Well, you know, PW, public schools quality is all the fault of women. If we did not have opportunities elsewhere, then all the smart ones would go back to teaching and then everything would get fixed..right?

Not good news, but not surprising. Are we counting all the ways this group has mangled important functions of government. Maybe, if there is good news here, it is that the facts are out/proved the case that services that benefit the people are worthwhile and improve our national, public life. Thank you for this report. On to fight for good public schools.

plain and simple, they are trying to privitize every single thing that’s succesful about government

private industry is never “more efficient” then the government provided service but they want to make money from that service so they make believe privitizing is a good idea

Good morning PW.

Thanks for the rundown on privatizing schools.

I was interested in that subject a lot when my son (now 27) was school age. He had minor learning disabilities & school was not for him. So he went to every kind of school that ever there was, 6 in total from K-12. 3 private schools (Manhattan style expensive), 2 NYC public schools, one a failed experiment, and one VT boarding school. The main thing that mattered was good teachers. And they were found both in public & expensive private schools. The latter turned out to be important too because of their smaller class size and greater administrative interaction with parents. Because school was hard, my son would look for cracks to slip through, and the larger classes in public schools allowed too many opportunities for that.

But when all was said & done, it was private tutoring that finally got him the skills he needed.

Short version: there is no magic in any kind of school that will provide the education everyone needs in today’s world. It’s a labor intensive, hard job.

Obama (or one of his spokespeople) said that part of his economic recover plan is to invest heavily in the education infrastructure, including preschool education.

Pukes don’t like education. Educated people tend to vote for Democrats. Also a lot of Pukes think if you think too much you’ll make the wrong decisions. You have to go by your gut feelings like the Senile Movie Star.

Just as the economic house of cards finally collapsed around George W. Bush and his cronies (and did so a good three months earlier than they’d hoped)

That’s one of the things I’m thankful for. Not the collapse, but the timing.

The notion that profit is the best motivator as opposed to dedication has been the driving force in this country for to long.

I just LOVE these folks who believe that some random set of organizational reforms will “fix” our schools. The REAL problem is, and has long been, that our schools are DESIGNED to create fools. After all, Yale and Harvard gave W a degree. And the outcome of this expensive mess is what Veblen called “trained incapacity”. We are NOT going to fix education in USA until we actually WANT informed citizens coming out of the school house doors!

The push for charter schools here in Arizona is high as many of our Repug state legislators, their spouse or family member are in the charter school business….. It has only been our Gov Janet who has helped us fight the radical legislation that would nearly do away with our public school system…..

These idiots even fought establishing a medical school here in Phoenix even with the severe shortage of MD’s the idiots just could not understand that with a successful medical school many of the doctors will stay in the state, increase in research and could impact and improve the health of Arizonians……….

I was actually disappointed in that. If there are deteriorating schools, then of course, fix them. But that’s not the answer to our educational problems. A few years ago, NYS schools had a huge incentive to fix-up/add on to their schools. My district went for it. You know where a big chunk of the money went? A new gym and lights for the football field.
Not only that, but before we were talking about merging schools since the population has dwindled here in CNY. Nope, we added on instead. Huge waste of money.

K-12 education is a joke in this country. It is goofily funded in most areas by property taxes that build in inequalities between rich and poor. And it is used as a political and ideological football, subject to whatever craze is making the rounds among the professional educational elite or being flogged by some undereducated pol with attitude.

The tragedy is that most of the solutions have been known for decades. Better, more rational, stabler funding. Recognition that education does not respond to the efficiencies of the marketplace, i.e. that a teacher who teaches 40 students is not twice as efficient as a teacher who teaches 20. Better pay for teachers to improve quality and retention. More parental involvement in the education of their children. And a setting of goals not by tests but of what will produce critically thinking citizens.

My older two kids went to a nice little private school where I felt they would get a safer and better education than in the public schools here in LA. But, then the third child came along. Started him in private too, but soon realized he was “different” and the private school couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with his special needs. In Kindergarten he couldn’t sit still on the rug for his French lessons and they wanted me to put him on Ritalin. The public schools finally classified his Aspergers and he has had special accomodations including a special class for him and his special peers to deal with the social skills.

The AMA had for a long time limited the number of graduating MDs in the hope of preventing a glut. Not sure if that is still going on.

Getting rid these for profit schools and No child left behind should be a priority for Obama. It would be nice if he were to send his kids to public schools too.

For Katymine @9

That depends on the state and the laws for distribution….. In AZ each school gets the same amount per student….. and some school districts can raise extra funds with bonds (which get approved by the voters) but Paradise Valley gets the same amount of money as South Phoenix per student….

Good schools and teachers are very very important but it takes parental involvement too.

Public school for his children would be unsafe, not only for them but for the other children and staff. His priority is his children, not what would look good.

What! We have idiots in Arizona!? I can’t believe that! I thought that we had only total fools!

Until we change our school system from a local and political one we will be permanently limited in our scope. Today, elected board members, their administrators, and activist parents decide the direction and nature of our educational system. No other system in the industrialized world suffers these compromises.

Thanks, PW. The privatization of the public school system is bad in every way, something that sounds good to people who just don’t bother to think it through.

Economist Rob Johnson said that one of the best things we could do for the economy is to compel all kids to go to public schools. We’d see a level of parent involvement and community oversight heretofore unseen.

Wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, but I’d be all for it.

OT, but wanted to thank you for your “new coats” story the other day. Got me all teary. Thank you for sharing the good news.

One of the other things that stands in the way is that unlike other countries, we don’t have any national sort of “what an educated person knows” standard. So many state and local districts have really poor outcomes for things like science, foreign languages, etc.

You are very welcome.

Education in so far as it is literacy based is counter productive. We created several new disorders to explain kids who can’t take the old paradigm of the all knowing teacher and empty vessel students. I doubt there’s a high school in the country where some fourteen year olds don’t know more about computers than anyone on the faculty. Furthermore the emphasis on education classes for teachers gets us teachers who supposedly know how to teach but who don’t know their subject all that well. The fourth and fifth grades are probably the only places in the world where long division is done with pencil and paper. Schools need to embrace the new technology (ie DVDs instead of term papers) and networked, but try telling that to a teacher.

Jane, where I live, unless you want your kids taught in a religious based school your choice is public schools, period. Our experience with our three is that unless parents are prepared to fight every day for their kids and their needs AND want/be able to help them on a personal basis(themselves or afford hiring a tutor), then the kids are lost. I had to learn Spanish so that I could haul number 1 son through his third year(and the Regents) because he’d had the same teacher for years one and two(who did basically nothing) and his teacher in year three sent home a note saying, “Unless you do something privately, these kids are all going to fail the Regents because I’m leaving on maternity leave in November and won’t be back until April.”

I have hosted foreign exchange students from UK and Germany. It was a very good experience for the students we hosted, our kids and the schools they attended. The students we hosted were generally more advanced but I am not sure that it was a fair comparison since these were somewhat more advantaged kids. I am not very much impressed with the German system where students are divided into tracks at a very early age. One track prepares them to enter the work force after HS the other to go on to advanced studies.

I would imagine the security considerations have a very large impact on where the Obama girls go to school. Sidwell Friends is used to dealing with the children of the political elite so understand the security implications that other schools, including public schools, may not.

The kicker is, Obama has never complained about having to pay school taxes for public schools while trying to get extra benefits for sending his children to private schools.

I did my student teaching in inner city schools in Flint, and trust me, we need to spend more money on schools and on teachers.

I agree it’s unfortunate that people put such a high priority on sports facilities, but if that’s what it takes to get people to support education then so be it.

Yes, parents must be involved in their childrens education. I was more aware of that with my special needs child. The teachers are so over burdened with large class numbers, they don’t have time to deal with the student who is different, who doesn’t get in line and stay there. The teachers always told me the same thing, He’s highly intelligent, we don’t know why he’s getting such low scores. Even now, with all the special education and the IEPs (Individual Education Plan) which make each of his teachers aware of his Aspergers, I get notes each and every report card that my son has trouble focusing. I can’t imagine any of those teachers telling the parent of a deaf child, your student doesn’t listen to me. Know what I mean?

I hate the way the Europeans throw twelve-year-old kids away like a piece of used tissue. That’s going to hurt them as education becomes more important in the world economy. It’s also why the comparisons between European and American students are meaningless.

Don’t get me started. I’ve been 33 years in the bidness, and I plan to retire in June. Problems I’ve seen have generally come from the state of California over the years…(whole language, teach no phonics!) which could be ignored or worked around. But NCLB is another entire animal. There is no working around it. Every single text is crap, because the standards all have to be included, which turn the texts into a hodgepodge of nonsense. You have to keep moving forward even if the kids are LEFT BEHIND. Tough shit if you don’t know your multiplication facts, time for long division.

Every federal dollar comes with strings attached that involve state and district money, so there is nothing left for local control. And every federal dollar involves lots of adults, oversight, and TESTING. I cannot imagine what is spent on testing. We’re in a budget crisis, and I offer up an end to testing until we’re on sound footing…

I honestly think it was designed to stupid down the people for the permanent republican majority.

And what % of those kids are Muslim? In addition to the economic implications, think of the social ones.

Exactly. It’s the ultimate segregation.

Ideally, there would be avenues people with both types of aptitudes to advance in school and society. I would think there are at least as many people in society with automation learning disabilities as with literacy problems. I still think the liberal arts are the glue that holds a society together, particularly in a democracy.

‘mornin’, everyone!

I would say the kids in private school “appear” to be smarter due to what they wear and nothing else. ;-)

I believe there is a big difference between educated and trained. The NCLB
is a corp. led program to train kids for what they perceive to be needed in the future. Kind of like GM building SUV plants.

The official term is cream skimming. Private schools can & do get rid of the problem students, both thru admissions and if that fails, they invite the problems to leave. Public schools can’t do that.

and his new ”Nations School” scheme has a tuition rate similar to Ivy League colleges.

In this economy he wants to sell luxury schooling with a failed brand name? That is what Jeb Bush invested in? The Florida’s teachers union really needs to pull their funds out of this deal.
Just how did the Bush family ever get rich?

Yeah, Pukes don’t know the difference between education and training. Nowadays everyone talks about education in terms of career opportunities. When I was in high school in the 60s there was a general awareness that education is primarily for personal enrichment. Pukes just don’t understand that. If you’re not making a fast buck off someone you’re just wasting your time, in their view.

Heh! Thatwas pretty much how the RC Church’s parochial model operated: Nuns ran the grade schools and priests got the kids once they’d hit the alleged age of reason.

Reminds me: One of the ways that Whittle tried to save money and ramp up profits was by turning students into clerical workers at the school. Can you imagine the problems that would create? Imagine that you were one of the school’s outcasts and that one of the school’s “Kool Kidz” (who was really a “mean girl/boy” in disguise) got access to your files.

And where are the federally mandated (for public schools only) special ed classes, nurses, speech therapists, ESL classes, etc.?

Retiring in June? Really? What are your plans thereafter?
(personal ot – I’ve lost your turkey pot pie recipe..can you re-post or email me, plz?)

TRAVEL!, and I’ll email you.

NCLB (aka “Teach to the Test” or “No School Board Left Standing”) has been blamed as one of the triggers for the rise in violence among Somali youth whose parents came to Minnesota:

By the late 1990s, thousands of Somalis were coming to Minnesota each year. The refugees were from every conceivable background, a mix of rich and poor, well-educated and illiterate. But regardless of their station in their home country, in Minnesota they all started over. At least one-third were under 18, many of them missing fathers, some both parents, orphans of the war. Some lived with distant relatives; many had experienced the horrors of war and still suffered from post-traumatic stress.

Somalis settled throughout the Twin Cities, many in Eden Prairie, Columbia Heights, Fridley, near Peavey Park and Elliot Park in Minneapolis—but the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, near the University of Minnesota’s West Bank, became the heart of the community. “Cedar,” as it is known, is home to Riverside Plaza, six high-rise towers of various heights, containing 1,303 apartments, one of which was once featured as the residence of Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Now, half of the buildings are low-income housing and they are nicknamed “the Crack Stacks.”

The young Somalis struggled hardest to assimilate to their new surroundings. They tried to fit in with the local African American community, but were ostracized for being different. American students pulled the headscarves off Somali girls and mocked students who washed their feet in the bathroom sinks before prayers. “Even being called a Somalian was an insult because of the way they used it,” says one former Roosevelt High School student.

To protect themselves, several of the boys banded together into a group called the Rough Tough Somalis. If they saw a Somali getting picked on or beaten up, they’d leap to his aid. They carried broken bottles and the sharpened tips of metal fencing as self-defense weapons.

Within a few years, the violence settled down. School became safe for Somali students, and a new group formed. The Hot Boyz were sharp dressers who sang R&B at a Roosevelt talent show and made all the girls swoon. “They dressed nice, they always asked for more tennis shoes,” remembers one young woman who was in high school at the time.

Other boys wanted to be like them, but as the clique grew, some of the new members of the Hot Boyz started getting into trouble—stealing cars or committing robberies. Before long, the community began to regard them as a gang. The Hot Boyz became a state-documented gang after five of them were involved with the robbing and killing of a Somali woman, a vendor of khat, a mild stimulant that is illegal in the U.S.

This act of violence came a few years after the Bush administration passed the No Child Left Behind act. Stricter laws on foreign language instruction had led to many prominent Somali teachers being laid off. No longer was there a connection between parents and teachers. Kids dropped out and began hanging out together, calling themselves names like Murda Squad, Riverside Riders, Somali Mafia, and Madhibaan With Attitude. These gangs were nothing like the highly organized, regimented street gangs of Los Angeles or Chicago; they were loose-knit groups with shifting alliances and constantly changing names.

“If there’s one thing that caused all this, the entire Somali gang problem, it’s the No Child Left Behind program,” says Shukri Adan, author of the 2007 Report on Somali Youth Issues commissioned by the city of Minneapolis. “In one act, they created a gang culture.“

OT
Listening to program on cspan on prez election recap. One of the panelists in discussing Obama’s use of technology sez that he was aware of YouTube so he was careful to be consistent in his campaign message in different locations.

WTF??? The other candidates didn’t know about YouTube and therefore felt free to say different things to different voters? I’m amazed that the knowledge of the internet is that primitive.

That’s fantastic! And, then write a What I Saw When I Traveled memoir?
Need a travel buddy? Ha.

Pukes really are dumber that you can imagine.

You’d a thunk they’d pick it up pretty quickly after what happened to George Allen, duh.

They know what they know don’t try to confuse them with facts of any sort.

These are the people who keep saying “Who could have predicted?” Not practiced in thinking. Critical or otherwise.

These are also the people who think that deeds have no consequences.

The relationship between a states rating in education and their “red” state factor is pretty high……. AZ is ranked 49 behind Mississippi …… and all other rankings such as drop out rate, teen pregnancy, high death rate of teens…… seem so much related to our red state status……

Is this the chicken and the egg type of scenario….. is it Repug policies and legislators that put this situation in place and because of their ideology ….. they can’t plan a way out of it……

Obama is aware of the problems of NCLB.

http://usliberals.about.com/od…..maNCLB.htm

WTF??? The other candidates didn’t know about YouTube and therefore felt free to say different things to different voters? I’m amazed that the knowledge of the internet is that primitive.

the internets are a “series” of tubes, not just “you” tube, so they didn’t understand the “you” tube was going to be the main player.

easy to explain once we realise the internets is a series of tubes

Where I teach the Charter schools ARE PART OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT, they do not drain students out of the system but actually bring former private school and homeschool students into the public schools, teachers have to be certified in what they teach. I teach AP classes and remedial classes in the morning part of my schedule and teach in a charter school in the afternoon. We have 16 charters in our district open to any student who enrolls, no extra cost and every single one has ELL and ENN students! It is a matter of meeting the needs and dreams of students and parents- the folks who pay for education. A school for the arts a Montessori school, a project basd school, a career academy. a direct instruction school, an eschool (secondary) and an online school elem and middle, an engineering school, and an entire elementary charter focused on best practices that can be more flexible than a non-charter etc. There is a way to give parent’s and kid’s choices in a way that

As I said above, after what happened to George Allen, you’d have thought they’d learn instantly. After all, the first job of a pol is to get elected.

Sad. I thought it was only the dfh’s who have problems with short term memory.
How was your Thanksgiving? Leave anything this time? Sorry to tease you. (hugs).

Teddy’s upstairs.

I had Thanksgiving at home with a few friends. Going to relatives Xmas, so ask again on 12/30. *g*

We may need more options for kids. Not all kids have the interest or ability in college prep classes. Every school district should have a college prep program whether it be on a separate campus or not. Kids who don’t make the grade should go back to the “general population”. We may also need to re-engineer “distributive education” so that kids who don’t have a taste for “book learning” can be working in apprentice programs in the afternoon while doing classromm work in the mornings…we may also need thug programs where kids who think that school is a place to act like an asshole can just “do their time”.

the big republican/conservative lie of privatization – its nothing more than dog whistle for lining the pockets of republican hacks with the taxpayers hard earned money to buy worse services than the government can offer. Its always a win-win-win for republicans: the hacks get richer, the government does less, and the average American is kept in a constant state of struggle so they have no time or ability to focus on the republican/conservative pillaging of America.
.

What % of the student body are minorities?

My dream education reform would be the end of college athletic scholarships. They don’t have them anywhere else in the world and it thoroughly distorts our public education system.

It means there is an entire alternate path to high school success which undermines the academic side of the system. Imagine if all the resources that went into afterschool teams could be channeled into in school physical education programs. It also widens class distinctions because now the only kids who make it onto high school teams are those whose parents have been expensively preparing them for it since kindergarten. (Not all sports, not all schools, but definitely true in my town.)

For all the talk about how parents need to be involved in school, I don’t think that is true at all. In other high achieving countries, the kids are just dropped off in the morning and picked up in the afternoon. In a study done in Germany, parents rated as the worst thing about teaching. Getting parents off teacher’s backs might get better teachers into the system.

Thanks PW

digg

The school systems here in Northern Europe all allow the student to choose a trade or academic track at about age 16. Some special high schools (say musical performance) require exceptional academic performance, others just a certain minimum grade average. In Finland, where I live, the top PISA scores of the country’s 15-year-olds has been overshadowed by a couple of violent school shootups by bullied boys who bought guns online. Many young Finnish guys spend inordinate amounts of time playing computer games rather than reading or interacting with friends. Indeed, today’s paper had a rather horrifying revelation that teen males only read on average about one non-school-related book a month. Teen girls were more avid readers. Nevertheless, such reading levels are good by post-literate US standards.

There are no charter schools, of course.