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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Education Woes

Education Woes

by John Cole|  June 15, 200512:49 pm| 12 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics

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I don’t think this is what Bush and Congress had in mind when they passed No Child Left Behind:

Officials of Orange County’s largest school district were dealing with the fallout Tuesday from a high school principal’s memo that urged teachers to pass failing students so they could graduate and allow the school to meet federal graduation requirements.

A June 9 memo from the principal of Santa Ana’s Saddleback High School asked teachers to reconsider the failing grades of 98 students so that the school could meet the standards of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

“This is the largest number of non-graduates we have had in years!” reads the memo from Principal Esther Jones, who didn’t return calls seeking comment. “I am asking teachers of these non-graduates to please review your records for these students and determine if they would merit a grade of ‘D’ instead of a failure.”

Jones added that the school needed 95% of its seniors to graduate, but it actually needed 82.8% under the law

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12Comments

  1. 1.

    Nash

    June 15, 2005 at 1:15 pm

    In fact, if testing was down before and after, the results would be remarkable. While these same students may be below the avergae, when you consider the before and after scores and abilities, it will paint a completely different picture.

    I totally agree with this. This is a much more realistic local measure of progress.

    there is a great deal of pressure to fudge the numbers and look for quick fixes rather than addressing the real issue.

    As the son-in-law of a secondary school educator, I am aware that this fudging is a long-term problem. Those arguing previously for fudging were the parents, insisting that their children be passed on to the next level, although unprepared. NCLB simply added another client (school administration) into the mix of those asking for special favors.

  2. 2.

    Jill

    June 15, 2005 at 3:27 pm

    Isn’t this what most educators and those who oppose NCLB were afraid would happen? Just like those who were saying the troop levels were too low and the planning was non-existent in Iraq why is anyone surprised by W’s failed policies. The doubts were there before the implementations.

  3. 3.

    mac Buckets

    June 15, 2005 at 3:37 pm

    Of course, Bush should’ve known that some teachers and principals would cheat to get the money. They are, after all, members of the corrupt teachers unions!

    You get that many union flunkies together and it’s a guarantee that you’ll get a healthy %age who just want the money and have no interest in educating our kids.

    NCLB should’ve had a provision for public humiliation and termination of principals and teachers who urge cheating to get money. Thank you, whistleblower, whoever you are!

  4. 4.

    Nash

    June 15, 2005 at 4:09 pm

    mac, let me introduce you to your strawman…

    Anyone arguing that it shouldn’t be considered wrong to cheat on numbers to get NLCB monies?

    What’s the going punishment for parents who urge cheating to get their children passed, mac? I won’t stuff a strawman that says you don’t think that’s wrong.

  5. 5.

    ed

    June 15, 2005 at 4:10 pm

    There has got to be a way to create the incentive to educate children, not making the numbers seem as if the children have been educated. I don’t think we are close to discovering what that is, however.

    I find this comment strange, since we know, for a fact, how to improve the performance of pretty much any institution. The problem is that its called competition, and it takes time, and there are winners and losers.

    If we want better schools, take the money we spend on public education, dole it out to parents in the form of vouchers, and let the parents choose where to spend the money. Government would be involved in regulation of schools in terms of setting standards (through uniform testing, perhaps), and that’s it.

    What’s so hard to understand?

  6. 6.

    John Cole

    June 15, 2005 at 4:12 pm

    Umm, vouchers would help, and I support them, but they are not the only answer. I live ina state with a shitload of one school towns, and there is no such chance that a shitload of little competing cottage idustry grade schools are going to pop up.

  7. 7.

    ThomasD

    June 15, 2005 at 4:37 pm

    “An example- in West Virginia…” Forgive me if you are actually from WV, and merely using a local example…

    What makes you think this problem is limited to rural America? All poverty starts with povery of the nind and this is hardly a limited problem. Your owrds might be interpreted as an indictment on large swaths of American society. If the problem of education is actually a problem of parenting (or lack thereof) then just how do we address this? Letting students get a free pass or unearned diploma is hardly likely to encourage any real change in society. More money for remedial socialization and schooling hardly seems fair to those members of society who actually prepare their children for the educational system. Students who do not perform should fail.

  8. 8.

    John Cole

    June 15, 2005 at 4:41 pm

    Forgive me if you are actually from WV, and merely using a local example…

    West Virginian, born and bred.

  9. 9.

    wild bird

    June 15, 2005 at 8:40 pm

    The pricipal should be expelled for this inane idea its as bad as the rediclous OBE and ebonics they wanted to trying during king williams reign

  10. 10.

    Kimmitt

    June 15, 2005 at 8:53 pm

    Man, it’s always a pleasure reading a half-literate screed on how reading should be taught.

  11. 11.

    Al Maviva

    June 15, 2005 at 9:24 pm

    The whole point behind NCLB was to force schools to enforce standards and to publish results. This in turn would piss off parents and get them to take charge of their local school systems. Granted, it’s a perverse way of doing it, but it is working in a lot of places. Better go check out the Ed Department statistics on this, because you damn sure won’t get the success stories in the MSM.

    FWIW, the single biggest problem, pre-NCLB, was “aggregation” of test scores. It typically occurred in mix-racial districts with a large white population, and a substantial black / hispanic population. Blacks and hispanics were flunking in enormous numbers – 75% was not uncommon for young Black men. School districts could avoid the problem, however, by breaking up problem areas (usually geographically oriented in poverty pockets) and bussing the kids out to various “successful” schools. Sure, they still flunked at the new school, but their flunking test scores were aggregated in with the kids who passed. All an outsider could see was a school with a 90% flunk rate, and the fact that 80% or 90% of the kids who were failing were Black or Hispanic was unknown to anybody except administrators. The publication requirements of NCLB require that test scores be broken down by race and sex. They also require that the test standards be fixed and hard to evade, so that California’s normal trick, lowering the bar so the lowest can crawl over it, is not effective.

    I have mixed feelings about NCLB. I will say, however, that it is having a great effect on a number of schools where I live.

  12. 12.

    Kimmitt

    June 16, 2005 at 12:51 am

    NCLB will never change the basic problem, which is that rich white folks hate paying for poor black (and, now, Hispanic) folks’ kids’ education.

    We tried integration, but it turned out that rich white folks would rather their own kids go uneducated (until they can flee to the suburbs) than pay for black kids’ educations. When you’ve got that level of commitment, it’s hard to figure out what to do about the problem.

    I’m from Illinois, and various politicians at various times have proposed schemes to even out funding between school systems. You can hear the shrieks of outrage from DuPage County in every corner of the state.

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