The american public "education" system

[Ben]

*Originally posted by msmith537 *
**Perhaps I should have been more specific. The goof-offs who got crappy grades went to crappy schools. Some of us can actually have fun AND get good grades.

**

Funny, earlier you said:

Originally posted by msmith537
**And success has nothing to do with IQ. You can have a student with an IQ of 160, but if he never goes to class or does his homework, his grades are going to reflect it. **

**
Why do you think jocks are lazy? My high school’s valadictorian was also on the baseball and basketball team. Not all athletes are fat dumbasses.

**

I don’t equate “jocks” with “athletes”; IME the former is used perjoratively. In any event, you haven’t addressed my point, which is that plenty of students in Ivy league schools are neither hardworking nor smart. Moreover, you’ve put words in my mouth- I never said athletes are “fat dumbasses.”

*Originally posted by Ben *
They also didn’t go to public school.

**

Your point being?

**
You can’t say the public school system is bad just because every student doesn’t go to the Ivy League.

**

Tsk, tsk- putting words in my mouth again.

**
Oh and Dumbguy, you don’t have to respect my work. But at least I’ll be pulling down six figures and going on nice vacations with the wife and kids while you’re slaving away in your cubical or factory floor hoping my company doesn’t downsize you out of a job.
**

My, aren’t you a pleasant fellow. Do your kids really admire you when you lord it over people like that? Or do they just not appreciate real polish when they see it?

-Ben

[Ben]

*Originally posted by msmith537 *
**Dude, your conspiracy theory statements are ignorant on so many levels.

**

Let’s look at who’s really ignorant, shall we?

**
First of all, wealthy people would want less competition for THEIR kids, not THERE kids.

**

Mr. Pot? Meet Mr. Kettle.

**
Third of all, wealthy and upper middle class people don’t “conspire” against the poor. We don’t sit around in dark conference rooms smoking cigarettes, plotting to keep the people ignorant so we can get ahead.

**

I find that to be a rather naive viewpoint. Do you really think that people with power won’t use it to make sure that they and their children keep it?

The fact is that in Ivy League schools, at least, wealthy people have indeed conspired against the poor. It’s called the legacy system: if your parents went to an Ivy League school, you’re given preferential treatment in admissions to the same school. Poor students, meanwhile, get the short end of the grandfather clause.

**
If anything the opposite is true: Education = more money = more purchasing power = companies make more $$.

**

Funny, earlier you said that society needs tires as much as it needs doctors. If everyone is educated, who makes the tires? Will better educated tire makers make more money? If they did, wouldn’t that just mean more inflation, or a smaller share of money for the elites?

The fact of the matter is that if you let more poor people into elite schools, you make more competition for the children of the upper class. That’s why the elites felt the need for a grandfather clause, to tip the playing field.

I mean, think about it. Increasing opportunities for the poor not only doesn’t help the people in power, it at least indirectly harms the chances of their children. Do you really think it’s ignorant of someone to think that the elites might have a vested interest in keeping the masses ignorant, and might act upon that interest?

Bear in mind, too, that William F. Buckley has openly advocated using education as a tool for keeping the masses ignorant so that they can be better manipulated by the elites. And while Irving Kristol’s plans didn’t directly involve the educational system, he did, as an atheist undergrad, suggest that the masses should be kept ignorant and religious in order that the atheist elites could better control them, while the elites themselves publically (and falsely) professed theistic beliefs. But that was a long time ago- nowadays Kristol is quite devout, and enthusiastically promotes Intelligent Design.

**
The kids who studied a lot and had good grades had graduated from good schools and went on to good jobs. The kids who goofed off in class and were drunk all the time had gone to community college and many had crappy jobs.
**

You know, I addressed this point when I said that Ivy league schools have a lot of lazy, drunken jocks in them, but you didn’t make any substantive reply.

-Ben

[even_sven]

Perhaps my earlier statements about economics have been misunderstood.

When I mean economics, I do not mean just the money that goes towards the school. I also mean the money in the community in general.

It is a fact that people’s whoes parents are not educated (and poverty often accompanies education) tend to place less emphasis on education with their kids. You may have read Mein Kampf as a kid, but what if your parents didn’t buy you books or refused to “waste their time” at the library? What if you never got a newpaper in your childhood home? What if the people around you never engaged in discussions about history or politics? What if you had to work after school instead of having time to research things yourself.

Sure, occassionally a “talented kid with drive” makes it out of their class/education status, but trust me, I’ve been their and it is pretty damn rare. The truth is, if you have grown up where education is not a priority (often out of neccesity…who can afford school when there are families to feed and bills to be paid?) chances are education is going to take a back seat for you, too.

And yes, that does bleed over into school. My poor high school offered half the AP classes that the richer high school down the road offered. Beyond that, AP tests are $75.00 a piece. Take a couple of those and you are out of a whole lot of cash. Add the cost of SATs (about $50.00 per a time you take it if I recall correctly), and the college application fees (usually around $50.00 per college) and you have an enourmous expense…and this is before you get yourself in debt for the rest of your life with student loans!

There is a damn good reason why I am sitting on my somewhat-privaledged white ass in a college dorm, typeing away on my TI 'net connection, while my best friend growing up is busy at work. She gets to work long hours to feed her ten year old sister because her mom is in jail. It’s economics. She never stood a chance. Can you honestly tell her to her face that it is her fault that I am going places in my life while she is struggleing just to survive?

[Myrr21]

As a note, these “hostile” takeovers of schools mentioned earlier are the epitome of bad public education policy. It forces teachers to teach to a standardized test that is often irrelevant, mind-numbing, and targeted at the lowest common denominator (so that failure rates won’t be too high).

A number of Balitmore City schools have undergone the “we’re taking over” routine by a private company, the by the state, and I think the city may be back in charge now. It hasn’t helped. Of course, the ironic thing is that right in the middle of this is Baltimore City College (a public high school–go figure) and a few others that have a graduation and college acceptance rate comparable to many of the well-funded county chools.

Public education isn’t dead; it’s just being widely mismanaged.

[Gundy]

*Originally posted by even sven *
**Can you honestly tell her to her face that it is her fault that I am going places in my life while she is struggleing just to survive? **

Sven, I think you’re absolutely correct on this, and that’s something I don’t think better public schools are going to be able to help much. I went to school with plenty of kids like your friend. Many worked to support their families and wound up dropping out as soon as they were 16. Part of this was economic necessity, part of it was that their families didn’t make education a priority over immediate wage-earning. But better public schools can’t do anything about parents who think education is a waste of time, can they? When I said part of my educational ambition was a result of my upbringing, I meant my parents challenged and encouraged me. To them, however, it wasn’t about going to school, it was about knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Being informed was important to them, and this was passed on to their children.

That said, I do see your point, and again, I think you’re totally right. If we want to achieve educational parity in public schools, we have to offer equal resources to everyone. If my general H.S. had offered Latin like the magnet schools did, I would have continued to take it - but they didn’t, because they couldn’t afford it. Did this out me and my classmates at a disadvantage? Who the hell knows?

[Tars_Tarkas]

So other than an ability to read, write, perform some basic math, and perhaps possess some basic history knowledge, how much education does your father require to perform this job?

ah, so you equate how much you learned in school with how good a job you deserve. Simple, hardworking men that make tires that you depend on, otherwise they would explode while you are driving down the road, deserve to be ridiculed because they never went to college.

amazing.

If you must know, I have just started a job as a consultant for one of the largest management consulting firms in the world… But I’m sure you won’t respect my work because it doesn’t involve working with heavy machinery.

No, i dont respect your work because i am a microbiologist, a field much more difficult than your buisiness school crap. i required much more education than you, yet came from a poor, single parent background, and was lazy in high school.
By your logic that means i should be playing register jockey at the local kwik-e-mart.

And, yes, i work with heavy machinery as well. (Think DNA sequences itself?)

Oh and Dumbguy, you don’t have to respect my work. But at least I’ll be pulling down six figures and going on nice vacations with the wife and kids while you’re slaving away in your cubical or factory floor hoping my company doesn’t downsize you out of a job.

yes, that makes you superior to me in every way…NOT!
(Well, maybe in blind arrogance and delusions of grandure)

I find i hard to believe a woman would want to be with a guy this creepily evil.

Oh, and if rich, successful people are so smart and get good jobs, why are the companies they run so stupid when it comes to running a business that they need to hire other people (at a lot of money) to save a little money. sounds a little dumb to me, but i’m just a simple, poor scientist, not a big, fancy arrogant downsizer.

P.S. let us know when your company downsizes you!

[glee]

Here in the UK we have Public Schools (like the one I teach at). Anyone can attend … provided they pass an entrance exam and pay about $20,000 a year. (So they’re private schools).
If pupils continually disrupt classes, we expel them.

We also have a State system (my sister teaches in it). The class sizes are higher, it takes a lot to be suspended, let alone expelled. Pay is lower and conditions are worse. (The Government funds these schools at something like $4,000 per pupil per year).

Dude, you posted:

'Over here in the UK they publish a league table of schools based on final exam results and also tests of pupils at different ages.

The schools at the bottom of the league are sent educational ‘swat’ teams who re-organise things and inspect the teachers.

These schools then move UP the league !’

Firstly, as in the US, the worst schools tend to be in the poorest areas. Parents have less money and influence etc.

Secondly we do indeed have Swat teams. However there’s little evidence that they work by themselves, since the affected schools are usually given large chunks of money along with the suggested reforms.

Thirdly, isn’t there always going to be a school at the bottom of the league?!

[msmith537]

Wow, its sounds like people here really don’t like the idea that the amount of effort they put into school has a huge effect on their future. I guess I never really understood the “look how lazy I was in high school/college and look at how great my job is now” attitude. I actually got pretty crappy grades in college, but that’s a source of embarassment to me, not pride. And it took me 2-3 years to work off those grades and finally get a job comparable to ny peers. The moral is, you are a lot less likely to end up in a dead end job if you work hard in school.

And lets face it. There are a lot of jobs that are dead-end, sucky jobs (both blue and white-collar). Rather than offend someone by naming those specific jobs, let me just say that I would rather have a career I enjoyed instead of a job I had to take because I couldn’t find anything else.

Tars Tarkas - Thats great your a microbiologist. I’m sure that is much harder than an undergraduate engineering program and an MBA (which, quite frankly, is pretty easy). But you obviously don’t understand anything about management consulting or why companies hire us. It’s not arrogance to admit you don’t know everything about everything. Thats why companies hire us. I don’t want to get off topic here so you can do your own research at (http://www.accenture.com/, http://www.deloitte.com/, http://www.mckinsey.com/, http://www.pricewaterhousecoopers.com/ )

Ben - You made a comment that there are a lot of “drunken, lazy jocks” in elite schools. What exactly is your point? That there are other students who are more deserving of being there? That the “wealthy elite” conspire to have the schools enrole their drunken offspring? Do you really think that the “nobel poor” are being kept down so the “decadent ruling class” can send their spoiled offspring to four years of decadent living?

Here’s how it really works (at least at my school). My college was pretty elite (not quite Ivy though). There were a LOT of wealthy students and a lot of partying. A lot of those students failed out their first year, rich or not. The rest of us figured out how to party AND our classes.

All of this is a little off the main topic, however. The question is, “does the American public school system work?”

My answer is “sometimes”. If you grow up in a town where most of the adults are upper middle class and educated, you are likely to end up the same way. The school system has more money and there’s plenty of influence to “go to college and make something of yourself”.

If you grow up in a poorer working class town, you might not get as good an education. You probably grow up with different attitudes towards higher education.

In either case, if you work hard and get good grades, you have a good chance of getting into college. It may not be Harvard, but you’ll still get a good education.

[Kaitlyn]

It is a combination of factors that determines how successful a student is in a school. Intelligence, work-ethic, socio-economic background, attendence, parental support and involvement, parental education level, health and access to quality health care, depth and breadth of personal experience, class size, quality of the school curriculum, quality of school facilities, quality of the individual teacher in the classroom. To try to isolate one factor and say that it is the sole factor in the success or failure of a student is ridiculous (And, yes, I realize many of these factors are interrelated). Change any of these factors for the better, and you increase student achievement. Some factors can be affected by improving schools, some cannot.

Some of these are out of the hands of the school. Those that can be controlled usually require more money.

Intelligence cannot be affected by the schools, nor can socio-economic background, parental education level, or depth and breadth of personal experience. These are matters that are entirely outside of school control, and they figure significantly in student achievement. Work ethic, parental involvement, and access to quality health care can be influenced by the school to some extent, but are mostly a product of factors outside of the school. For example, students who read 20 minutes a day at home succeed more in all language-intensive subjects (which is all of them except maybe art and shop). Schools can encourage students and parents to read each night at home, but cannot control this vital practice time.

So what can schools control, and how do we improve these things?

Class size: This is one big advantage richer schools have over poorer. A student in a class of 20 will learn more on average than one in a class of 30, for a variety of reasons. This solution is simple, but expensive. You have to hire 50% more teachers to reduce classes from 30 to 20. And you have to have classrooms for the additional classes. And you have to provide training for these teachers. And you must get people to want to be teachers. There is a teacher shortage as it is.

Teacher quality. I teach every subject to my 5th graders. I am an excellent reading, writing, and language arts teacher, a very good math and social studies teacher, and a good science teacher. I am an acceptable P. E. teacher, a bad art teacher, and a terrible music teacher. My students would be much better off with dedicated specialists teaching them P. E., art, and music. Richer schools have money to spend on specialists, which provides their students with a richer, more well-rounded education. And students who study music and art at an early age do better in reading and math. Again, the solution is simple: train and hire more specialists. Again this costs money. By the way, who do you think is more likely to get those college band scholarships, my students who have to wait for 6th grade before ever having the chance to pick up an instrument at school, or those in a neighboring district who can begin daily band practice with a music teacher in 3rd grade?

The same goes for middle and high schools, which cannot find enough high quality math, science, and business teachers. And special education teachers are scarce everywhere, at every level. Except in the rich schools. People with math, science, and business degrees can almost always find more money elsewhere, and those who do choose teaching are drawn to the schools which pay the most.

School facilities, equipment, and books. I have no science equipment with which to teach science. None. It costs money the district doesn’t have. All of these things affect student learning. All cost money.

School curriculum. This one is basically free, but no one can agree what it should be. There is a depth/breadth trade-off, due to time constraints. Add a new subject, and you take time away from another. It’s free, but very complex.

I am not advocating throwing money at the problem. I am advocating spending more money on focused areas that have a demostrable effect on student achievement.

And we should recognize which problems are school problems, and which problems are societal problems. To suggest that societal problems are a product of the schools is to reverse cause and effect.

[dude]

The point i was trying to make is that at least now in the UK things are a bit more open, at least there is a league.

The educational SWAT teams do work and so does more money.

I think putting things in the open and not pretending there is no problem is a large part of trying to fix it.

Of course there is always going to be some school at the bottom of the league but then at least the extra resources are going where required instead of just been spread out with no monitoring.

[dude]

What is the objective of a public school system ?

Is it to get more people on to University ?

To increase the educational level of the population ?

To create a higher trained workforce so to reduce the cost to industry ?
If you haven’t got a clear objective and a way to measure it then your just wasting time really.

The USA and UK have fairly good economies and living standards ( even if there is a wide range i.e. the poor are still poor ) so perhaps it is working.

If i remember correctly the original reason was so that ‘the workers’ could read the instructions in the factory.