OMFG. American Schools In Crisis

[simonm]

Normally I do not watch Oprah but this time she had a really interesting show. It was about the American education system and how we compare to the world. If this is not a national security issue then what is?

We are seriously in trouble.

The show is a real eye opener and I urge everyone to watch. There was even a part where students from other countries such as China knew the names of our first 5 presidents while american students couldn't even guess.


http://www2.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/200604/tows_past_20060412.jhtml

[jsamuel]

1. didn't see it, but I have been calling our problem the "War on Education"

I am refering to the RW attacks on schools. Including the WH getting companies to "re-design" how US universities work. We all know what they intend to do. Make education more expensive and less fact based.

[Ksec]

2. what was the problem?

Seriously. Teachers, students, money?

[BlooInBloo]

13. I assume that American kids leaving HS & college are dumb...

.... lotsa places to look for the cause of course...

Teachers reflexively point to bad parenting without even thinking about it...

Parenty reflexively point to unintelligent teachers without even thinking about it...

Others point to both of them.

[Lorien]

23. Crumbling schools, lowered expectations, a system set of for kids of the

1950's, and a growing dropout rate. Here's more details: http://www.standup.org/thechallenge.html

[TheBaldyMan]

40. not teaching anything apart from how to pass a test, IMO...

education should be a preparation for life. If you have a good education and can think critically you can pass SATs, if you are schooled to pass SATs that doesn't necessarily mean you have an education.

Nowadays it seems that nobody cares about the standard of education as long as some bean-counter can wave a piece of paper around to say that results have never been better. The quality of an education is as important as the content.

I bunked off school a lot as a teenager but I read a lot down the library, the result was I learned a lot of stuff that didn't get mentioned in school.

[Reader Rabbit]

3. The only crisis in American education...

...is its attempted destruction by the corporate right.

Why is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0325006377/qid=1143505761/sr=1-26/ref=sr_1_26/103-2665491-9561426?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

It's just more scare tactics, designed to encourage people to let big business have free rein to privatize the system.

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. Corporations want cheap workers and fundies want easily brainwashed

pew fillers. And right now they are both winning the war on education. x(

[Reader Rabbit]

8. Got it in one!

In my opinion, NCLB—with its obsession for testing and numbers—is a Trojan horse designed to turn public education into an assembly line for manufacturing a permanent underclass.

[linazelle]

25. And Oprah mentioned NCLB--innocently--I am tempted to write her

She said something like "even with NCLB" the schools are deteriorating. :eyes:

They are, of course, deteriorating because of it.

All in all, the show was eye opening.

[BootinUp]

11. Doesn't make sense to me.

I can't think of any logic for why corporations want to damage our education system. Criticize it? Sure.

[Telly Savalas]

28. Short sighted executives might do it for two reasons

1. Properly funding education requires taxes. More taxes mean less net profit.
2. They lobby for schools to become mere job training facilities, ditching the notion of a more well-rounded liberal arts education.

Being too lazy to spend more than 2 seconds at the amazon link, I think the focus of the book is on point number 2.

Note that these reasons don't point to an explicitly anti-education agenda, but the effects essentailly advance one.

Smart executives, in contrast, are aware that having a larger pool of creative and dynamic people from which they can recruit personnel strenghtens their business. Hence they support quality schools which help in this cause.

[nonconformist]

31. Because uneducated people are easier to control

They won't demand higher wages.

[seabeyond]

36. they want it out of fed and into corporate world. they want to run the

schools. like they have taken our military thru their corporations, they want to do the same for our schools. they dont want federal govt running the schools

[katty]

4. been seriously deteriorating for last 25 yrs+

[Lorien]

21. Oprah said that 20 years ago America was #1 in education; now we're #24

behind Poland, Hungary, and the Balkan states. The problem she, Bill and Melissa Gates, and TIME magazine say, is low expectations for student combined with underfunded and overcrowded facilities that we're set up for 1950's students.

[LiberalEsto]

6. I have 2 friends who teach 5th grade

in 2 different states. Both have told me that all they do these days is prepare kids for the No Child Left Behind standardized testing. Everything else is neglected. Kids get hardly any science or social studies or grammar. There's no time to teach these "extras."

Nobody bothers teaching the times tables in 3rd grade, so kids in 5th grade can't multiply without the help of calculators.

No Child Left Behind really means "Lets Turn Our Kids Stupid So They Will Only Be Fit to Work at WalMart."

[Ksec]

7. I can vouch for that

My two kids spend half the year preparing for this test, reading and math.

Then they go to the next grade unprepared. NCLB is a big part of whats wrong.

[porphyrian]

9. Education has been successively given less money since I was born.

The only difference between the parties is that Democrats cut education funding less than republicans. At least, that's been my perception of it.

[Tanuki]

10. We have an "education president"

who has been quoted as saying the "jury is still out on evolution." It's not just the schools---we have a nation in crisis.

[LWolf]

12. I believe this show had a taped statement,

short though it was, from Jonathan Kozol, and Oprah plugged one of his books. I'd read it if you get the chance. Here's a link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400052440/103-9308442-7342234?v=glance&n=283155

I didn't see the show; I've never actually watched Oprah, and watch little TV. There was an interesting discussion about it over at FairTest, which is where I heard about it.

Why is it that when actual teachers say something, we're ignored, but when Oprah speaks, everyone listens? Would it help if we all became sports or media stars before we headed to the classroom?

You're damned right, we're in trouble. Having worked in public education for 23 years, I could give you chapter and verse in the longest recorded post on DU.

I don't think Oprah got the whole picture, though. The "failing schools" mantra is the rw propaganda piece that has been used to destroy public schools over the last few decades. It's still efficient today. Be careful that you can discern which publicly exposed problem is propaganda, and which is real.

For more, you can check out Kozol's website:

http://www.learntoquestion.com/seevak/groups/2002/sites/kozol/Seevak02/ineedtogoHOMEPAGE/homepage.htm

[SmokingJacket]

14. Was the solution to close the public schools altogether?

Because that's what the righties are itching for.

I agree something BIG needs to change. But as for that bit about Chinese kids knowing our presidents, the right wingers would say, "Yeah, but they don't have GOD in the classroom!" and/or "What did they get on their standardized tests?" and some on the left would say, "Who needs rote learning? We need critical thinking skills!" as if it's even possible to think critically if you don't KNOW jack shit.

:grr:

I blame the right AND the left for the suckiness of our schools.

[maveric]

15. Standardized testing is killing the quality of education in the US.

Kids spend too much time preparing for testing and not enough time learning new things. Many, if not most, are "Left Behind", due to these tests that reek of racism and class warfare.

[lovuian]

16. Instead of Iraq War we should be EDUCATING our children...

instead we are making them standardized ... and indoctrinated...

I feel so sorry for US children... they are being cheated!!!

[acmavm]

17. Please don't think that this is anything new. About 10 or so years ago

I heard this news story on the way to work. Fortune Magazine reported that there were tests given to the kids in the schools of the top 25 industrialized nations on the planet. The tests were taken by just your regular run of the mill school kid in 24 of the countries. In ours, we tested our best students.

The United States of America ranked 24th out of 25 nations. The only nation who's kids who's scores were worse than ours was Lebanon.

That was the day I truly understood why Johnny can't read.

[Lorien]

22. The "new" trend is the dropout rate

which according to studies is reaching 60% in many areas of the country. Kids just don't see an education as being important, and neither do many of their parents.

[serryjw]

26. Two facts from the show really got me

1) It cost $35-75K to incarcerate a prisoner and we spend about $10K to EDUCATE them.......am I missing something?

2)Remember when they said that 50,000 kids in CA could NOT pass the qualifying test to graduate from HS?

It was exhilarating to watch these young minds when they placed in the 'small' school.

[SheilaT]

18. If our schools are so bad,

why is it that growing numbers of students take AP classes every year? And many of them take the AP exams and score well enough to get college credit. (Both of my sons started college with about 16 semester hours of credit from their APs).

A few other things to keep in mind: We are virtually the only nation that does not do serious tracking of their students. We attempt to graduate everyone from high school, although if this week;s issue of Time magazine is correct, only 70% graduate. In most other countries, large percentages of students are funneled off into what amounts to vo-tech schools by 8th grade. So their "average" students in the upper grades are the same as our best.

And don't forget that religious idiot fundamentalists are largely responsible for the dumbing down of schools, especially in science and world history. They don't seem to want kids taught anything that doesn't match their interpretation of the Bible, preferring to keep everyone in ignorance rather than risk allowing kids to learn to think.

All of that said, we still have the finest secondary education system in the world, which is why students from all over still flock here. I've also read that students who go through our secondary ed system come out being able to think creatively, no matter what the field.

So much of the bashing of our school system is being done by those who have an agenda, who want to systematically dismantle it.

[dramachick]

19. That's great for you

that your kids are doing well, but we don't have the finest secondary education system in the world.

Open your eyes and look beneath the surface.

School systems are more segregated and unequal now than before Brown.

Many children don't have books and take home photocopied pages to study.

The overcrowding and physical conditions of too many schools create environments where it's impossible for students to learn anything.

Kids graduate, but it doesn't mean they know shit.

As an employer, it's embarrassing how many Armenian, Russian, African and Asian immigrants, etc., have a better command of the English language, both written and verbal, than native born Americans.

The only agenda I have is that I believe ALL children in this country should be afforded a quality education.

[northamericancitizen]

24. Welcome to DU dramachick!

[sandnsea]

27. Her point flew right by you

Those immigrants are the cream of the crop in their country, the equivalent of only our AP students. That's the reason they are better educated, it's like comparing a Harvard grad to a community college grad.

We DO try to educated EVERY child in this country, unlike most other countries. Straight comparisons that don't consider that are completely unfair and useless.

Somebody said Oprah said 20 years ago US schools were #1. Funny, because I remember these exact same complaints about US schools all of my life. I don't ever remember a time when a report said US schools were #1. So she's either intentionally misleading or a victim of our ignorant information system herself.

There are problems with our schools, no doubt. But creating a false crisis to shovel in vouchers or some other "free market" solution is a danger to your stated goal of educating ALL children.

[SoCalDem]

29. "...children don't have books ...".. I a NEW school in CA, in an AP

calculus class, my son did not have his own book.. We couldn;t even BUY one for him.. he was a "group leader" and shared a classroom book, because he was DOING THE TEACHER'S WORK &^%$#@().But for homework purposes, he would have to go to the office and xerox the pages he needed...and he was TUTORING some of the kids in his group, becaus ethe teacher gave an individual grade AND a group grade..

My husband and I went and complained, and he got a book..and a few weeks later, the "group" thing ended too..

[rucky]

33. The achievement gap is like the income gap in America

either really good schools or really crappy schools. I bet you can guess who gets the good schools & who gets the crappy ones.

either way, if the education-rich get richer, those numbers you cited would go up. so there is "tracking," in a way. they're putting the poor kids on the failure track and, as you said, not offering any alternatives.

[seabeyond]

38. i have kids in both a higher income public school and

a lower end public school. here i have to ask. is it the school that is giving them the crappy education, or could it have something to do with the parenting and environment that the children that they are in ergo crating a circumstance at school that is tougher to teach. i dont think i will blame the schools on this from what i saw at the low economic public school. i still saw teachers working hard, and i still saw a principle out there every day all day. this was elementary.

[rucky]

48. Oh yeah, family is a HUGE factor.

It's hard being poor. I'm trying to get some kids in an afterschool tutoring program and it's like pulling teeth with some of the parents. they depend on the bus system to transport their kids, since most of them are in a situation where it's a single parent or both parents work. They can't afford babysitting/daycare, and usually have one or no cars. Even offering in-home services is difficult for some families.

Just one example where there is a resource available from the school that can't be taken advantage of because of the family situation.

Education and opportunity are very much intertwined with income, because most poor people are doing just as much work (for pay)_, then have to do more homemaking work that can be "outsourced" by most middle class families. So they are simply unable to take advantage of many of the rescources available to them.

[seabeyond]

50. i am so with you rucky on what i see

all that you say is right on. take it further, then there are those that are just not into schooling, theirs in the past, or their kids and they do not put the emphasis on school nor pass it to their children.

but even more is what you say. depending on the school. lots of single parents doing the best they can. i watch my brother with his two boys. dinner at 8 at night by the time they get to it. homework 9. bed 10. kids have to walk to school in the winters here. the nifty, they get a breakfast.

the school my boys are going to .... high income now. my youngest has poor fine motor skills. getting a's but they put him in tutoring two days a week since beginning of year for handwriting. tuesday was the last one. other son 5th grade straight a's. he got a 79 on a pretak test..... tutoring, ...

i am all for it. i dont know how other parents feel, but even in this school teacher acts like she is asking something from me, whereas i am just so appreciateive of the extra work for my kids.

[seabeyond]

37. thank you sheila. i listen to these post, and look at kids school

and really i am not seeing it. they and the teachers are working their buts off. they seem to be doing stuff earlier than we did. they seem to be learning MORE than we did. then i read this and i get concerned all over again on if the kids are getting a good enough education. the upside in my family, we also learn outside of the school. but i am seeing science and history. they have p.e. and art. and they do grammer. and work hard on multipilication starting in the second grade. shruggin shoulders.

[recidivist]

20. I favor standardized testing. Here's why:

Standardized testing is not a be-all and end-all, but it IS a response to rampant social promotion and the gutting of standards -- not everywhere, but in far too many schools nationwide.

After decades of graduating functional illiterates, the powers-that-be in public education simply no longer have any credibility when they say "trust us." No way -- the trust is gone. Testing is simply an accountability tool. It is a only a first step, but it is an essential one in a system that refuses to police itself.

A final thought: I have difficulty taking seriously all the howling that an annual test is too time consuming or that it weakens the curriculum by forcing schools to teach to the test. I passed through a very average public school system in the 1950's and 60's, just a few years before the great dumbing-down wave struck. (My younger siblings got a very different, and inferior, elementary and secondary education but that's another story.) We were tested in every subject every week with additional pop quizes thrown in, not to mention midterms and finals. Looking back, I now suspect some of the teachers didn't know how to do anything else. But it worked: we knew the test was coming, so most of us studied.

So what's the big deal nowadays about something as simple as a battery of tests? Maybe the kids just need a lot MORE testing so the annual NCLB exams don't stand out as anything special.

[rucky]

34. I agree.

and I teach.

The tests are created by educators, and cover concepts that really should be taught in the schools that year. If the teacher is doing what they're supposed to be doing - teaching grade-level skills & concepts, then "the test" will be no problem.

All this 'spending all classtime teaching to the test' means absolutely nothing, when pressed for details on how the teachers "waste" their time.

plus, we need a uniform system to mark student progress on a national scale, if we want to be objective about it.

achievement standards aren't really that different from state-to-state, district-to-district, so why should each district re-invent the wheel by dictating their own sets of standards every time? Not only are districts more susceptable to local/fundie politics, but it just seems like a waste of resrouces to me.

Parents should be involved, but not with curriculum decisions.

[Dinger]

35. Accountability? For Who? NOT Private/Voucher Schools

Private/voucher schools are not required to take standardized tests in most states, and IF they do take them, they are not required to report the results. It's that way in Wisconsin, that I can tell you. There are excellent private schools, and if I'm going to spend a fortune and send a child of mine to one of them, they had better be able to show how they compare, and make my money a wise investment. Private schools are simply not held to the same standard as public schools. I am a public school teacher (elementary), and if I'd have chosen to teach in a private school, I'd have had to take a $20,000 a year pay cut - no thanks. I think standardized testing is necessary, but it could be improved, that's for sure.

[One_Life_To_Give]

42. Loophole that needs to be fixed.

Your right, we should not be exempting Private and Home schools from standardized testing.

[Francine Frensky]

46. I'm sorry, but I disagree strongly.

Two main reasons: one, all this pressure for schools to have high test results forces the schools to follow very strictly the curriculum of the test-maker, and who knows what their agenda is or whether they are highly qualified to know what each school district should teach. Here's a great example: I live in Georgia, which has terrible schools overall, but here in the suburbs of Atlanta we actually have decent public schools, mainly because the parents are well-educated (mostly not from Georgia). While our local curriculum might be more advanced because of where the kids are coming from, they instead have to study dumbed down topics that the state of Georgia thinks are important for their grade. For example, instead of studying the greeks, romans, european or world history, the test focuses on American Indians, and my kids have spent way too much time studying these people. Nothing against the indians, but my kids haven't even learned the one thing I would teach them about the Indians: that they were spritual and had great respect for the land. Instead, they learn about arcane ceremonies (leg scratching?) and rival tribes.

Second, standardized tests are poor predictors of success, I believe. I probably should be in favor of them because personally, I was a very good standardized test taker, actually doing better at that than open ended or essay type tests. But I have one child who really struggles with these multiple choice tests, and I can see some are unfairly rewarded (me), some are at a disadvantage (him). If you don't have kids in school right now maybe this isn't obvious, but right now, too much pressure is being placed on these standardized tests; they have gone way beyond what they were when you and I were in school years ago. There is just no comparison between these tests and the pop quizzes your teachers gave you.

Third, just another thing that is annoying, my third and fifth graders have their "big test" next week, and they've spent months preparing for this and scaring the kids half to death, and constantly reminding the parents to have their kids rested, well fed, on time, at school, no doctor's appointments all next week...and I keep wondering: shouldn't we be reminded to do this all year round, not just during testing week?

This is the bottom line for me, this saying from the business world: It is better to design quality IN than to inspect it OUT. These tests do nothing but attempt to inspect out problem kids and schools, and does nothing to address structural, fundamental problems (lack of funding is #1) in our school system.

[malaise]

30. It was shocking

but should not have been given the reality that Grover et al don't think government should spend money on education. I thought about New Orleans while watching.

[nonconformist]

32. I'm sorry I missed it. Yes, it is a serious problem.

Especially the "learn things applicable to testing" mentality. Entire subjects and areas get omitted (or simply glossed over) because they're not on the standardized tests. Alternately, they hammer incessantly the stuff that will be, long after the smarter kids have a good handle on the material.

It's absolutely shameful.

I have a 5th grader and a 1st grader, and I supplement their education in areas where I feel it's lacking. Sadly, I'm sure they're not learning certain things that I'm not aware of or wouldn't think of.

[Bassic]

39. Well, with a bunch of crazy people refusing to allow their

children to learn anything about reality (like the FACT of evolution, for example) American schools are bound to score badly.

If this phenomenon isn't stopped, future american generations will eventually find themselves at a loss compared to the rest of the world.

[One_Life_To_Give]

41. Nothing to see; And in Baseball News Today n/t

[Saboburns]

43. Our Public Education

Is simply a mirror of our nation in general. Life for 95% of us had gotten dramatically rougher, and tougher since The Republicans seized power and implemented their policies.

This is what happens when unchecked capitalism takes hold.

This was always intended to be the endgame.

It's gonna get way, WAY, worse.

And nothing will change it in the forseeable future. Nothing that I can see. Not until the peasants get their pitch forks and storm the castle. Anyway, I hate to seem so negative, but, that's the way I see's it.

It's all them 'Dang Libruls' fault.

[ecstatic]

44. I saw that... Hopefully I can help one day

The show was very moving.

[Crankie Avalon]

45. Teaching creation mythology in our science classes...

...THAT'S the answer!

:7 or:cry: ?

[sg_]

47. I was talking a quick look around the oprah forums...

on the link in the original post, and some person posted saying this -

"But why are some people afraid of this program? In less than 2 weeks time, our current school board cancelled the program. They say it's un-American to teach about other countries. They say the approximate cost of $85,000 is too much. (Our school budget is $50 million and over 750 children participate in the program.) They say there is no local control, but IB classes use all the same textbooks and curriculum our other students use. "

I dont know alot about the US education system since I dont live there, but people thinking its unamerican to teach about other countries? :crazy:

[newspeak]

49. back in the seventies

our highschool was number one at that time. We had sociology, world problems, living skills, psychology classes. The living skills class was very interesting. It taught one how to balance books, owning versus renting and human relationships (marriage, sex). In the World Problems class we discussed events happening around the world and debated political positions. This was during Vietnam and the trouble in the Middle East. From English class to World Problems, we formed groups to learn how to debate. Do they do that today? Do they even tolerate opposition? Learning deductive and inductive logic is another thing students need to know before leaving highschool. Learning logic skills keeps one from gravitating towards illogical, prejudice pandering Rush Limpballs and his ilk.