Bush hurts America again

Don't know about California, I'm in New York. I think Int Students pay over $500 per credit and for americans its a little over $200.

 

Basic reading, writing, and math skills are the problem. I can't believe that you think that there are significantly more English rules, writing standards or new math problems that didn't exist 50 years ago. Language is language, writing skills are writing skills and numbers at the elementary level are the same unless someone has come up with some new ones lately.

Try to image the drop out rate for 19 and 20 years. A remedial college course is really the only logical option not further burdening and already stressed public school system.

 

It would be nice to know some science. And Alg may not be enough in the future we may need differential equations type stuff. As for language, a bit of Arabic would have helped Midas.

 

Having read it again, I think you and I are probably mostly on the same page. I just couldn't see why the people that as you say traditionally fight for education should be the ones to have to hold both parties accountable. If you read my longer rant in the thread, it said pretty clearly that both parties have failed to make education a priority. The problem is with the Conservative elite who have no interest in public schools because they can send their kids to any school they want. Why should their tax money go to educating poor children when they could have another Lexus parked out front? Some might call this a short sighted approach to the nation's future but when you are already callous and greedy what's the difference?
I don't believe that it up to either party to fix the education problem in this country. It is up to you and I and the rest of the parents in this country to demand education be a priority, not a lip service topic during election cycles. If it is left up to those corrupt, special interest teat sucking morons in Washington, nothing will change except for the worse and our kids will suffer for our indifference.

 

Oh, Science has actually gotten much easier. God did it!

 

I agree Moen, I think that for the most part we are on the same page on this matter. The elite on both ends could care less about public education, why both Kerry and Bush went to private schools and elite universitys based upon family name and money as much as grades. And I also agree that God is behind science even if your statement is tongue in cheek but there is still science for us to figure out and those answers are not in a prayer book but in the god given minds and souls that we were born with. Of course I use god to mean a universal god and not any particular religions expression of such.

Danr,
All this talk about knowing to know more is hogwash,
We need to know the basics and as we get older we specialize.
The real problem is Americans , in general, are getting soft and lazy and
would rather play a video game then play outside and would
rather skim thru a magazine then read a book.
If you read history this is one of the reasons the great empires fell in the past, they became soft from within.

 

The problem isn't that there's NEW reading, writing, or math stuff - the problem is that those who tell teachers how to teach that stuff keep changing the way in which kids should read, how they should write, and how to do math. My mom's a tacher at the grade level, and in the 2 years that she's been teaching 4th grade, they've changed the standards for writing on her three times. When I was in 4th grade, we used to just write. Little standardization on the HOW TO. Everybody learned how to write, some albeit sloppily, and all was good. Then along came Clinton, who recognized that not everyone was writing in the same WAY, and legislated to make everybody write the SAME. That's when writing started to go downhill. Same with reading, same with mathematics.

If there's anything we need to do, it's REDUCE the amount of standardization placed on the core subjects, not create more laws to make everybody the SAME (wow, that sounds like Communism, hm?).

 

Shatsi you right about out of state students and international students tend to pay more then the local population in terms of City and State Universitys.
The point that others and I were making is that illegal aliens, who might only have been in this nation a few years, are getting free rides with free university provided help and their grades usually are way below American born students of any background who are not accepted because of space or are not provided with any financial assistance.

The working class and the lower middle class white, asian, black, or hispanic american are the ones being screwed the hardest with this.

 

I am not sure of the exact numbers but both India and China are producing many times the number of engineers that we are. That is a bigger problem than Islam.

 

I don't know about this assertion but every candidate claims that they are the "Education President" and passes some program or another that unusually does little to nothing to solve the problems facing the educational system and often in the case of programs like No Child Left Behind, does more harm than good. If it were as simple as pointing the finger at one administrations failures, we'd have a solution already don't ya think?

Standardizing "tests" is for the purpose of assessment not teaching. Because learning and teaching are so amorphous, it is difficult to assess their effectiveness unless you standardize the testing process. No Child Left Behind sets the standard for standardize testing and is just the latest cynical attempt by Washington bureaucrats to claim credit for addressing a difficult problem that nobody seems to really want to solve. It was never a question of making everybody the same but rather a question of directing the limited resources to those best able to lobby for them. Increasing resources only makes the pot bigger for the lobbyist, it does nothing to add funding of education in any real way. For instance, Illinois passed a law many years ago to allow the Illinois lottery to come into existence and sold it as a boom for education by using the profits for public schools. What happened right after it passed? The lottery money went into a large pot of state money and education got the same amount they had always gotten. Education gets the shaft again.

 

All I can say is the Education system over here has also taken vast steps backwards, the exams are easier they no longer have the ability to fail even!! What I dont understand is if we dont educate our kids now then what does the future hold?

De Orc :rolling:

 

When I had my kids in school on your side of the pond, I found that the British school system had a couple of interesting differences from the American system. The British system emphasized English and history while the American system emphasized science and math. I thought it was interesting that you don't necessarily go to the school in your neighborhood. You can register at any school in the country as long as you can get your kids to it. We were in the Yorkshire area between Leeds and Bradford but our kids went to the Calverley Parkside School many miles away. I found that very little was expected of the kids and they pretty much emphasized football (soccer) in every facet of their recreation. It was a lot of fun to experience for the kids and the school head couldn't have been nicer to our kids. The school they attended was over 100 years old which felt odd because we raze them when they've been around like 50 years.

 

In Arizona we have a teacher shortage, any other area experiencing that?

 

Standardized testing is only efficient when the teaching staff don't "teach to the test." It has produced some fairly startling data: As it relates to GPA's (both boys and girls, 8th grade)
White's=3.07; Black's=2.63; Hispanic=3.06; Asian=3.31 and Non-resident Aliens=2.81
It also indicated the biggest factor in this difference was in the manner in which the "PARENTS" participated and reacted with their children. That should tell you something. School attendance and discipline problems were also rated and it too came down to the "PARENTS".

NOTE; This was a large scale assessment so should be fairly solid in numbers.

 

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Not enough pay in either democrat or republican runned states, countys, or cities to attract many.

Can't blame it on one party but can put pressure on both.