The education gap in America is getting huge!

Continuing on about US education and the stupidity known as the nclb (no child left behind) act --

Every student in public schools are mandated to take the test. In the best of circumstances, it takes two weeks to administer the test. All too often (the majority of schools ?), the teachers 'prep' for the test by going over test questions for one to two weeks, so that the fraction of weak students in the school can make the bar. So of the ~ 180 days of yearly education, ten to twenty days are wasted for every child who has reached the requisite level.

Think about that. FIVE - TEN percent of the school year, every year, for practically every child in america who can read and write by the 3rd grade, has been wasted by that mediocre student currently in the white house.

I often suspect that the education board sets up standards based on worker requirements at Disney World.

 

Hello? We have some of the finest universities in the world, many of them private. Your argument just doesn't jive with reality.

 

Holy crap! My background is similar to yours... Well, the only difference is the town I started and grew up in wasn't exactly what I'd call ghetto, but nonetheless the mechanism is the same, my family specifically moved to a particular town for the sole reason of getting me into a private high school that, back then, catered only to local residents. The high school I WOULD have attended had the move not taken place, well, sort of sucked, whereas maybe 50% would go onto college, versus the school I went to which 99%+ went onto college, a healthy swath of that onto Ivy league at that...

The funny thing is, both schools were maybe only 3 miles apart. For all purposes though, one could have been on the Moon, the other, Mars...

Except UNLIKE you, I had nothing to prove (after all, I was, I suppose what one might consider a social "anarchist" :lol: ), even though for whatever reason I ended up in the most advanced courses, and much to jayman's chagrin, I was a classic text-book gen Xer, who spent most of my time hanging out with friends playing video games, skipping classes, and coming up with all sorts of reasons why I shouldn't/couldn't/wouldn't get a summer job... :lol: Could I have gone to an Ivy league school? Sure. BUT, I'll be the first to admit I had ZERO ambition/motivation (my friend's and I actually openly ridiculed those that went to Ivy league schools as we knew they'd have to bust their asses, and such had no idea what life was really all about. B) Plus, we knew it was all "marketing hype" in the first place.) , which I guess underscores the theme here. :lol:

In the end, contrary to popular belief, but in-line with stark reality, few, if any, of those we knew who went to Ivy league institutions are actually "better off". :lol:

 

Hiya, glad ya could make it! Unfortunately your argument doesn't jive with reality either. Most private schools cost a small fortune. Believe me, I speak from having worked for years to pay off my student loans.

A private and affordable educational system just isn't going to work.

 

anyone see this article recently?

Study: Most College Students Lack Skills
Jan 19 2:43 PM US/Eastern
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By BEN FELLER
AP Education Writer


WASHINGTON


Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.

Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.

"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.

Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills, meaning they could perform moderately challenging tasks. Examples include identifying a location on a map, calculating the cost of ordering office supplies or consulting a reference guide to figure out which foods contain a particular vitamin.

There was brighter news.

Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.

Also, compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents.

"But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group.

"This sends a message that we should be monitoring this as a nation, and we don't do it," Finney said. "States have no idea about the knowledge and skills of their college graduates."

The survey examined college and university students nearing the end of their degree programs. The students did the worst on matters involving math, according to the study.

Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.

Baldi and Finney said the survey should be used as a tool. They hope state leaders, educators and university trustees will examine the rigor of courses required of all students.

The survey showed a strong relationship between analytic coursework and literacy. Students in two-year and four-year schools scored higher when they took classes that challenged them to apply theories to practical problems or weigh competing arguments.

The college survey used the same test as the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the government's examination of English literacy among adults. The results of that study were released in December, showing about one in 20 adults is not literate in English.

On campus, the tests were given in 2003 to a representative sample of 1,827 students at public and private schools. The Pew Charitable Trusts funded the survey.

It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

___

On The Net:

American Institutes for Research: http://www.air.org/

 

Then I apologize, I thought you were going off on 'spoiled teachers making huge salaries', which is a rant that I hear quite often and gets very old.

I can't fathom how people bitch and whine when their local taxes go up and bitch and whine when teachers want a standard of living increase yet see no correlation and continue to bitch and whine when their kids are stuck using 20 year old textbooks.

 

Which is precisely why you can wipe your nice person with most 4 year degrees in this day and age...

 

I can't resist...

They must be driving Priuses... cos I sure as hell couldn't tell you how far my car can go when it gets down to the last bar.

Sorry, couldn't resist!

 

you nailed it. I went to a private school for highschool and college. My writting skills stink cause I never learned how to structure a sentence from early on. When I do write something official I usually wind up sitting with a friend or two to help me go over gramatical structure, because I was never taught it-- by highschool the assumed we knew it. Frankly it is embarrassing to admit at times.

 

I always read the offers before applying. Its not that hard to speak legal-ese when you read about 20 of them. All that matters to me is that I'm not going to get charged to keep the card yearly and what the penalties are for a late payment.

I pay my bills at the end of every cycle-- completely. I think the credit card companies hate me.

 

Hey man, I resemble that!

If you ask me, that's capitalism at it's best! :lol:

 

most?? no no no. ALL private schools cost a small fortune. i would not be here without a fellowship, since one year at Duke costs freakin' 8 times my remaining undergrad student loan debt. other schools are the same way.

 

Who was it who said, "Ain't no man can help being born average. But ain't no man gotta be common"?

 

Wow, what ever made me think Windstrings was on the "left"? While you talk about the extremes, you have a great point. All of you who are blaming the "No Child Left Behind" act seem to forget this pattern has been occuring for a number of years (downslide)

I am concerned about the culture that athletics surpasses academics

I am concerned about the "poor inside" mentality where there is too much entitlement.

As far as it being politicized...well part of it is EACH of our faults. We all want to think we have all the answers and all the knowledge...even though in these posts we show we have a mixture of facts, fiction, and stereotypes.

There are people out there who are highly knowledgeable about how we may turn this around...but if their proposal flies in the face of our ignorance...we rant to the politicians who then demogogue it. Nothing gets fixed and the status quo is protected.

We will never know what will work unless we "try it". Theory is nothing but theory until there is practical application and this is PARTICULARLY true of human social theory. Our only good data comes from the past.....as people have not changed much.

The biggest problem IMHO is this..just a few decades ago, most people could learn most of what they needed to know due to the volume of information available. Today, it is impossible to know even basic things about so much that is going on, yet we all want to act like we still can.

There are a LOT of people out there who, with good intentions, are letting their ignorance runtheir lives...and I count myself more in that every day. I am trying to stay out of issues I do not understand and focus my efforts on things I have knowlege and experience about.

For example, I spend less time in the Prius technical forums and more in FHOP because I have lots of experience with social issues and "life" and have little desire to become technically advance (just literate)