Stupid America...

[ItsonlyExperiment626]

Bobcat-That is great that the union will have yur back if you ever need it, but it seems as though they will also back the proven racist, incompetent and sexual abusive teachers who is sitting doing nothing in these rubber rooms as well.

 

[graygables]

I didn't watch the show, but have read parts of the transcript. I am a former teacher myself (although I refused to join the NEA, joined a private union instead). My children now attend a virtual charter school in Ohio.

That said, I grew up in Germany and went to DoD schools which were excellent, when I moved back to the States, my 8th grade counselor had difficulty placing me b/c I was beyond the 8th grade work. In Germany, we had an exchange program in place where some of us would switch out with German students a few days every few months. In the 5th grade, my German counterpart was learning not only German (her native language), but had classes in French, Latin, and English (and was fluent enough in English to do OK at my school) They were also doing some algebra along with world history and science. In the 5th grade. I always returned to my school grateful for what I *didn't* have to learn! They didn't tie up their funds with "sports", either. Those were handled through each town's "rec center". School was school, sport was sport.

American schools, no matter how good they are in relation to other American (or Ohio) schools are still bad. Many, MANY parents do not value education and do not teach their children to value it (along with respect, proper behavior, self-discipline, etc), which gives teachers difficulty in the classroom. Teachers are not allowed to fail the star basketball player, who cares if he can read or not? Principals are under pressure, school boards are under pressure and they all think that throwing money at the situation is the solution. In our local district, the levy has failed more times than I can count b/c of the abhorrent amount of waste in this district (which performs as "excellent", btw). As such, they dropped all extracurriculars over the summer. What happened? Parents joined a booster club and now all the sports are privately funded. Suddenly, the school CAN function (still at "excellent") with less money. Hmmmmm. Until the teachers can focus on teaching (and teach at higher levels than the current expectations, another VERY IMPORTANT point), American schools will always perform poorly internationally.

School choice is coming. People are pulling their kids out to homeschool or enroll in charter schools in numbers that won't be able to be ignored much longer. BTW, one reason my DDs go to a virtual charter school is so they don't have to hang around with 11yo's whose parents take them to see movies like Hostel. The public school monopoly has driven me to seek education elsewhere.

 

[Puffy2]

What about the failure of the "No Child Left Behind" BS that has been shoveled onto the public school systems by the Bush administration?

Madates that force the school systems to adopt "new" text books that follow the "new" curriculum and "more testing" and smaller class sizes ... but not enough money given to the states to pay for new texts, or testing, or classrooms and teacher.

So the state tax payers foot the increased bill while Bush's friends (the text book publishers and testing corporations pocket all the cash).

Which may be fine and dandy if it actually helped Johnny or Jane read any better, but it hasn't and won't. Just another example of the American people getting the screws put to them.

 

[ItsonlyExperiment626]

What about the failure of the "No Child Left Behind" BS that has been shoveled onto the public school systems by the Bush administration?

Madates that force the school systems to adopt "new" text books that follow the "new" curriculum and "more testing" and smaller class sizes ... but not enough money given to the states to pay for new texts, or testing, or classrooms and teacher.

So the state tax payers foot the increased bill while Bush's friends (the text book publishers and testing corporations pocket all the cash).

Which may be fine and dandy if it actually helped Johnny or Jane read any better, but it hasn't and won't. Just another example of the American people getting the screws put to them.

It's been said time and time again. If you give the schools more money, the administrators will spend it on themselves with bigger and more posh buildings. Giving more money is not the solution. Finding administrators who actually cares about your child's education, take risks and take on new ideas to make learning a fun experience for the kids so the kids will be engaged with the process of learning is what needs to be done.

 

[DVCPAT]

I sure hope that people understand that you can't believe everything you see on TV. John Stossel is a master at making things sound the way he wants them to. The way he sounded was that there are no schools performing well in the US. They all fail. Everything he talked about was negative. As some other posters said--what about the parents responsibilities to their children? Many of the schools that are failing are in areas where the parents don't give a flip.

John Stossel said affluent areas are doing just fine. It’s the schools in the surrounding areas that don’t perform. Teachers that blame the parents for the embarrassing performance of US schools sound like General Motors blaming foreign competitors for poor sales. Whenever you have a monopoly like the teachers unions, you can never reward excellence or punish poor performance.

Our education system is like a page out of Communist Russia, every member must tow the party line. Why improve, our contract doesn’t mention it!! Unions are the only organization that can take a group of high paid millionaires (baseball players) and make them feel cheated for playing a kids game.

 

[chobie]

It's been said time and time again. If you give the schools more money, the administrators will spend it on themselves with bigger and more posh buildings. Giving more money is not the solution. Finding administrators who actually cares about your child's education, take risks and take on new ideas to make learning a fun experience for the kids so the kids will be engaged with the process of learning is what needs to be done.

If only...My kids last school district abolished all "fun" lessons as they deemed they would not help the kids perform better on "the test".

 

[chobie]

John Stossel said affluent areas are doing just fine. It’s the schools in the surrounding areas that don’t perform. Teachers that blame the parents for the embarrassing performance of US schools sound like General Motors blaming foreign competitors for poor sales. Whenever you have a monopoly like the teachers unions, you can never reward excellence or punish poor performance.

Our education system is like a page out of Communist Russia, every member must tow the party line. Why improve, our contract doesn’t mention it!! Unions are the only organization that can take a group of high paid millionaires (baseball players) and make them feel cheated for playing a kids game.

Perhaps you should actually read some of these contracts. Many do have extensive language about improvement that it written into the union approved evaulations. Maybe if some the administrators in the central office ever deigned to step foot in a classroom they would have a better idea of how to improve teaching.

Even if a contract does not talk about improving to imply that teachers cannot be bothered and do not care that their students learn is a big reason why no one wants to go into the profession and why so many get burned out and leave.

Do you honestly believe that people go into teaching just so they can belong to a union that will let them do a crappy job?

 

[Bojo]

Do you think that maybe the reason children in those countries outperform their US counterparts is beacuse their parents do not take them out of school for trips to WDW???

JUST KIDDING!!!!!!

I think that you have to look at this program for what it was .... a 40 minute commercial for Educational Vouchers. Did anybody catch what "international test" was used to make the comparison?

 

[lbgraves]

The NCLB thing has to be changed as well. It doesn't work. Here there is a school that missed the mark 2 or 3 years in a row so all of the kids in that area have the right to go to another school of their choice within the district. We got a bunch of them this year. Now our school's demographics are totally different. It will be interesting to see how those students do this year when it is time for our testing.

 

[Karel]

Of course they wouldn't have to be left behind in public schools. There are private schools now that educate special education students. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, one of the provisions of IDEA is that if the student can't receive an adequate education in a public school, they can be sent to a private school that will provide an appropriate education. My point is that not every private school that accepts vouchers should be forced to comply with IDEA regulations. What I don't want to see is simply a system where the voucher money can only be used if the private school is operated the exact same way as the public school was. That's nothing more than replacing a model that does work with a model that doesn't.

Ok, I didn't know which way you were going with special ed. Whenever special education is brought up as an expense, I get rather nervous.

Yes, there are a lot of private schools for special ed but those are mainly for autistic, severly handicapped or emotionally disturbed kids who could not function in regular school. I don't want to be sent back to the 50's and 6o's, where anyone who 'learned' differently or couldn't keep up with everyone else was sent to 'private' school.

Could you explain to me the model of public school that doesn't work? For me, my elementary school 'works'. The teachers come up with lessons, some interesting, some boring and the kids come in and learn. How would a private school do that differently?

Aren't there problems that just occur naturally when dealing with a group of children? Or that teachers are people too?

Example: I have a friend who was telling me about a woman who teaches at her school. The woman is getting nasty letters from a parent about the fact that she is teaching while she is pregnant. How dare she expose her five year old to pregnancy.

I usually like John Stossel, and there are problems with unions and teachers and schools. Nothing is perfect. But there are people out there who do try to educate and try to do the best they can.

 

[Karel]

Also, for all of you who think you have "excellent" schools--bet they don't do so well when compared to schools in Belgium (which were highlighted in the program).

Please tell me how I go about comparing my school to Belgium schools. What kind of test should I give?

I think my kids are getting a good education. I have no desire to see how they stand up against Belgium kids.

A good education means to me that they will graduate from high school, find a career that makes them happy and have enough money to support themselves and contribute to society in a positive way.

I have an 'above average' son and a learning disabled son. I don't judge them based on how the other did. I don't demand that my LD son lives up to his older brother's standards. I just want him to do the best that he can do.

 

[Bayshore Bandit]

"Did anybody catch what "international test" was used to make the comparison?"

Something I'd like to know also, as well as what the actual results were (instead
of just "they cleaned our clocks".

I've been teaching for 12 years, and have never had to give my students an
international exam.

 

[Charade]

Do you honestly believe that people go into teaching just so they can belong to a union that will let them do a crappy job?

I do. Of course not all but a lot of people go into certain unionized jobs (including teaching and public service) because of the benefits and they know that it's near impossible to get fired.

 

[ItsonlyExperiment626]

"Did anybody catch what "international test" was used to make the comparison?"

Something I'd like to know also, as well as what the actual results were (instead
of just "they cleaned our clocks".

I've been teaching for 12 years, and have never had to give my students an
international exam.

The Belgium kids averaged 76% while the US kids averaged 46% and I do believe these were high school aged kids.

 

[poohkie]

I don't see any students posting so I think i'll throw in my .02.

I hated school. I hated going. I hated the teachers. I hated everything about it. And you wanna know why? No one cared. When I was fairly young I found out I had a problem with my eyes no one knew about it. I got it fixed but the damage was done. I was left far far behind because when the teacher would write anything on the board I would turn about the letters and numbers. My parents went to them and said somethings wrong. No one did anything about it or even paied them any mind. My mother had meetings with them and the very first thing they said we there must be a problem at home.

We we moved down here to GA and I did one year of public school. And you know what I got put in the lower level classes because I didn't score high enough on some test to be put anywhere else. In these classes that didn't teach me a thing I didn't already know. And no one cared. No one tried to take the time to try and help me or to even try and catch me up a little bit. Half the kids in my class didn't speak english. The other half wouldn't sit down and shut up. So most of the class was spent hearing the teacher yell as us. My mother came into the class room and it was no different.

At 11 yr. old I went to them and said you've got to do something different I can't stand this anymore. Because I knew I could do better. I knew if I was given a chance I could learn. I knew if someone took the time with me I could be the best. So my parents homeschooled me. And I can't tell you how glad I am they did. I learned to love learning again. Being homeschooled taught me so much that the public schools i've been to could of never come close to. My parents gave me the choice of going back into public school for highschool. I said not a chance. And I would tell them the same thing every time.

I'm in college now and couldn't love it better. I have a wonderful teacher. I'm in a major I feel passionate about. And when you meet the people at this school you know they want you to do well. And you know what it's a Tech on top of that. I wouldn't go to any other school if given the choice.

This "No child left behind" is a bunch of crap i'm more then enough proof of that. So yes while there are good public schools out there. Good teachers out there. Parents who do get involed and try to help. You know what. For alot of us. We don't have that school we don't have those teachers and no one listens to us.

 

[Bayshore Bandit]

"At age 10, American students take an international test and score well above the international average."

Pulled this quote from the story on the abc news webpage, so it seems that
public schools are doing something right. Somehow those that want to bash
teachers have ignored this fact.

Personally, like I said before, my kids have never taken an "international exam",
and it has never been stated exactly what that exam was, or what parts of
it were taken by the 2 schools in the story.

If we as public schools, are now going to be judged as successful or not
successful based on a small sampling of students taking an international exam,
then maybe we need to adopt a nation wide international curriculum

 

[Olaf]

Please tell me how I go about comparing my school to Belgium schools. What kind of test should I give?

I think my kids are getting a good education. I have no desire to see how they stand up against Belgium kids.

A good education means to me that they will graduate from high school, find a career that makes them happy and have enough money to support themselves and contribute to society in a positive way.

I have an 'above average' son and a learning disabled son. I don't judge them based on how the other did. I don't demand that my LD son lives up to his older brother's standards. I just want him to do the best that he can do.

We live in a "world economy" now. We will be competing even more for high tech jobs with other countries. How we stack up against those countries with regard to education, matters--hugely. The fact that we spend more per pupil on education than just about any other country in the world, and that our children's scores are dismal compared to those countries ought to matter to you. Here's an article which goes into it a bit. Also puts paid to the ridiculous idea that Bush has underfunded the Education Department.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/072505C.html

 

[Republican Rapper]

I think a large problem is the gerrymandering of school districts as well as the lack of parental support in underachieving communities.

I'm currently a student at one of the nation's top grad school for education. I'm sure that is nothing compared to those with years and years of field experience, but I do hear a lot from those with 30+ years in the field.

A large problem is still white flight. I see it all over the place in Central Virginia. Whenever a school's minority population increases, the wealthy and more involved white parents move or send their kids to private schools. The schools therefore have parents who are less involved, and obviously don't perform.

It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the rich white parents think a school with a diverse population isn't a good one and send the higher performing students elsewhere.

Racism still has a great impact on public schools. It's a damn shame too. I've heard from many parents who claim they won't send kids to the public high school I went to because it's too black now. They're shelling out over $10,000 a year to send them to a whiter school. This is VERY widespread.

 

[BuckNaked]

Yes, there are a lot of private schools for special ed but those are mainly for autistic, severly handicapped or emotionally disturbed kids who could not function in regular school. I don't want to be sent back to the 50's and 6o's, where anyone who 'learned' differently or couldn't keep up with everyone else was sent to 'private' school.

I don't want to return to that either. But I also don't want a situation where special ed is such a financial drain on a school that the education of the non-special ed kids suffer. There needs to be happy medium somewhere. And I'm not saying that this is what's happening, I only mentioned it because another poster talked about the IDEA program adding to the per pupil spending in public schools.

Could you explain to me the model of public school that doesn't work? For me, my elementary school 'works'. The teachers come up with lessons, some interesting, some boring and the kids come in and learn. How would a private school do that differently?

A model that works is one in which the kids leave the school having actually learned something. There is much, much more to that than simply drawing up lesson plans and teaching from them. You need teachers that are truly concerned about the education of the students, you need the appropriate tools and technology, you need administrators that are more concerned with the children's education than with new office furniture, you need kids that are willing to learn and you need parents that involved in the child's education. And private schools seem to do a better job of it because they aren't bound by all of the PC issues of worrying more about the child's self image than the child's education. Educate a child and his self image will soar.

Aren't there problems that just occur naturally when dealing with a group of children? Or that teachers are people too?

Of course there are problems, but successful schools have found a way to deal with those problems, while the unsuccessful schools don't.

 

[lookingforward]

Public schools are as varied as the people in them. I spent thousands of dollars sending my children to the best private schools and they were okay. My dollars bought smaller classes with kids that all looked like my kids and parents that were all like my husband and I. But it was, in my opinion, a false sense of security. The kids were no better or worse than kids who go to public school. My son went to many a party (in middle school) with his private school chums and had to repeatedly refuse drugs and alcohol. I can remember doing the same in "public" schools. There were wonderful teachers at the private school.... but there were also teachers that were not certified and not experienced (the dean was a son of the owner's friend). Some good, some not so good. Just like I remember in public school too. So much depends on the parents and the kids. Money does not buy better education. It buys more opportunity (trips, computers) but it does not buy passion, brains, hard work, ethics. Those wonderful traits exist in the poorest schools and the most exclusive ones too. They exist in individuals not institutions.

Here is my personal experience: We were paying over 30,000 per year for our three children to go to private school. We researched the local schools (which were reportedly HORRIBLE here in palm beach county) and found that there were some great things to choose from. We put our daughter's name in the lottery for the IB elementary program. She got picked (our local elementary is A rated so it was a good plan B). She is learning french and spanish and her class size is 22. Her teachers are great so far.
My middle son auditioned for the middle school for the performing arts. He had no formal training but a real desire to act. He self taught himself and got accepted. The school is in a high crime area of our county and there were no academic standards that a child had to meet to get in. Guess what, the test scores from this school are the highest in the county and state. Why? Because each kid there is full of dreams and creativity and hard work. They have extra classes, a long train ride each day, and long rehearsals after school. The teachers at this public school are amazing and dedicated. Who knew? I sure didn't! But I thank God every day that I took the time to find out.

I am not knocking private school, it has it's merits. But it is not the only way to get a premier education. Teachers are underpaid and underappreciated in my opinion and deserve so much more than they get. Special schools can be created within a public school system.