Public School Education System Thread

[SuburbanFarmer]

[quote="GrumpyCatFace" Is education subjective now?

oof[/quote]

Fine, skip that bit. Please explain how removing the DoE would change things.

Because I'm pretty sure that would just be a dinner bell for these cats to run everything:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... anies.html

the four companies that dominate the testing market -- three test publishers and one scoring firm.

Those four companies are Harcourt Educational Measurement, CTB McGraw-Hill, Riverside Publishing (a Houghton Mifflin company), and NCS Pearson. According to an October 2001 report in the industry newsletter Educational Marketer, Harcourt, CTB McGraw-Hill, and Riverside Publishing write 96 percent of the exams administered at the state level. NCS Pearson, meanwhile, is the leading scorer of standardized tests.

[K@th]

You can beat on teachers all you like

We would have been happier, frankly, if the school had flunked him out, rather than giving him a prize just for being 18. We begged them to give him the grades he earned, but they never did. Hard to blame a kid for accepting a prize. It also solidified the "everyone gets a trophy for existing," mindset. He's going to struggle with that for a few years. He's kinda butt hurt that we won't subsidize his life, but he chose to listen to the school instead of us. In his defense, school was telling him what he wanted to hear - you don't have to work hard to reach your goals.

[Smitty-48]

Standards are meaningless if they are not enforced, got so sick of being passed just for showing up, that I dropped out of high school to find a standard to measure myself against, at the Royal Canadian Regiment Battleschool. I learned plenty of critical thinking from my parents, but never had to apply it under pressure, until I got to the School of Hard Knocks.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Could it be that the things you hate about are education system are actually related to this?

http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multim ... mmary.html

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2001 and was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, is the name for the most recent update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

[apeman]

I couldn't be less concerned with which party passed which crappy bill, I am concerned with crappy bills.

[K@th]

I couldn't be less concerned with which party passed which crappy bill, I am concerned with crappy bills.

+1. Have no idea how it's relevant to the discussion.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I couldn't be less concerned with which party passed which crappy bill, I am concerned with crappy bills.

+1. Have no idea how it's relevant to the discussion.

NCLB mandated the current, fuzzy 'everybody wins' approach to education. It's also the reason that we have glorious nationwide, continuous testing every week or so.

This is why I'm so confused about you guys jumping all over the DoE... We basically told schools that 'all kids must graduate', then told them 'make everybody equal'. The rational (economically-speaking) approach to this was to simply lower all standards to the lowest common denominator.

[Smitty-48]

This is why I'm so confused about you guys jumping all over the DoE...

Education is not the role of a federal government, federal states are not unitary states, by definition.

No Politburo of Education, Ministries of Truth therein, for the federated states of the free.

If you want a Chairman Meow, move to China.

[Okeefenokee]

the four companies that dominate the testing market -- three test publishers and one scoring firm.

Those four companies are Harcourt Educational Measurement, CTB McGraw-Hill, Riverside Publishing (a Houghton Mifflin company), and NCS Pearson. According to an October 2001 report in the industry newsletter Educational Marketer, Harcourt, CTB McGraw-Hill, and Riverside Publishing write 96 percent of the exams administered at the state level. NCS Pearson, meanwhile, is the leading scorer of standardized tests.

The only reason those companies exist is because of the DoE.

[Okeefenokee]

You can beat on teachers all you like

We would have been happier, frankly, if the school had flunked him out, rather than giving him a prize just for being 18. We begged them to give him the grades he earned, but they never did. Hard to blame a kid for accepting a prize. It also solidified the "everyone gets a trophy for existing," mindset. He's going to struggle with that for a few years. He's kinda butt hurt that we won't subsidize his life, but he chose to listen to the school instead of us. In his defense, school was telling him what he wanted to hear - you don't have to work hard to reach your goals.

One of my professors was telling me something similar about her kid. He was pretty upset when he didn't get to move back in, and instead gets to live in his car.