Service is honorable, but ing is free.
I could say the same to you since you feel we aren't spending ENOUGH on students. We are already spending $5000 to $8000 per student per year.
The kids that want to learn are being educated. The problem is that we have a high percentage of school age s that have no desire to be educated.
Service is honorable, but ing is free.
@ admiralsnackbar:
If federal benchmarks based on standardized testing hinder the teaching of curriculum, how will pouring more money into just such a system improve its performance?
Self-education is the kernel. You gotta have the ganas. Knowledge does not pass from teacher to student osmotically.
True, but we keep em cooped up way too long, and not providing enough vo-tech is certainly a mistake. Secondary level education ought to be done by age 12 or so. Leave em time to apprentice to trades if college is too far a reach. College isn't for everyone, certainly not at age 18.
One example simpleton is computer labs... I can give you others if you'd like.
And you'd be right to turn it on me. Unfortunately, the change I'd like to see would have to come from a higher place than a state or district budget. I understand we have different ideas about federal funding allocations, and what we spend on kids, but my position is that the best thing a country can do invest in is it's kids.
Better education costs more on the face of things, but when you factor in lost tax revenue due to unemployment or unskilled employment, and the costs of law enforcement and incarceration, you realize you get off cheap. The more kids with good educations you put into the economy, the higher the likelihood they will create businesses that can compete globally and raise the GDP and currency value, and, consequently, make education cheaper.
I also don't doubt there are kids who will never develop an interest in education because they don't give a , but smaller classes make it easier for them to get guidance, either because they get none at home, or because the system (at its present scale) often doesn't know how to plug these kids into the economy. Academically dumb kids can still be taught trades that will make them more money than McDonalds or burglary.
I'm not saying you can help people that don't want to be helped, but its cheaper to make the effort in the long run than it is to consolidate schools and guarantee that a solid percentage of students will become criminals or poverty-liners. YMMV.
We totally agree on both points. By the 8th grade they should have acceptable math, english, and history/civics basics. Make the split there...let the parents/kids choose the track and do ap ude testing and break the vocational off into it's own dedicated campus. Vocational training needs to be comprehensive and not just a place to park them till they "graduate".
Because you aren't pouring more money into the Teachers Union to placate short-timers, you're investing in facilities and new teachers. Half the problem in public schools is that class sizes are too large for people that don't have the ganas to learn.
Teaching isn't rocket science, it's about making kids accountable for their performance. You can't make kids feel the need to meet expectations in a big-ass classroom.
Agreed.
The whole problem IMHO is that the school model is out-dated and broken and is based on perpetuating teacher/administration paychecks and not on providing a better education.
You'll have no argument from me on this, man.
We agree.
Thing is, what you speak of has been happening since the 50's. It wasn't complained about until Bush (43) came into office.
That's debatable. Hard to believe they you stay with an ineffective program for 60 years.
Not all all. Probable cause is required to target a specific line.
No, and my posts have never reflected that.
Is that all it is where you live? It's something like $13,000 now here in Oregon, per student.
Maybe you're just looking at the second set of books. Ask for the "all funds budget" and then divide the number of students into that.
Not quite. It wasn't complained about after 1968 when a law was created demanding search warrants for wire-taps which was essentially rescinded by the Patriot Act. Prior to 1968, there was plenty of fuss made about the issue since JE Hoover was a surveillance-happy transves e nut.
Well, that'd be nice.
That they are required to be there and that we are required to keep them there, by law, is insane.
Not so many heads to hide behind would seem to enhance basic accountability. I can buy that.
What would be an optimal ratio, would you guess?
I'd defer to a professional teacher for the answer, but I'd say 20:1 is pushing it.
I remember taking an American History class in college from an excellent professor that had 380 people in it. You were expected to know everything in the book (he wrote it) but he didn't lecture from the book and you were responsible for that material too. Like anything else, those that wanted to learn, learned and those that didn't didn't.
Expecting that sort of self-discipline from people who aren't paying for their school (or earning their scholarships) or may not even be cut out for college seems unrealistic to me. By the time you get to college, it's a foregone conclusion that you've learned how to absorb knowledge and be auto-didactic.
Well, I wasn't born until the 80's, so please forgive me for not raising a fuss 30 years before I was born.
I see a problem now, I'm commenting. Better late than never, eh?
Did they do it at the level it's being done now? Look up "deep packet inspection"... we have many more tools to monitor now than we did before, which means more data to sift through.
Do you think that they actually had probably cause for every person they intercepted communications of?
I'll use wikipedia here, but if you wish, you can check out the links from that page...
Now tell me WC. You normally don't trust the government, right? Why would you trust them the ability to go through your mail, your message traffic, etc etc?The exact scope of the program is not known, but the NSA is or was provided total, unsupervised access to all fiber-optic communications going between some of the nation's major telecommunication companies' major interconnect locations, including phone conversations, email, web browsing, and corporate private network traffic
Shoot, they might one day use the law to track people, say, that were involved with Tea Parties, like they did with these groups...
http://www.aclu.org/national-securit...ups-activities
Among the do ents released today were more than 100 pages of FBI files on PETA. Multiple do ents indicate ongoing surveillance of PETA-related meetings and activities, including a “Vegan Community Project” event at the University of Indiana during which the group distributed vegetarian starter kits to students and faculty, an animal rights conference in Washington, DC that was open to the public, and a planned protest of Cindy Crawford’s decision to become a llama fur spokesperson.
There are groups of people who believe it is more important for kids to develop socializing skills over actually learning. They prefer kids to be promoted with age and not with achieving a set goal. I personally do not agree that kids who don't want to learn shouldn't have to go to school. Under 16 isn't an old enough age to be responsible for their actions (if they will affect them for the rest of their life). Also the higher crime from kids who aren't in school. I think magnet schools and voucher programs did everything CC, WH and admiral are wanting for improvements: smaller classes; less emphasis on teachers and more on the students; and less focus on standardize testing. The only problem is when they start looking at where to cut from budget, the parts not protected by the unions, or communities (no matter how successful) will be the first to go. For instance on the NEISD when I went to school they had Center School, and another on which got shut down not too long ago.
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