I spend a huge amount time of time bitching about how establishment media types go too easy on each other. So, without being too much of an asshole, I have to say that, while Erik made a lot of good points in his post (I agree that the gravel road stuff is more symbolic than anything else, for example), using parental satisfaction as a measure of our educational system is simply idiotic. It’s the kind of thing Megan McArdle would do. Parents are not professional educator and, moreover, the public is just bad at judging things like this. For example, poll after poll shows that Americans think that crime has gone up over the past few years, when it fact it has gone down.
Numbers are hard to come by with education — I put no stock in standardized tests, for instance. But here’s one very important number: the United States is now only 12th among 36 developed nations for the number of 25 to 34-year-olds with college degrees. We used to be first. I can easily anticipate a McArdlesque retort: why do we need more college graduates, blah blah blah, people can work at McDonald’s blah blah blah. Seriously: does anyone think an uneducated populace working service jobs is the answer in an increasingly information-based economy? (America is weak on vocational training, don’t forget.)
How much of that is a result of secondary education that isn’t up to snuff? I don’t know the answer, but to pretend that everything is ay-okay with our educational system because a lot of parents think it’s fine, well, that is simply glibertarian wankery.
General Stuck
Yup
arguingwithsignposts
Third-person effect in action.
JGabriel
.
QDC
I’m genuinely curious if anyone has some links to good research on the decline in college completion (or is it just that other countries are increasing faster?). My first guess was that it was primarily a function of increasing costs rather than declining secondary education. That’s pure speculation on my part, though.
JGabriel
Shorter DougJ:
Pretty much sums up my attitude so far. I think there’s hope for Erik, maybe, but given his time and commenting constraints, I fear we won’t be able to adequately convert him to sociaIism due to only partial immersion in our brainwashing techniques.
.
DougJ
@QDC:
It’s that other countries are increasing faster. We’re still going up, just not that quickly.
Bill Murray
The gravel roads thing is symbolic of the results of glibertarian/Republican tax hysteria — off loading costs to a portion of the citizens, usually the poorer/less powerful portion
13th Generation
I just want to say now, because I’m always late to the comments, I love’s me some DougJ. All you haters can just fuck off.
JGabriel
Bill Murray:
You mean those newly gravel roads don’t lead to mansions?
I’m shocked – shocked, I tell you!
.
JGabriel
@13th Generation: Seconded.
.
Violet
I wonder why these kinds of statements aren’t made this clearly by our ruling class. The average person probably doesn’t know where the US ranks in college degrees, although they’ll know “America is the best!” as a slogan. But we’re not the best anymore in higher education degree rates. Not by a lot.
morzer
Not really. Gravel roads are less safe, more expensive to maintain, and cause more wear to tires. There’s also the issue of pollution from run-off water and various materials that go into constructing said road.
General Stuck
Man, I am burning more bridges today than ever. Oh well, They prolly needed burning anyways, this place has gotten too chummy maybe with a hardened line of thinking. Anybody wanna fight?
Some Guy
I teach and a declining state flagship university. Our education system is in crisis. To think otherwise is uninformed.
Students are less prepared, have to work more while getting an education and ratios of teachers to students, the best measure of quality in my opinion, is getting worse. Education takes a lot of attention, and the more students the less ability to pay attention. It really is not that hard. Too few teachers, more and more teaching as adjuncts, and more administrative work crowding teachers time as schools cut back on staff. It is a sick situation and it is absolutely not good.
With all due respect, the opinion of “parents,” which includes bazillions of differently competent people, is a meaningless indicator of the value of anything. There is nothing inherently good in someone’s judgment because they are a parent. Phyllis Schlafly is a parent and look how fucking stupid her son is. That is a professional opinion.
jwb
@Violet: You’ll see the ruling class growing alarmed only when the value and prestige of their degrees begin to suffer.
WereBear (itouch)
Whatever happened to grinding up old tires and mixing those into the asphakt to make it last longer? One thig I agreed with ED about wad the more efficient lightbulbs.
Colorado Springs deserves its citizens, and vice versa.
jwb
@General Stuck: I don’t know about BJ becoming too chummy, but ED’s presence has dispersed the circular firing squad.
Cat Lady
@Violet:
But we’re first in incarceration rates and obesity. Fat, dumb and incarcerated. America, fuck yeah!
DougJ
@13th Generation: @JGabriel:
Thanks, guys!
BombIranForChrist
I completely agree with Doug.
I think there is a danger in relying too much on Expert Opinions, but I think there is danger on the other end of the spectrum as well. We are not a Democracy, after all. We are a Democratic Republic. Our government assumes that the citizens are not always perfectly equipped to judging various matters of the state.
This is not to say that we as Americans are NOT equipped, just that we are imperfectly equipped, and it’s just not a very good idea to base policy on the varying stages of the citizens’ erectile delight re: the issue at hand.
More substantively to the argument at hand, it simply makes no sense to say that a D Student is just A-OK because his D Student parents think the school is doing a great job.
MNPundit
Are you sure? Wouldn’t McMegan say that our college degree ratio has gone down because we’ve allowed so many illegals in the country that are too stupid or english incapable or poor to go to college?
13th Generation
Just want to say this about Kain..who cares if he engages in conversation? Let him post his crap, if he’s wrong, tear him a new one in the comments. It’s up to him if he wants to defend himself.
El Cid
Surely we have lots of soon-to-be gravel roads to be kept up, so a lot more Americans don’t need college or even technical degrees.
Linda Featheringill
Yes, the US is getting dumber.
I’ve noticed that for some time and decided that maybe I was just a grumpy old woman but now I am hearing younger adults say the same thing. So perhaps I was right all along.
Reading and writing and spelling and adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing are the skills that are falling by the wayside. These are the basics. If the schools aren’t teaching them, the parents should step up and do something.
Didn’t you check the reading and spelling and arithmetic of your kids? Don’t today’s parents do that?
I don’t know what the answer is.
morzer
@MNPundit:
I think it’s more likely she would accuse students of perversely getting into debt for an education they don’t need. After all, WalMart has a degree program etc etc. There would then follow a column about how to obtain the very finest white pepper/escargots/bouquet vintages etc
Gina
Depends on the parents. I homeschool my kids because our system here is just kind of bleh. There’s an “aim low” culture, and both my son and daughter were further ahead in academic skills at kindergarten age than the curriculum would have had room for. Bored kid + unimaginative classroom = kid becoming a disruptive PITA & checking out as time goes by.
Now, if you ask around, I’d say most parents in this district think it’s a great one. From my observations of local students over the years, and from looking at everything from test scores to college admissions, I’m not impressed. They seem to be educating for factory/warehouse/time card type jobs, and even the “advanced” classes don’t hold up to scrutiny (some serious grade-inflation issues that keep getting swept under the rug, leads to serious confusion for the “A” students when they get to a real school). So, I guess it depends on which parents you talk to. Maybe it’s just a groupthink thing, they have to say they’re satisfied because they’d feel like an idiot for paying such high property taxes for lousy schools.
duck-billed placelot
Yay, DougJ! More, please. Specifically: please take on his bullshit strawman-liberal fake equivalencies. “Liberals and Republicans hold equally ridiculous extremist ideas in every case! Like regulation and taxes!” When, as many comments pointed out under E.D.’s post, ‘all tax or all tax cuts’ is a) a misrepresentation of (AKA lie about) the liberal position on taxes/govt. and b) a complete dismissal of the actual distinction between those two postures – that one would have a positive effect on the problem.
Anyway, glad you’re willing to put in practice what you preach and take on bullshit from people within your circle. Especially since so many of us are incredibly disappointed to have to contend with said bullshit in one of our Safe Spaces.
(Would we all be happier if E.D. would preface his posts with a TRIGGER WARNING: CONSERVATIVE FALSE EQUIVALENCIES BELOW THE FOLD line? Cause the commentariat has definitely been triggered.)
13th Generation
@Gina:
You lost me at “I homeschool my kids”
Pancake
Good straw men to argue from. I don’t believe Megan or EK make the argument that pushing burgers at McDonalds is fine, and nothing more is needed; that’s just a false choice kind of argumentation. And isn’t it ever so typical to find that those who presume to be brighter than everyone else, also know more than parents do about their own children; only true “elites” like DougieJ can have a correct opinion about those same children. What arrogance!
Josie
One reason that fewer students are earning degrees is that they are not being prepared to do so. Too many public schools are forcing teachers to teach to the test rather than teaching students critical thinking skills. Teachers are also expected to meet the varying needs of 30 – 40 students in a classroom, some of whom have no intention of learning or behaving. The expectations are all on the teacher rather than on the students and the parents. Rather than putting pressure on their children to work harder, parents put pressure on the teacher to pass students who haven’t earned the grades. Until public schools are organized and staffed like the few successful charter schools that are operating now, we will continue to turn out mediocre, uninformed students, perfectly prepared to work for our corporate masters. George Carlin knew whereof he spoke.
13th Generation
@DougJ
Told ya. If this thread goes on for a while it could get interesting.
Steve
I also thought the argument that “maybe the teachers are just getting laid off cause the kids are migrating to charter schools” was very Meganesque. It’s like, no attempt at a rigorous examination of the question, just cite an anecdote that might have occurred in one or two places and dismiss the problem.
duck-billed placelot
@13th Generation:
Hey, now. There’s a pretty vast chasm between ‘I home-school my kids to make sure they don’t learn critical thinking skills and thus realize my entire philosophical system of prejudice and hatred is flawed and empty’ and ‘I home-school my kids because the education system sucks’. Just because she has the good fortune of being able to improve her kids’ education personally, it doesn’t follow that she’s an evangelical bigot.
Of course, more home-schoolers are evangelical bigots than otherwise, but somehow I doubt many of them frequent the BJ comment section.
Wishbone
The college degree numbers are from Bob Hebert’s column, and like most things on the NYT op-ed page, are misleading at best, and full of shit at worst. Bob Somerby addressed this today: http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh080910.shtml. The lesson, as always: Hebert (and the other NYT writers) are idiots.
Quaker in a Basement
The Daily Howler takes this one on today. The percentage of young adults with college degrees has increased, but the percentage in other countries has increased more rapidly. Further, the U.S. is part of a pretty tight cluster around 40 percent–the handwringing over the #12 ranking elides the very insignificant differences among several nations.
Anne Laurie
@Some Guy:
It’s a serious topic and I appreciate your serious imput, but thanks for the laugh, too!
Gravenstone
@13th Generation:
To be fair, not all – frankly, very few – home schooling parents are doing so to indoctrinate their offspring in their own insular worldview.
Most (of those I am acquainted, in any event – anecdote != data duly noted) do so because they recognize the failings in the current community schooling systems. I can point to several who are actually quite politically liberal and who work dilligently to make certain their home schooled children obtain what can only be described as an old fashioned “liberal arts” education – replete with all that evil science and math and logic stuff.
Of course, I know of at least one case of a home schooler who is a biblical literalist, and who inculcated his myriad offspring with the same disease. So be careful branding “home schoolers” with a one size fits all dismissive attitude, they may just surprise you. As always YMMV.
WereBear (itouch)
One thing I can say with certainty. There are far more spelling and grammar errors in books, signage, and publications in just one month than I saw the entire time I was growing up.
The sad part is that so few even notice.
chopper
@Some Guy:
i can see why they’re declining! ZING!
sven
@Gina: Up above you said:
I’d be really interested in hearing what you mean by bleh. I’m always very interested in what parents would like schools to provide. If you don’t mind, please be as specific as you can!
Let me ask something in particular; would you be willing to dramatically reduce content volume for a more interactive approach to teaching/learning?
How much would it bother you if your district eliminated varsity athletics but still offered intramural sports?
13th Generation
@duck-billed placelot
I agree with your argument, but that’s not been my experience with home school parents here in the south. I have yet to meet the parents of which you speak. I’ll put my trust in teachers’ training and experience over your average parent any day.
Wishbone
@Quaker in a Basement: beat you by a minute! (wishbone)
Citizen Alan
Well, I’m cynical and paranoid, but I’ve believed for quite some time that part of the agenda of the financial elites (executed by their agents in the GOP and increasingly the Blue Dog Dems) has been the systematic undermining of our educational system because an uneducated populace is more easily manipulated. Then again, I think nearly every bit of stupid, incomprehensible governmental malfeasance to plague this country in the last 40 years can be explained by reference to Goldstein’s Manifesto from 1984, which the GOP apparently read as a how-to manual rather than a cautionary tale.
DougJ
@Quaker in a Basement:
Thanks, will take a look.
brent
@13th Generation:
I agree with that. I have never been one to make a stink about Bloggers not engaging in their comments sections. Hell, I love Benen and I don’t know if he has ever responded to a single comment.
But I think the issue has been raised repeatedly mainly because John Cole has made such fuss about how commenters have been treating E.D. I think the point is more that people would feel less inclined to vitriolic response if they felt like they were engaging in a reasonable back and forth rather than being offered the sort of tripe they could easily read at numerous other blogs that they like a lot less.
matoko_chan
@MNPundit: that is what Sailer and Derbyshire say.
Menzies
@Citizen Alan:
This, pretty much – Zinn said about as much in A People’s History. Most of America is being educated to have the basic skills they need, because a skilled labor force is still necessary, but the goal of a good, rounded education for everyone went out the window long ago.
Nylund
This gets to the larger issue of people confusing polls for facts. Go to the Conservapedia entry on evolution and a lot of their “factual evidence” against evolution being true is based on polls reporting what percentage of respondents think its true.
Apparently in fairly recent human history, the earth was actually flat and the sun did revolve around our planet. The universe itself must’ve changed because polls of what people THINK is true is synonymous with what is an actual objective truth.
The same goes for global warming, gay marriage, the Iraq war, etc. “People think X, therefore X must be objectively true.”
sven
@matoko_chan: If Steve Sailer were here, race and IQ would have made an appearance already…
Say what you want about the man, he doesn’t resort to dog-whistles!
13th Generation
@Brent
I hear ya, but these guys have never really engaged the commenters like say, McMegan does. They might respond once or twice (thanks DougJ!), but I’ve never really seen a lot of back and forth here between the posters and commentors.
Ted
The foreign exchange students who come to my kid’s high school from Asia and Western Europe are generally years beyond the most advanced curriculum available. This is a school that sends lots of kids of elite institutions and produces several National Merit Scholars every year.
PiledhighDeep
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh080910.shtml
The college degree thingee seems to be a bit alarmist
“In this column, Herbert takes a type of liberty columnists frequently take with clumps of data. He says we’re worse than eleven other nations, without trying to say how much worse we are. In fact, we aren’t much worse at all, except when compared to a handful of countries which are currently leading the pack. (Canada leads the world in this measure.) It’s true—the US ranks twelfth out of 36 nations when it comes to the measure in question; according to the official data, 40.4 percent of Americans aged 25-34 held at least an associate degree in the year 2007, the most recent year for which the OECD offers data. But a whole bunch of nations were clumped around 40 percent, and the US ranked ahead of quite a few Euro powers. According to the OECD data, the US ranked ahead of the UK, Denmark, Sweden and Finland—and we were way ahead of Germany. (And Austria. And Italy.) We trailed these countries by two points or less: Norway, Israel, France, Belgium, Australia.
On the whole, the world’s developed nations were rather tightly bunched around that 40 percent mark. Compare this to Herbert’s fiery claim: “The problem is that today’s young Americans are not coming close to acquiring the education and training needed to carry out that mission. They’re not even in the ballpark.”
This brings us to a basic question: Is there some obvious reason why the United States should have a higher score on this measure than small, middle-class, unicultural nations like some of those we’ve mentioned? Unless we retain some sense of manifest destiny, we can’t imagine what it would be. Nor does Herbert attempt to explain this basic point, in a very unintelligent column. Why is it “beyond pathetic” when Norway exceeds us by two points? We can’t begin to guess. Meanwhile, Herbert has clearly made readers think that the United States has been losing ground when compared to its own past rates; in voluminous comments to his column, one reader after another “explains” our gruesome decline. But uh-oh! This country’s percentage isn’t declining; it has risen steadily in the past decade. In the year 2000, it stood at 38.1 percent. By 2008, the last year with data, it had risen to 41.6 percent. Or at least, so the College Board says.”
Omnes Omnibus
@13th Generation: True, but the responses, or updates on the front page, are frequently substantive. The FPer will either acknowledge an error and correct it, clarify a point that was hazy, or say “You guys are willfully misinterpreting what I said. Stop it or won’t post any further pictures of my pets.”
Midnight Marauder
@chopper:
Amazing.
13th Generation
@Omnes Omnibus
Cole is a grumpy old basterd but I don’t know how to quit him..
Omnes Omnibus
@Josie: Expand the IB program.
matoko_chan
DougJ…..
Erik is just regurgitating standard conservative failmemes.
The conservative base just swallows whatever McMegan/Kain/Douthat etc are fapping.
He has to pretend that vouchers will fix our “broken” edumacation system and that America is not falling behind in world rankings.
vouchers will fix everything is conservative failmeme #5.
matoko_chan
@sven: well, im tellin yah, there is going to be a proven significant between-group difference in IQ between liberal and conservative political affiliations in the next decade.
i wonder how Sailer will deal with that.
that is why Kain thinks he can get away with fapping conservative failmemes here.
his base is too dim to question them…you guyz aren’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: You have a numbered list?
duck-billed placelot
@13th Generation: Grew up in the South, myself, and yes, the home-skooled kids were by and large small hostages completely at the mercy of their parents’ crappiness. Living in Alaska as an adult, however, I met quite a few homeschooling families who worked hard to give their kids a good education, including hiring tutors for subject areas that the parents weren’t strong in. Most of them chose that route because of circumstantial stuff (rural living/seasonal moves, etc), but some of them just felt the school system not up to snuff.
Anyway, Gina’s comment didn’t invoke Jeebus or racist dogwhistles, so I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, seeing as she’s here and all.
PTirebiter
How about polling educator satisfaction with parenting skills?
demimondian
@PiledhighDeep: Hush, PhD! You’re not supposed to deal with “data”.
The truth is that the US educational system *hasn’t* failed at all, and that fact contradicts every one of the vaunted “need for review” claims. Sorry, DougJ — you’re just wrong here.
Josie
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree. I think all students should be taught as though they are gifted and talented or IB students. High expectations and good substantive curriculum can do wonders, especially if the parents are on board.
matoko_chan
@PiledhighDeep: that is not the only ranking we should be paying attention to.
umm…..like science and math.
AhabTRuler
@PTirebiter:
Tee-hee.
Omnes Omnibus
@demimondian: Ok, it appears that the data indicates that the US is improving in the number of associate degree and above holders, but that it is now doing so more slowly than other countries. How is that a good thing? Also, how do our degree holders stack up against those from other countries?
Cain
@13th Generation:
Go and look at one of Michael D’s posts. You’ll see some epic flame wars with Michael on one side and everyone else on the other. His first post he admitted he was a Republican and that got all the dogs to raise their shackles and bear their teeth.
cain
13th Generation
@duck-billed placelot:
Like I said, I’m not arguing your perspective. However, I’m not convinced that parents alone, or even with the help of tutors, can offer their kids the kind of education that they can get from public or private schools, staffed by trained teachers and administrators with a wide variety of backgrounds. Not to mention the social interaction, and please spare me the argument that home schooled kids get plenty of that. Some of my most valuable life life lessons were learned from going to school with kids who came from very different socio-economic backgrounds. Home schooling is just way to insular, I really wonder how these kids are going to fare in the real world when the leave the safety of their comfortable environments.
Alwhite
Yes, America is getting stupider & ED is a good example of it – Jesse Crispy on a kangaroo – if you want to defend him at least have the decency to do it in the endless, pointless threads his bullshit generates so those of us who prefer informed debate can ignore him & read the rest of you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cain: The dogs shouldn’t have been shackled in the first place. A collar and leash should be sufficient.
DougJ
Point taken about the clumping of the top 12 or so on percentage of college graduates. But I’m not claiming that our system has failed, merely that other countries have caught up and in some cases passed us.
In any case, I think that all of this is much more worthwhile than looking at parental satisfaction scores.
Corner Stone
@Cain:
I understand you may not care for some of us here. But that’s just a damn cruel suggestion to the unsuspecting.
13th Generation
@Cain:
@Corner Stone:
How long has it been since he posted here anyway?
duck-billed placelot
@13th Generation: You’re absolutely right about the social aspects – which is one of the reasons why I don’t think I’d homeschool any putative future kids of my own. I guess as a parent you’d just have to pick which part is most important to you and try to mitigate the drawbacks. ‘Course your take is that with homeschool you’d fail your kid on the social AND education parts of the equation…hmm. I feel like Texas should be the counter-example here, but I should probably think it through more.
Just for fun, let’s analogize; who do you think is the too-insulated home school kid in the recent battles of E.D. Kain vs. the BJ commenters? (John Cole, in either case, remains the well-intentioned if anti-social parent.)
Darnell
Shorter Erik:
“Don’t talk about tax hikes, tax hikes make little baby Jesus cry….”
General Stuck
Is Balloon Juice In A Great Recession? deep thoughts. bring em.
13th Generation
@duck-billed placelot:
I really hesitate to disparage my fellow commenters (man it’s hard sometimes), but I really, really worry about that matoko_chan person. Guy, Girl? Not sure, but anyway, people accuse him/her of being drunk, but I think there’s something much deeper and more troublesome at play there. If I had to pick a homeschool candidate, it would be they. The posters, I think are all too old to come from the HS demographic. Too much drug use in their youth may be their excuse. Or maybe I didn’t understand your question?
Omnes Omnibus
@General Stuck: Actually, business seems to be booming. Like him or hate him ED Kain has lit a fire under a lot of people. Aside from the vituperative, vicious jackal thing, I saw a lot of commenters bring their analytical A-game to bear lately.
DougJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
I agree. EDK has been a great addition.
sven
@DougJ: Similarly, one often sees the claim that our public schools are getting ‘worse’ but it is a claim which is hard to quantify. Periodically there is shock and horror over polls of what high school students know (x% can’t name the first president or do simple algebra) but the same test administered to their parents and grandparents often yield similar results.
matoko_chan
@13th Generation: actually, im grrlstyle.
and while i did eventually attend catholic school, my infant and preschool experience was a field lab experiment in Piaget theory directed by my hyper-educated parents.
amg the spinning.
so i think that was homeschool of sorts. good guess.
and i was crunk last nite.
warped tour after party.
duck-billed placelot
@13th Generation: Oh, it wasn’t a question about who literally was home-schooled; I was trying to riff off of your comment about home-schoolers leaving the safety of their insular environments. Some people here have pointed out that E.D. might not be used to the vociferous attacks on weak arguments here (and he has whined about it), but then there’s also been quite a bit of ‘shocked, shocked I tell you that a Conservative on MY balloon-juice’… Insular environments/real-world difficulty… Just thought that, as an analogy, the home-schooling thing fit with the current dust up, which I like to call “Balloon-Juice Disagrees With Balloon-Juice: Episode 40 Million.”
brent
@13th Generation:
Right, but the point there is that commenters don’t, for the most part in those cases, feel as if they are being essentially lied to. They may disagree on some particulars but the arguments themselves seem honest and they don’t feel like they are being deliberately provoked by strawman arguments. So the interaction or lack thereof isn’t as frustrating.
Corner Stone
@13th Generation:
He flames away here once in a while.
13th Generation
@duck-billed placelot:
HA! That’s what I find so funny. Also. Too. People around here love to bicker and squabble (Stuck? Cornerstone?), but when someone comes around who is actually worth arguing with, they freak out like someone took a dump on their living room floor. FWIW, I like having Kain here. Kind of woke everyone up, including me.
Mayken
@13th Generation: http://thesinisterscribe.com/ Good friends of mine. Not remotely fundies. Live in the South. http://twitter.com/dgfeeney Also good friends, also not fundies, though they don’t live in South… Congrats, you now know (of) two sets of such parents.
I am hoping hubby and I will be able to do the same when the time comes though I’m not sure I have the temperament for home schooling. My husband would be better at it but he’s get the big bucks and I don’t so….
ETA: though, yes, unfortunately the homeschooling movement is full of fundies – both families have commented on how careful you have to be picking curriculum and homeschooling associations – so I can understand why you make the association if you don’t know any no-fundies who homeschool.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: He showed up in one of the EDK related threads a day or so ago.
Omnes Omnibus
@13th Generation: The freak out is part of the fun for many of the long time commenters, I think.
matoko_chan
@duck-billed placelot: look…..Kain doesn’t have anything to say but [failed] conservative platitudes gussied up in faux reasonable prose..
all conservative memes are currently FAIL.
supply-side? fail. GINI up all ovah.
free market? fail. see, the Econopalypse That Ate America.
american exceptionalism? fail. we are broke and stupid.
bush doctrine? fail. when muslims can vote, they vote for shariah.
COIN? fail. we are gettin’ an asswhuppin from 30k taliban.
vouchers? fail. world wide, we are 23 in math and science. vouchers cant touch that.
real amurrikka? fail. the demographic timer is going to deliver a ginormous asswhuppin to real amurrikka in about another 10 years.
Kain has nothin’.
conservatives are the only people that are dim enough to believe Kain’s schtick.
juicers aren’t…..well…..most aren’t. :)
matoko_chan
@Mayken: i personally recommend you avoid Piaget theory in your curriculum.
Corner Stone
@13th Generation:
Where? Who?
Mayken
@13th Generation: See my comment at 86 for back ground on this comment.
How many public schools do you know where the kids will get Latin and Japanese (just because the older boy wanted to study them) or go on field trips several times a month if not more or do practical experiments in science with a 7 year old? How many 8 years old do you know from public school who will have serious debates about the origins of the universe with several adults and be able to hold his own?
As for sheltered, well, it didn’t seem to have a noticeable effect on the rich kids I knew in high-school to have interactions with less fortunate kids unless their parents were willing to teach them some empathy and understanding. Most of the spoiled rich kids I knew, unsurprisingly, grew up to be Tea-tards (high school re-union FB group FTL!) That outcome is almost entirely based on what the parents teach regardless of what school one goes to.
I’m not saying that any parent can be all for their kids – I suspect as the kids get older these parents will have to resort to outside professionals for help – but I’d love to be able to give my son half the educational grounding these 4 lovely parents have given their kids. He will 100% NOT be able to get that in our local public school.
Barney
While in general it is good to have a variety of opinions on a site, they need to be within sight of each other in terms of quality. EJ’s contributions bring to mind the station manager’s comments to Billy Crystal’s character in City Slickers about a commercial that was allowed on air: it makes people change the channel.
duck-billed placelot
@13th Generation: @matoko_chan:
Actually, I agree with you, matoko_chan, about the substance (or lack thereof) of E.D.’s stuff. I think it’s been great to see people eviscerate what he takes as a given, and I’d imagine as he continues, I’ll have an even better grasp of how to show my dad that the Republicans/Conservatives are useless and awful. And I can understand (and shared) the initial frustration of the commenters when E.D. was crapping crap all over the front page and none of the other FP’s were disagreeing in a major post-y way.
But there was an element of ‘John, how could you DO this to us?!’ That’s what I found funny (13 Gen, here is where we are all friendly agreement); because what John did was provide us with a Real Live Conservative Intellectual and then let us rip apart his crap. Feels good, doesn’t it? Not that I didn’t join into the fray (and for serious, the whining and passive aggression from E.D. should stop), but I’m pretty happy to have him post here as long as he takes his lumps and the other FP’s call him on crap. It’s a nice change of pace from near-clinical-depression on the state of our feckless liberal overlords.
ETA: Actually, judging by his responses to people’s finding his arguments disingenuous or pathetic or just wrong, I doubt E.D. will last long here – but by his own choice.
suzanne
@matoko_chan:
What’s your excuse for, well, every other night?
13th Generation
@Mayken:
Well, with all due respect, back when I was in school in the 70’s and 80’s we had access to all those things. We even had a whole science center, complete with planetarium (Atlanta, GA) right across the street from my elementary school. This was back in the day when people thought that public funding for schools was a good thing. I have no complaints whatsoever about my public education. Access to honor programs, field trips all over the place, language and arts. Why did we get away from that, and why shouldn’t we go back?
Omnes Omnibus
@13th Generation: Yep.
Cain
@Corner Stone:
Hey, just trying to give a little perspective. ;)
cain
Cain
@DougJ:
We’ve stopped whining about the progressive circular firing squad and really got our juices (so to speak) going. I’m learning a lot on debate more than anything else. I think the bit on statistics and normalizing them for inflation is definitely something to take into consideration when looking at similar statistics.
cain
Cain
@matoko_chan:
Are you drunk now?
cain
Gina
@sven: Sorry for the late reply, life, dinner, prep for tomorrow, etc.
Specifically, what I don’t like is that we hear buzzwords like “21st century workforce preparation”, but what we see is the teachers don’t have the resources, like a computer for every kid, plenty of free time for them to explore things like robotics, science, literature, art, etc. There’s a big emphasis on teaching to the tests, and we’re in NY, so we have tests that are not really valuable – they’ve recently been shown to be exaggerating the actual competence of the higher scoring students when compared to national norms, our district has dropped in most categories by about 20 points or so when adjusted for the error. The new middle school principal’s big claim to fame is that he’s all about “character education” whatever the fuck THAT means. He majored in phys ed…
For all the fundie-haters, don’t freak on me for homeschooling – I’m a capital-A Atheist, and big ol’ ACLU-type liberal/libertarian. Freak on me for other stuff if you like. I don’t do this to keep them insulated from any worldviews, other than the one that says ‘school is boring’, and ‘don’t try anything new or risky because you might not score high enough’, and ‘it’s best to fit in rather than be out of step here and there’. Those worldviews are way too prevalent, and seem to really get a foothold in middle school, which is where my son would be now.
He started reading when he was about 3. On his own. He insisted I teach him how to read fluently, and had major hissyfits when we started going over the basics, because he wanted to be able to read like a grownup in one or two lessons.
By age 5, he read as well as most adults we know, he was perfectly comfortable reading aloud and had a big vocabulary (ht to Thomas the Tank Engine, dinosaur books, DK Eyewitness books, and the Time-Life History of the Air Force collection), and what he didn’t know he made sure to figure out. Kindergarten at school is all day, something he couldn’t deal with at that age (he still needed naptime, had a new baby sister, and wanted to be home with us). The school was working on teaching basic phonics, with heavy emphasis on writing-to-reading, and he was asynchronous – hated using pencil/pen and paper, and didn’t need to be held back from reading interesting things because he wasn’t willing to write along with it.
So, I started homeschooling because he didn’t fit – and the school wasn’t going to work around him (how could they? 20 kids or so per class, gimme a break). My husband and I both had less than stellar experiences with public education ourselves, so we didn’t feel any sort of social obligation to try to work within that system, it seemed like a more sensible use of our resources and energy to just freaking do this at home. My daughter grew up seeing her brother learning at home, and naturally wanted to come along for the ride.
To check things for my own purposes, I avail myself of resources like Iowa skills testing, or CAT 5 testing, for both kids. It’s one small part of the overall thing. As my son gets older, I’m finding more and more truly great options for online learning – for higher math and things like writing classes with instructors, feedback from peers (Bravewriter, Aleks, Thinkwell, Math-Whizz – heh heh they said whiz)
Summer is good, we avail ourselves of local college summer courses for kids, Lego NXT robotics at RPI, stop-motion animation at St. Rose. My daughter is 8, she competes in gymnastics, so during the season we have the option of working around her schedule so that she can have a life, yet still get a good education. We’ll look into community college classes as they get to high school age. They may want to go to “regular” school then too, if they want to we’ll do it – but my husband and I both make it clear that their education, and their enthusiasm for learning for learning’s sake, is the most important thing.
Shit it’s getting late. Okay, I have to keep reading 13th’s insults and other’s replies, I left off at Sven’s question.
Mayken
@13th Generation: I would love it if our public schools were funded and valued at that level again. But the truth is in most states and districts, this is not the way it is and trying to get there from here is going to take more than my son’s 12 years of schooling!
I went through school during the transition time between full funding and supporting traditional “liberal arts” type education and the current status quo of teaching to the test. I remember being more and more dissatisfied the further I went along my public school career. I was very fortunate I had a very well-educated father who helped me fill in the gaps that the public school wasn’t.
It wasn’t until I became and adult that I realized why this was, which is the systematic dismantling of public education in this country by the right.
I am more than willing to get down in the trenches to fight for better but as long as it remains the way it is – and as long as private school is out of the question due to money – I’d prefer to homeschool.
13th Generation
@Mayken:
Sigh. So the answer is to give in to the right wing philosophy of dismantling public education, so the only choices are private school or home school? If you’re one of the smart, intelligent people who can pull off giving your kids the well rounded, complete education that they need and deserve, then more power to you. I wish you and yours well.
Gina
@sven: Oh, yes to the content/volume reduction for more interactive. For example, we have one public school option called Tech Valley High here that would be the bee’s knees for my son. Hands-on, mentors and experiments in real labs, the whole enchilada. BUT – it’s limited, a charter school with enrollment from all the districts in several counties, with a max of 2 students from each district. Enrollment is by lottery. That’s our only public option that I could see being even better than what we could offer on our own. It’d be worth the long commute if he could get in.
As far as eliminating varsity athletics but doing intramural sports? Right ON! But that’d never sell. The football team is a big deal here. Baseball, even soccer and basketball. Nope, local culture wouldn’t tolerate it. They’ve spent a lot of money on new expanded fields, track, gyms, etc. Gotta get their money’s worth. The big industry in town is the prison complex, one max and one medium security. There are some warehouses/distributors, and then tourism and farming. Not so much with the high-tech scene, or the arts here (other than a few artists and writers who sell in NYC). But in nearby towns, we can scare up something like a community in those areas, so that’s what we do.
Okay, I’m done for now. Sorry if I missed something, I’m beat and have to be up early for my chauffeuring duties.
Gina
@Mayken: In practice, we find that the one-on-one nature of homeschooling cuts way down on bulky filler time that schools have to put in a day. I do the teaching here, since like your situation, DH is the one that gets the big bucks.
I decided, for my sanity, to look at it as an extended maternity leave, and plan to get back to some kind of a career when the adventure is over. As the kids have gotten older, one is 8, the other almost 12, it has gotten easier, and there are so many more resources every year – from online courses to local homeschool groups and co-ops, that it actually does get easier. Okay, really to bed now.
Shygetz
@DougJ: If a guy comes in your house and takes a dump on your couch, it’ll get people talking. Doesn’t make that guy a great addition to the party. So far, I think you could argue that E.D. serves one or both of the following roles:
1.) Front-page troll for whipping up comments
2.) Evidence of the quality of top-of-the-line “reasonable conservative” thinking, in order to convince us to stop digging for gold in that there litter box.
That post by E.D. was on par with or worse than the epic McMegan pieces, but the difference is that John posted it on my favorite blog, rather than a place I routinely ignore.
Who knows, maybe E.D. will prove to be like Larison, and actually prove to be extremely insightful on some corner of policy…but domestic economics, apparently, ain’t it.
Oh, and DougJ…gravel roads aren’t much more symbolic than rural electrification was in its time. For those of us who live here, it’s expensive (gravel has to be replaced MUCH more often than asphalt), damaging to property, and can be VERY dangerous in heavy weather or with inexperienced drivers. It’s bad for the environment, too, as not only do you lose the sand from the gravel to erosion, but the eroding roadbed can screw up your runoff plans, which can lead to topsoil erosion and flooding. Thankfully, even though I live in a HEAVILY Republican district, they seem to be a weird kind of Republican that values public education and infrastructure…the local gravel road that services a large chunk of our neighborhood recently got paved, and it makes a huge difference.
Mayken
@13th Generation: I disagree with framing our judgment that our public schools aren’t good enough as giving into the right-wing. I don’t believe that we as a nation should give up on public schools but enrolling my child in a substandard school is a non-starter. I have no better plan than to continue to work politically for better public schools while simultaneously not allowing my son to have what I consider to be an inadequate education.
Thanks for the well-wishes and for a polite debate.
ETA – we live in Cali BTW so we are pretty screwed in this department until our fellow parents figure out just how screwed they were by the Repugs taxes are the Devil policies and the 2/3 requirement for budgets and tax hikes.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
@Corner Stone: In your case, apparently everyone.
Anne Laurie
@PTirebiter:
From my experience with educators, such a poll would teach even this commentariat new forms of invective.
And quite a lot of it would be deserved, too.
Mayken
@Gina: Yeah, I can imagine. I am amazed by how much my friends get into to a home-school day!
And that sounds like a good perspective to put on one’s role as homeschool teacher. Thanks.
Mayken
@Gina:
This! Yes, this is another really good reason I don’t care for our current system of public (and possibly private though I gather it really depends on the school) education.
Oh, and don’t get me started on middle school/jr. high. I cannot begin to tell you how many kinds of hell 7th and 8th grade were for me as a smart, less-developed tom-boy with mostly male friends. Gods, undressing in the locker rooms… shudder
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
This site is starting to piss me off. The ad servers crash Firefox on my laptop, and it won’t word wrap in Opera.
Anne Laurie
@13th Generation:
Homeschooling — and I think it CAN be done responsibly, although the incidents we hear about are the ones where it wasn’t — is the flip side of the Obamas sending their kids to Sidwell Friends instead of the DC public schools. On the one hand, pulling the “best & brightest” kids out of the system is anti-egalitarian. On the other hand, expecting a parent NOT to do what they believe to be best for their own kid is… well, anti-egalitarian. I can blame certain parents for what they fail to do after they’ve decided the local schools aren’t up to their standards, but I can’t blame them for not accepting “because
shut up, that’s whythat’s the way it’s done around here” as a reason to submit to the Higher Authorities.Bernard
so we get to hear/discuss? the bs right here and stop complaining about how fucked the Country is because of the Republican Party actions of the last 40 years.
and that does what? refocus the conversation, maybe, the truth about the policies and actions of the Republicans and their “faith based reality” is what screwed up our country. and thanks to dumbing down education, controlling the media and buying Congress.
and i can have someone try to explain to me how this is/was good?
I choose not to waste my breath debating old facts, so now i got entertainment!
distraction, divert, deny the Republican operative measure. Welcome, maybe we can use Republican tactics here and learn how to bs as good as the Best.
Anne Laurie
@Corner Stone: I actually liked Michael D’s posts, and I regret that he “gave up” his front-page status. Yes, I once accused him of having one egregious error in every post, but he wasn’t afraid to be corrected, and he was always fun to read.
He does still comment here, occasionally (hi, MD).
Yutsano
@Anne Laurie: To be absolutely fair, Sidwell was also chosen because they have had experience with setting up the Secret Service security details. And the Obamas DID consider public school until the SS nixed the idea. So it’s not exactly fair to say that the Obamas had a huge amount of choice in where to school their children.
E.D. Kain
Doug – the poll on how parents think about the school system isn’t meant to illustrate how good or bad the public school actually are – it’s intended to illustrate the disconnect between how people think about the abstract ‘public school system’ (it’s terrible!) vs how they think about their own school (it’s wonderful!). You may think that’s an idiotic thing to point out, but I think it’s important.
I find the one statistic you do point to to be a little misleading. The entire world has been ‘catching up’ to American in terms of education, technology, and prosperity for decades. That’s not a bad thing. Quite the opposite. And actually there’s no good way to analyze the public school system as a whole. You have to go state by state and often district by district. I’ll drag out some numbers in a follow up post. Suffice to say, states like Kansas and Mass. rank side by side with high scoring Asian and northern European nations, while D.C. ranks way down there with Eastern European nations still emerging from communism.
There’s no easy way to box in our school system with gross generalizations because by it’s very nature it’s extremely local with wildly varying outcomes.
Yutsano
@E.D. Kain:
A friendly suggestion while you’re doing this: make sure you crosstab how local taxation relates to public school outcomes. Also if you have the wherewithal (though how you possess ANY with a newborn is beyond my ken!) see if you can determine which taxation scheme gives better results (things like property vs. general fund and such). I just think it would solidify your point better than merely saying these schools have better results without some context as to the underlying causes.
E.D. Kain
@Yutsano: Sure – but you also have to unterstand that this also varies widely from one place to the next. Kansas and Massachusetts have different systems but even from one district to the next. And the sad truth is, the number one determining factor is going to be the wealth of the district – not necessarily how they tax or spend the money, but the economic class of the parents.
Yutsano
@E.D. Kain:
Recognizing that fact will go a long way towards developing true solid solutions for the public education deficits in this country, specifically in poorer or urban depressed areas. And not letting ideology get in the way of answers. And that goes for both sides in this.
eemom
@E.D. Kain:
Wow, there’s one for the No Shit files.
And hear this, Mr. Reasonable Conservative: if you don’t get your “its” straight from your “it’s” right the fuck now, I will personally call bullshit on your qualification to say anything about anything — least of all EDUCATION — till you have gone back and completed the second grade.
Crusty Dem
@E.D. Kain:
To nitpick, not true
E.D. Kain
@eemom: Oh my God. A typo.
sven
@eemom: Whoa their, Im not sure a simple grammatical mistake in someones comment should invalidate they’re entire point!
@E.D. Kain: You said:
I agree that tax policy and per pupil spending clearly aren’t simple determinants for outcomes. I think we can also agree that within a region (within Mississippi not Mississippi vs. Massachusetts) a district with wealthier parents is exceedingly unlikely to have lower per-pupil spending. Across-the-board improvements aren’t easy to buy, but if neighboring districts have big differentials in teacher pay I can guarantee a difference in quality will appear over time…
Gian
If I recall the conservative take is that college costs too much because of federally subsidized student loans making it affordable.
I know, it makes my head hurt, but the notion that easy money to borrow to go to school may have helped raise the cost of an education makes some sense, coupled with the college tuition inflation, and the middle class wage deflation/stagnation, without data at my fingertips
I bet kids drop out because mom and dad can only cover 2 years at 40K a year if they make decent money (and for many families the house was the source of the college loan, how’s that working now?)
and if you manage the 4 year degree on loans what job will let you pay them off and live a normal life? graduating 200K+ in debt? in the next 10 years it’ll be obvious that education will be for scholorship kids, the wealthy and the rest can go flip burgers
sven
Gina,
BTW, thank you again for the lengthy response! When people are sincerely unhappy with their schools, I’m always interested in what they have to say; one way or another I suspect our schools will look very different in 50 years.
E.D. Kain
@Gian: I think it’s a complicated question. School tuition likely does rise when there’s more easy money to pay for it. This is not an argument against easy money to pay for it, though. We should be helping kids afford a college education. That doesn’t mean that it won’t get more expensive, though, so perhaps we need new mechanisms to keep costs lower. A lot of schools spend like crazy on non-academic stuff to compete for students. Maybe we need to take a look at how public universities are using public funds. I don’t pretend to have an answer here, but I do know that education is vital and important and public education is vital and important as well.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
@Gian:
This isn’t a ridiculous position, though I think the conservatives draw the wrong conclusions from it. Making it possible for more people to go to school even if they were previously priced out of universities is an artificial (in its technical sense) increase in demand for the good of college education. Unsurprisingly, this will tend to drive the price up. It certainly isn’t the only driver of tuition increases. I suspect it isn’t even the biggest one. (I’ll go with Matt Yglesias in arguing that it’s the stagnant productivity in higher education that’s the biggest cause.) I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t an element, though.
Corner Stone
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): Why don’t you go back to eating pie you chickenshit motherfucker.
sven
EDK,
btw, I gave you a h/t over at samefacts!
They were discussing Jimmy Carter’s role in deregulation and had somehow omitted beer!
sven
@Corner Stone:
Sir, you are Aristotle reborn!
E.D. Kain
@sven: Muchas gracias!
E.D. Kain
That may be a McArdlesque retort. But not at all what I think. The more education the better, and the more investment in education the better. That said, there is a limit to the amount money can do to improve outcomes, especially if other systemic factors are impeding educational results.
Beyond this, could anyone point to anything that actually substantively suggests that America’s schools are as bad as the media make them out to be? There’s room for improvement, obviously, but I think the rumors of their demise are greatly exaggerated.
matoko_chan
@E.D. Kain:
but ……america’s schools are fine?
wallah do i have to go to the League and disinterr some of your moldy reeking pro-voucher crap?
you are not honest.
Boots
Reminds me of Rumsfeld apologists who said he should stay because polls showed a plurality of “troops” supported him.
Kirk Spencer
I really wish I weren’t so late to this party. On the other hand I’m about to take a major digression based on what @Linda Featheringill said.
A big issue is parents.
A big issue is actually parental involvement. Many studies (like this) show that parental involvement (at home and support at school) has a positive effect on student performance. They’re encouraging and checking on their children. They’re encouraging and checking on their children’s peers. And they’re encouraging and checking on the teachers.
There are two ways I want to take this.
First, I’ll point out that we’ve had to shift from a (notional) single job family structure to a double income structure. The parent who volunteered at school (usually Mom) was the one who didn’t pull down a paycheck. If both parents are working, neither is available to check on school. The lower the income, the less likely the parent can adjust work schedules for parent-teacher meetings or school field trips, much less volunteering.
Second, it is a reason why homeschoolers do (statistically) better on average on academic tests. Small group teaching tailored to the student with full parental involvement. The socialization problem (which might or might not exist) and the fact some people use it to avoid teaching certain topics (evolution, for example) doesn’t change this.
matoko_chan
@suzanne: well…..i would actually like to be Matt Taibbi with a vagina.
that is my ambition.
i know, i know, i have to work on my profanity and snark content more.
i actually think the greater part of the commentariat here is mostly bio-luddites and stupid minimally aware cudlips and ‘slines that are chewing on complacency cuds and need to be woken up.
and old persons.
its really sad that this about the best the left side has got.
a lot of people are utterly spoofed by Kain, including Cole.
Kain is a message discipline conservative and a base-panderer.
He fuzzies up the main themes to appear faux rational but scratch the surface and hes a fetus=slave, teabaggers aren’t racists, unregulated free market voucher wielding supply-side capitalist.
he has nothing new to say, you are all just spoofed by the way he is saying it.
C’mon, you mostly see right through McMegan.
Kain is McMegan with a Y chromosome.
ksmiami
@matoko_chan:
no fair – at least call us lefties some type of rare protozoa. I think the majority of the Balloon Juice “wolf pack” saw through Sugar Kain from the start but then Cole got mad at our poor table manners and sent us to our rooms.
matoko_chan
@Kirk Spencer: this is exactly correct. the data we have shows that charter schools and increased teacher:student ratios do improve performance. There is ZERO data that shows vouchers improve performance. The analogy is climate change. Climate change is not micro-observational, therefore it does not exist and it is a liberal plot. Conservatives believe their “genius” children are being sandbagged by crap teachers that are also indoctrinating liberal memes…..because most of the high IQ conservative children turn liberal. This is also why conservatives want 10 year olds to get the vote, and why Douthat wants IQ bussing so heartland redstate kids can get into Harvard. Can’t fight the Bell Curve, lawl.
The conservative message is exemplified by Palin’s attitude.
Teachers are The Enemy.
Since NCLB has epically FAILED to make all american children above average, merit pay and vouchers are attempts at making all teachers above average. More fail.
America does have education problems, world standing in science and math is falling…high school drop out rate is soaring…duh, could it be correlated with GINI (the inequality index, which SOARED under bush)?
The inner city graduation rate has dropped below 50% in many big cities. This is because economically poor parents don’t have the time or energy to be involved in their childrens education.
Another conservative meme is bootstrapping….with a puritan work ethic and a love of baby jeebus anyone should be able to pull themselves out of the gutter.
Kain and McMegan know all this. they have to spin it to look rational so conservativism doesn’t go down in instant flames, and “doom us to a uniparty system.– Sully” How could a uniparty system possibly be any worse than what we have now, which is the Tyranny of the Stupid and their dishonest enablers like Kain?
i say let them burn. America survived the Whigs going extinct, something else will arise.
/spit
matoko_chan
@ksmiami: ill give you one more chance.
but im not impressed so far.
even your shamans are weak.
DBrown
Mr. Ed the talking horse is fun – only if to prove that when stupidity is wrapped in fancy talk it is still just palin speak. The horse’s rear adds some interesting points that are useful to flame if only to make BJ’ers think more clearly and realize that just one or two facts destroy the typical horse’s rear ends arguments – priceless.
Besides, its the closest to BoB that we tend to have.
Let him write a few more stupid thoughts and get flamed … it is fun to see such a show and realize this is about the best those idiots have – what a joke and tragically, it is on the amerikan people, who are so desperate, that they listen to these monsters that rob them of all their money, and future in exchange for false hope.
matoko_chan
apolos i should have also linked mistahmix excellent screed.
@DBrown: the way it could help with Kain being here is if the commentariat forces him to confront his reasons for base pandering.
Does he think the base is too stupid to learn?
Does he honestly believe in the bullshytt spew of disengenous spin he and McMegan and Douthat ritually vomit out?
Is he trying to get the base on his side so he can wean them away from Palin and Levin and Rush and Beck?
Does he live in fear of a uni-party system?
inquiring minds want to know.
also, too……why did my hero Freddie DeBoer leave the League?
couldn’t take the lying bullshytt rightwing spinmeisters any more?
Kirk Spencer
@matoko_chan: Actually, I have to object to a small part of your response.
Charter schools have not had a good performance. Given they tend toward small class size and heavier parental involvement, their performance has been VERY disappointing. From the Dept of Ed’s evaluation report: “In five case study states, charter schools are less likely to meet state performance standards than traditional public schools.”
matoko_chan
@Kirk Spencer: yah, disappointing, but i think the problem is within-group variance in charter school performance. Only SOME charter schools have smaller classes and force parental involvment…..some are actually christian schools which has the deleterious effect of dumbing down all students…..like Oral Roberts university and Brigham Young university self-selection effect for college students.
les
@Pancake:
Nice confirmation of the “too stupid to survive” opinion. Distinguish: parental opinion on the state of education, v. parental opinion of their kids. Although I’m sure your opinion that your kids are the prettiest, smartest, bestest of all is spot on.
les
@E.D. Kain:
Since I don’t know who you mean by “the media,” I don’t know how badly they portray US education. Likely worse than your parental survey. You might look here. Below OECD average in graduation, literacy, math, science. You can argue that this is ok, although it’s not where we started, but it’s hard to say it places us well for an increasingly technical, competitive world. Where we used to export technical expertise, we now import; and business claims for H1B visas continue to grow. College Board says about 40% of students qualified for college need remedial courses; the Chronicle for Higher Education says 4 out of 5 students needing remedial work were good high schools students, with grades of 3.0 or higher. While anecdotal, you can’t look at education stories without seeing increasing class size, decreasing electives, decreasing budgets for teachers and supplies, etc. And my kids are in a relatively well off, well regarded public school system.
Pretty soon it’ll be like apologists for torture and unprovoked war–“well, we’re better than Sadam!”
Degradation of the educational system is just one more result of a decades long anti-government, anti-tax, fuck you I got mine conservative ethos.