Maybe my comment was too broad. It's the fundamentalist religious right. The fanatics of the right that helps the party lose elections.
Bill Gates Imposes Microsoft Model on School Reform: Only to Have the Company Junk It After It Failed
New school systems are stuck with a model designed to trash teachers, while Microsoft employees collaborate and work on teams
Using hundred of millions of dollars in philanthropic largesse, Bill Gates persuaded state and federal policymakers that what was good for Microsoft would be good for the public schools system (to be sure, he was pushing against an open door). To be eligible for large grants from President Obama’s Race to the Top program, for example, states had to adopt Gates’ Darwinian approach to improving public education. Today more than 36 states have altered their teacher evaluations systems with the aim of weeding out the worst and rewarding the best.
Needless to say, the whole process of what has come to be called “high stakes testing” of both students and teachers has proven devastatingly dispiriting.According to the 2012 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, over half of public school teachers say they experience great stress several days a week and are so demoralized that their level of satisfaction has plummeted from 62 percent to 39 percent since 2008.
Now, just as public school systems have widely adopted the Microsoft model in order to win the Race to the Top, it turns out that Microsoft realizes its model has led the once highly compe ive company in a race to the bottom.
In a widely circulated 2012 article in Vanity Fair, two-time George Polk Award winner Kurt Eichenwald concluded that stacked ranking “effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate." He writes, “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
This month Microsoft abandoned the hated system.
four key elements in the company’s new policy.
- More emphasis on teamwork and collaboration.
- More emphasis on employee growth and development.
- No more use of a Bell curve for evaluating employees.
- No more ratings of employees.
“So let me get this straight. The big business method of evaluation that now rules our schools is no longer the big business method of evaluation? And collaboration and teamwork, which have been abandoned by our schools in favor of the big business method of evaluation, is in?”
http://admin.alternet.org/education/...ter929520&t=11
Then maybe my schools were the exception. The curriculum is really weak now compared to the requirements when I was in school.
Not the AP route. It is much tougher.
The regular curriculum, yes.
And Alex Jones meditates to feel the world...
What method is more accurate Alex?
Where will the moon be in relationship to the sun and Earth in 5 years, and 25 seconds from now?
Your meditative projection?
I don't think I have enough solid data to say if "administration" is a problem or not. I know there are lots of legal requirements that have been overlaid onto the school system that administrators have to do their best to accomodate.
As for attracting people who "game the system": So what?
Ish. As someone who has been reading business books and management books of one flavor or another for two decades, I shudder at the notion of making schools "more business-like".
The number of management fads and business trends I have seen come and go simply says to me that the pointy haired ones are in full control.
Microsoft isnt' the only one dumping that ueber compe ive stupidity:
Adobe stock up 68% since abandoning stack ranking:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercoh...osofts-follow/
RG: I'll see if I can find the stat, but the growth of administrators and spending on administration has grown dramatically in the last sixty years. to the benefit of whom besides the highly-credentialled, non-teaching class of education professionals, one wonders.
Maybe the federal government should just get out of education, and allow for the 10th amendment to do as it is intended to... Allow each state to do different things, then other states will adopt what works best.
We already do that for the most part. Unless you have something specific in mind that you want to get rid of?
This sounds like yet another in a very long line of hand-wavy factless wishes that seems to pass for policy solutions these days. Give me something specific that you want done. Please.
I went deep into the math maze in high school and college including calculus, trig, analyt, etc. I guess it served it's purpose in proving I was smart enough to do it, but to be honest the most advanced math I have used in my real life is basic geometry and simple addition, subtraction, and division. I have forgotten all the higher math I learned.
But the reasoning pathways one builds are invaluable. Mental gymnastics = critical brain exercise.
The business community does not know this? The people I know in my business understand this.
I'm not arguing that. The sad fact is that the average product of the 2014 education system is vastly inferior to the average product of the 1970 system which was probably inferior to earlier educational years systems. Every year we demand less and less of our students. If you need proof of that just look at the shocking ignorance and illiteracy of your average Club poster.
Well then you did understand what higher math means to you even if you don't use it now?
You implied you did not. That's how I took it.
More is demanded of the best students imo. Much more. But not the avg. student. And if you want a glimpse why this is so look at what this STATE govt. tells schools what they want. The STATE wants graduation. Period. With or without rigor.
The logic and mental acuity required in higher math is irrelevant to whether or not the actual subject matter is repeated or applied in later life. For example, logic is rarely used per se in adult work environments ( i.e., how many times are you required to solve a syllogism written as a syllogism in business or personal life), but the use and application of logical thinking is everywhere evident in adult life, (with the notable exception of political punditry of course).
It is in that way that learning of higher math functions is relevant. My guess is that you use the critical thinking skills daily in what I know (from your reports) is a successful business. That reflects critical thinking, which reflects the necessary use of critical thinking in some of your education.
I no longer use the doctoral level statistics I learned in graduate school, but the application of logical and probabilistic thinking (plus the invaluable ability to see through useless polls and ass-backward inferences from poorly constructed methodologies) is everywhere useful in America, imo.
This guy gets it.
An SBOE candidate's website:
Thombs, self-described on her Twitter page as an “international evangelist” and real estate agent
Thombs’ website made its debut last week.
She wrote that she’s running to fight — her spellings — “adgendas and ideoligies.”
That was right after the part about teaching the basics.
Parents are “criticle,” she wrote, and she’s an “advicate” and “expereinced.”
http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01...s.twitter&rh=1
ing TX rednecks, bubbas, "Christian" evangelists, what a bunch of not-yet-descended-from-monkeys!
Last edited by boutons_deux; 01-09-2014 at 03:32 PM.
dropping harder subs to make it easier for dumb s to qualify into courses lmao...
isnt most hard courses are filled by asians or fkn international students on scholarships? then once they graduate, give them a visa or citizenship to keep the talent
Another red state followig the Repug/tea bagger/VRWC strategy of devaluing, defunding, denigrating public schools (aka "let's privatize everything, tiest possible schools for highest possible price")
What’s the Matter With Kansas’ Schools?
KANSAS, like every state, explicitly guarantees a free public education in its Cons ution, affirming America’s founding belief that only an educated citizenry can preserve democracy and safeguard individual liberty and freedom.
And yet in recent years Kansas has become the epicenter of a new battle over the states’ obligation to adequately fund public education. Even though the state Cons ution requires that it make “suitable provision” for financing public education, Gov. Sam Brownback and the Republican-led Legislature have made draconian cuts in school spending, leading to a lawsuit that now sits before the state Supreme Court.
The outcome of that decision could resonate nationwide. Forty-five states have had lawsuits challenging the failure of governors and legislators to provide essential resources for a cons utional education. Litigation is pending against 11 states that allegedly provide inadequate and unfair school funding, including New York, Florida, Texas and California.
Many of these lawsuits successfully forced elected officials to increase school funding overall and to deliver more resources to poor students and those with special needs. If the Kansas Supreme Court rules otherwise, students in those states may begin to see the tide of education cuts return.
Kansas’ current cons utional crisis has its genesis in a series of cuts to school funding that began in 2009. The cuts were accelerated by a $1.1 billion tax break, which benefited mostly upper-income Kansans, proposed by Governor Brownback and enacted in 2012.
Overall, the Legislature slashed public education funding to 16.5 percent below the 2008 level, triggering significant program reductions in schools across the state. Class sizes have increased, teachers and staff members have been laid off, and essential services for at-risk students were eliminated, even as the state implemented higher academic standards for college and career readiness.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/01/08...om=mostemailed
elections have consequences: electing Repugs s up everything (but red neck, cowboys, bubbas, red-staters keep ing themselves up)
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