the quality of the teacher.