Obama’s Big Test on Education

i heard this brewing on tv yesterday, and was thinking when is jpt going to jump on the bandwagon.
i believe obama will use the advice of ms.rhee. if what she is wanting to do is def. working.
as far as the school his girls are going to.
hillary and bill sent their girl there.
and no one complained.
the obama should be able to send their girls there also.
and for the silly people who think the obama’ should be sending their children to one of the dangerous for the children who live in the neighborhood
schools, just to prove a point, are just plain silly.
the thing is half of the people on tv complaining about the school their girls are going to, do NOT send their children to the public schools in dc.
so i would like for everyone on tv and in print before they say or write against the obama and their school pick,
they should have to say where their child goes to school.

DC schools are a disaster. 70% of graduates don’t even have basic reading abilities. We need to tell the children Puff Daddy bad, Isaac Newton good. Beyonce, Spears, and Madonna whoress, Madam Curie classy. Make a rap about James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, Teller, Feinmann, Einstein, Heisenberg and Scroedinger.

Hopefully Obama will be able to do something about the public schools in dc and america as a whole, but for anyone to expect him to send his kids to a public in dc is crazy not only in an edcuation stand point but a safety stand point for his kids and a stablity stand point for his kids. His kids have been going to a private school since they started to school they will go through enough changes let them keep private school stablity.

In due course . . .

I wonder if all those folks complaining about the Obamas sending their girls to a private school, have any more than a snowball’s notion in hell of what chaos would occur if the girls went to a DC public school. (1) DC public schools are notorious for poor performance; (2)DC public schools are breeding grounds for gangs; (3)most DC schools are grossly delapidated & inadequate to support the use of technical teaching and learning tools; (4) most DC schools are reputed to be unsafe for most students; (5)most DC schools are over-crowded with poor student/teacher ratios; (6)accommodating the security details assigned to the girls would be impossible in DC public schools. The Obama girls have always attended a private school with high academic standards. Why on earth would any parent want to change that paradigm?

Real progress in the DC schools will come when the community strengthens it’s social fabric. Money for higher salaries to attract and keep good teachers is worthy but when these valuables teachers have to spend all their time dealing with the associated challenges of children whose parents give birth to them as teenagers; fractured, disorganized extended families where too many fathers are in prison. That’s not even to speak of the drugs and violence in these neighborhoods where the culture values rap stars and basketball players over men like Barack Obama who have succeeded through education. If Obama does nothing else, he shows the children in these neighborhoods that there is another way. Nothing will change until the culture of these neighborhoods really changes.

Huh, you are absolutely right!! Children are just pawns in our society these days. They are born, not to be loved, they are just for someones use.
They are sent to school for babysitting, parents don’t care whether or not they learn anything, it is made to easy to get the things they want in our society without putting anything back.

First of all, Jake, leave the “Obamas sending their kids to elite private school” stuff out. This is a serious issue that can do without the sensationalism.
Huh,
What are these programs that you speak of that you cannot find staffing for? I would imagine it to be some sort of nuclear power research. I can tell you that half the issue with those programs is the application process (not the clearance but the actual lower level application). I can cite my own experiences on this. I have often tried to take part in such programs and am often stopped at the lowest level. First is that you can only get the information if you search online, which is easy enough. But most of the info there might be outdated (mostly). And no amount of emails or phone calls can guarantee a response. The surest way to get involved in such things seem to be if you know someone, if you network and so on. That, as I have written somewhere already, is the true evil in the American education/research/etc system. You can only get through to good positions if you go through a colleague, a professor, a relative. The idea of opportunities being available to everyone is becoming an illusion.
As for school reform, I am very skeptical that teacher reform would equal school reform. Again my first issue is with the recruitment process. Taking for Teach for America as an example, I am rather turned off by their highly “elitist” recruitment process. Although I feel very strongly about school reform, that is one program that I would not apply for. I think its one of the most misguided programs out there, makes me wonder what they are trying to accomplish. They should be recruiting people who are really committed to the issue, instead of targeting those who may be attracted to it because it has become a highly selective program. It should be attracting people who plan to stay teachers for life, not those who plan to do it for 5 years and leave. But thats only a small part of my problem with it.
My biggest issue with school reform is that the reform should be targeted at curriculum, school structure and so on and NOT teachers, not teachers at all. Seriously, it doesn’t take a genius to teach sixth grade, so there really isn’t much point to focusing on teachers there. I strongly believe the best thing to focus on would be the curriculum that these teachers are given! Huh, you mention other countries and their progress on the education front, and I can tell you much of it has to do with their very rigid curriculum. There needs to be a standard TEXTBOOK for every grade. Although some might bulk at the idea of controlling education like that, it really needs to happen. No allowing teachers to hop from one book to another and choosing what they want to teach the kids. School is where students first learn structure and there is no better way to do it that showing them a highly structured curriculum. Once you go to universities/colleges, you get used to working from a single textbook, get assigned homeworks from it and so on. That doesn’t seem to take place much in public schools. The homeworks and pathetic, the books even more so. It could be because the college textbook writing business is a lucrative one; the business maybe not be as lucrative at the lower level, which is why the gov’t should take on that task. And of course longer school days, I am all for longer school days.

Do you have any idea at all how many hours teacher work both at school and at home that they don’t get paid for? How they get to spend at least some of their “summer vacations” paying out of their own pockets for and getting hours necessary to maintain their teaching certificates? How often they have to step up to the plate for students because parents either can’t or won’t? The time they spend chaperoning and/or supervising students at games, parties, and other school events?
Are you aware that the average salary is $40,453 for a teacher (clearly an exorbitant amount for someone with a bachelor’s degree, sarcasm intended) and the average salary for a registered nurse is $54,867? Why aren’t you calling for a cut in nurses salaries? They both have at least a 4 year degree and they’re both in the business of saving lives.

Teachers can only work with what parents provide. If kids tell their parents that the teacher is being mean to them and then said parent allows them to drop out, as happened in my in-law family, the teacher is not at fault.
If a teacher goes to school and has some nitwit throw a karate kick at her just to show how close he can get without touching her, that is not the teacher’s fault.
If a teacher is told by a child that he/she is teaching that daddy or mommy told him or her that teachers don’t know anything and he/she doesn’t have to do their schoolwork, that is not the teacher’s fault.
If a student says they ran out of paper or pencils and can’t do their school work because daddy or mommy either didn’t or couldn’t buy them for him/her, that is not the teacher’s fault.
I’d really like to know when teacher’s became the public’s favorite whipping post. Personally, you couldn’t pay me enough to put up with some of the spoiled brats I see in the restaurants and malls.

Speaking as a nurse…criminy, where can I get that kind of pay?? The one year I made that kind of total was the year I worked an average of 50 hours a week! Vacation? Ya gotta be joking!
But seriously, (not that I’m kidding about the above), you cannot compare teachers and nurses. The jobs are completely different. I admire teachers, I couldn’t ever be one and am the first to admit it, but I don’t know how many teachers could do what I do. And we ARE held to a high level of performance. An accountant screws up, it could result in a fine or whatever for his client. A nurse screws up, it could result in a funeral. I’m not insulting teachers, that’s not where my dissatisfaction with the system lies, because they are often helpless in the face of the factors I mentioned earlier, but it’s past time to start looking at, as it was called by Concerned, “the product.”
You have such a strong Union? Time to start fighting for the kids. Not using them as a shield or weapon, either. You know what the problems are, fix them. And if the Union gets in the way for political reasons, fix them, too.
Just remember, when everything is broken, you need to start from the bottom. The basics. Not yet another fancy build-on that complicates things further. The basics.

Tell me about performance-based pay. My wife is an art teacher and works her heart out. Exactly how do you measure the size of the smile on a student’s face, or the swelling of their pride in workmanship, as a result of her teachings? There is no top down answer on this one.

I think Obama should put all Marxist teachers in our public schools.All schools should be a big happy Obama land.

WestCoastMessenger,
I dislike you (based on your comments) immensely, but I appreciate that your wife teaches art. My art teacher was a bit of a snob and insisted that all students buy [insert designer brand] art supplies. I couldn’t afford them at the time, but learnt the lessons.
Finished with honors from the snobby artsy teacher, too. In short, most people just *lurve to be creative and it is the epitome of *freedom. The arts should always be included in learning environments. Learning to *express is probably the the single-most important lesson we learn in school. Learning to *think is one of life’s grandest rewards.
Hats off to your wife. I hope she teaches you something some day! :-)

Jan,
I can only suggest that you ‘volunteer’ as a parent some day. The teacher vs. parent is so old that you’d best come up with something else if you expect children to succeed. The only thing that pitting teacher vs. parent succeeds in is getting not only the children not to respect teachers, but the parents lose respect for them, too.
Teachers do NOT encourage parent participation and neither do the schools. They *do, however, fight parents that want to be involved; teachers have lawyers against parents now.

My kids are through school, but in comparing their schools with the schools I went too in the sixties. I have to say the schools now seem to care less about the kids. There seems to be conflicts between parents and teachers just as much as conflicts between the kids. The attitudes have changed. Everyone is fighting everyone else and pointing the finger of blame at each other as to why the kids are not doing as well as the parents and teachers think they should be… Personally I think the schools have gotten too big.. There needs to be smaller schools and smaller classes and more caring teachers..The charter schools are this but they cost way too much for the average person to afford. When one has to pay for their children to attend school the poor childern are left out.. I think smaller neighborhood schools with teachers and volunteers from the neighborhoods are what is needed so people can once again have pride in their schools and contribute to it with their time and cooperation.. The city schools now have closed meetings or limit how many can attend (there just isn’t enough room for everyone). The topics are predetermined by the board. Instead of including all parents and everyone’s voice. Is it any wonder there are conflicts?

One person’s education, or a lack thereof, affects everyone! So your particular antipathy towards minorities provides no positive input to the AMERICAN education system. As I keep on saying, educating 10% of the population does the country no good when 90% is left illiterate. And especially when other countries are focusing on educating ALL their citizens.

Question – Sorry for the delayed response. Nuclear yes. Radar yes. Renewable energy yes. I work in a place where all sort of cutting edge stuff takes place. The average age is around 48 years of age, and most if not all applicants need advanced degrees. It is hard now to find people coming out of school that have US citizenship, advanced science and engineering degrees, and competence. Looking around the national lab where I am at, you realize that so much of the capabilities will be lost when the majority of these folks retire. When I went to graduate school about 70% of the students were foreign nations. I like to think that Americans are not going into engineering and science because the compensation is so much less than law or medicine, but I am afraid that it is because American students lack advanced math skills among other things.

Common Sense,
That’s quite a backhanded compliment. You may have done well in art but you no doubt skipped the classes on diplomacy. In fact, my spouse teaches me something virtually every day. We can only hope that a loved one somewhere teaches you how to tone down your skewed far left views back closer to an achievable reality.

The problem with Obama’s position is that many families “opt out” of Public Schools based on affordability…I would not expect the President’s daughters to attend public school but I CAN question an Illinois State Senator who made the private school choice…I understand the concerns and challenges but vouchers should be part of educational choices in urban centers like DC.

Hay Sabniz,
Which standard, yours, mine, or George Bush’s? What does your educational community need? Do you think the feds know, and they know how to reward the right people to get there? What is your standard for artistic achievement? Should we just eliminate art from education? How about if we at least let this rest in the hands of the locals?

kat – what a great comment. i would love to know how much money has been sent on evaluation for NCLB – that could have been spent on books and decent wages (in the state i live in, some teachers are eligible for welfare, based on their wages) and who made all that money. no child left behind has left a generation of kids fat (no time for recess) medicated (no time for recess or phys ed and plus – more speed means better scores) and clueless (no time for writing, thought, or analysis).
as for sidwell – as someone who comes from a huge family of public-school kids, all with college degrees – i have no problem with the obamas sending their kids to a friend’s school. they deserve safety and privacy. and i can’t imagine why the press corps would complain – most of them went to private prep schools like the barrack academy and ivy league schools themselves. find me a prominent reporter under 50 who went to public school. good luck.

Laughing Cynic – People I know from both sides of the political spectrum home school their kids – and they are great. They are bright, inquisitive, kind, confident, and understand things at a basic, common sense level. I think public schools could learn something by looking at the way homeschooled kids are taught.
And I agree about the use of drugs in public school. Use as increased 3000% since 1995. That is not a typo. I wonder what the long term impact is going to be on these kids – who have effectively been taking speed every year for years as their brains develop. I also wonder what they will be able to retain. Instead of paying billions of dollars for experts with PhDs to run evaluations, they could have assembled a forum of mothers and grandmothers and regular teachers – who would have told them the obvious. Kids needs to run. Kids need to play. Kids need to get outside. A lot.

Mara:
Thank you. Yes, kids need to be kids, to daydream and run and play. And I agree with both you and Kat, I’m afraid for the kids and what these “necessary medications” are doing to their brains. But there won’t be any studies made public, because the ones who run the studies are the ones who are, even now, developing more meds to control normal child behavior. And who are pushing bipolar meds on 2-year-olds. Toddlers are all ABOUT mood swings!
People wonder why I get cranky… and no, I don’t need an antidepressant! LOL

I’m a sped teacher. I agree with 90% of your comments (yes, read them all). I do want to clarify one thing. The NEA is the National Education Association, the teachers’ union at the state & national levels. There are many, many of us who despise them. They exist for policy, politics, & lobbying only. But, we need our local unions, the ones at the district levels. Part of our union dues are taken to pay for the NEA. We have ZERO choice about that. We can shape & control what our local unions do & do not do. We have no power with the NEA.

I’m sure Obama does not want to be seen as breaking the DC teacher’s union but its clear that DC schools are pretty bad. Rhee needs the ability to fire underperforming teachers and reward good teachers with great salaries. The union should have been finding ways to improve their own schools before Rhee came to town. Now it’s too late

BO has endorsed publicly bill ayers’ book and taken his children to a black liberation theology church. Both examples show that BO is more than willing to expose children to messages of HATE and anti-American sentiment. Hopefully America will come to realize that they just elected rev wright with more moderate rhetoric.
Also, both his kids attend an $18,000 yr private school, but hey, he’s just your avg guy, right?

I suppose if the schools fill the positions at school with more teachers having master’s degree,they will make a huge difference.

One person’s education, or a lack thereof, affects everyone! So your particular antipathy towards minorities provides no positive input to the AMERICAN education system. As I keep on saying, educating 10% of the population does the country no good when 90% is left illiterate. And especially when other countries are focusing on educating ALL their citizens.
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Question ,
The very first thing that everyone has to come to grips with is very simple. Despite the concept, which was admirable, it is impossible to “Leave No Child Behind”. Completely & totally IMPOSSIBLE!
The reasons are many and varied, but the fact remains – We cannot educate every single child in this country. We can make the most reasonable attempt, but we must accept that we are destroying the system in order to reach those we cant reach.
The only real solution is to teach the material at each grade level that needs to be taught. No IEPs, No special tests or varying levels of homework. Each & every student must be expected to perform to a required level before advancing to the next grade! If they can’t do that, they stay back. Simply passing them thru the system is where this mess starts.
Teaching to the lowest common denominator is killing education in this country! It has been a failed social experiment for many, many years. It is time to return to the traditional teaching that made our public education system the best in the world.
That means accepting the fact, even though no one likes it, that some kids will dropout at some point, or their needs are to special to be met by the public system.
I have done my share of substitute teaching over the years. I have seen with my own eyes the complete futility of having a mentally handicapped kid in a regular classroom. I have watched clidren like this be handheld thru their day by an aide. These kids have no clue about the material being presented in the class, and are often the object of ridicule by their classmates. I am not saying that we do not educate them, but it is obvious to anyone who has been in a public school, that the environment there is NOT what these kids need to reach their maximum potential. The need to be in a school with properly trained people who have the time and the teaching techniques to really help these kids.
As far as the so-called special education kids go, its time to recognize that modifying their education so they can do 25% or 50% of the work expected of regular students has failed miserably too. This was one of the truly dumbest ideas of all time. Give a kid and “A” for doing “D” level work, because that just all they can do. Then they get through the system, with “great” grades, but cannot even handle the most basic of minimum wage jobs. Yes, this is an idea we should just keep pushing!!!
Over 30 yrs ago, these kids might have gotten out with “C” grades, but it was true “C” level. Now maybe they could do better, maybe not, but there was not artificial inflation of their grade right from the start. Many would then go on to get a job in the local economy, or maybe go to a trade school. There was a good chance of them succeeding because they did understand the process of learning. They were not “artificially” told in 2nd and 3rd grade that because it was hard, they only needed to do 5 homework problems instead of the 10 the rest of the class was doing. There is nothing wrong with having them do 10, and getting 5 wrong. At some point, we ALL make mistakes and need to learn how to work through them and correct them.
As a youth sports coach, the strangest thing about all this is I would see 9-yr olds playing competitive athletics such as Little League and Youth Football and guess what….the kids with less skills do not get 5 or 6 strikes. They have to play and measure their successes and failures just as every player does. For many today though, this is the first place where they are introduced to real failure.
It is time to stop worrying about the psycho-babble we have been hearing for all these years about failure in the early grades crushing kids egos & self-esteem. Failure is a natural part of the learning process – It seems our esteemed high level educators have lost sight of this.

Paying teachers more will not produce better teachers. Teachers who perform their job well should be rewarded by being allowed to keep their jobs. Teachers who aren’t performing need to yield their responsibilities to those who are willing and capable of performing. The NEA is a stumbling block to better education. Teachers like everyone else should have to compete for pay and benefits, even their jobs. The approach of “pay me more and I’ll do more” has never worked. Right thinking on the part of an employee is “I’ll do more so I’ll be considered for more pay and benefits.”

I attended public schools in 3 states and none impressed me. I fought public schools while my daughter was young. I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly.
- There are a lot of good teachers, and some bad ones. Good administrators are as common as honest politicians.
- Football is higher priority than chemistry. A sports program for a few is funded better than academics for many
- No effort is made for vocational training. Why can’t a kid come out of highschool as a certified welder or licenced electrician and ready to go to work?
- Bi-lingual “education” drains funds that could be used for actual education.
- Parents care more about their own entertainment than about their kid’s education.
Lord God Obama can’t fix our education system because the problem goes much deeper than that. We will have to change society and society isn’t willing to change.

Education key to economic survival.
Finland has often been hailed as having one of the most successful education systems. But what drives its high level of achievement? And what makes it different?
This places greater responsibility on families – and Ms Haatainen says that an important ingredient in Finland’s high achievement in reading and writing is a strong culture of reading in the home.
Parents nurture a love of reading among children and this is supported by a network of public libraries, says the minister.
In the last international education league tables, produced by the OECD, Finland’s 15 year olds were judged to have the highest standards of literacy in the world.
Ms Haatainen also says that the country has made a conscious effort to have highly-qualified teachers throughout the school system.

Posted by: Oonogil
- Football is higher priority than chemistry.
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The reason football gains greater recognition, and is often a priority, is simple: CASH.
Football (especially a school with a winning team) will generate the most revunue through concessions, fundraisers, and selling team merchandise that is often used for such things as school lunches, school events, field trips, etc. Furthermore, football can also offset other expenditures not covered by the district budget, like, extra microscopes for the chemistry lab.

Entry level teachers make $23K in my district. I’ve been teaching science for over twenty years and make less than $40K. I have also, in those twenty years, worked nights cleaning a daycare center and my current part-time job is a night class at a nearby public baccalaureate college. (As I point out to students: honest work done well is nothing to be ashamed about). I have raised a son alone and I sent him to public schools and a state university. I will be debt free in 5 years.
My high school classes are all inclusive, so I have learning disabled, physically handicapped, emotionally disturbed students, gifted and talented and regular students. Want to hand out scapels and dissect? How about a burn lab in chemistry?
Here, entry year teachers are paired with highly qualified teachers. Teachers that are struggling are put on plans of improvement. They can be denied tenure. Administrators can also be placed on plans for improvement. They usually get promoted or asked to leave.
Union? I’ve been on the negotiation team and helped write the master contract for our district to insure equitable treatment for all teachers. I’ve been on the professional rights committee and faced down administrators on behalf of faculty members being unfairly targeted and harassed.
Teachers from my state are actively recruited because of the teacher-education programs. Most leave the state because of financial considerations: they can make more money.
Why don’t I leave? My parents are in their 80′s and 90′s, and I need to be here.
What would I change? NCLB requirements. Unfunded mandates (both federal and state). Society’s perception of teaching: those who can, do. Those who can do MORE, teach.

Mike_C
Lowest reading comprehension in class was 2nd grade, 3rd month. I had to get elementary school level science books and pull out information on the topics being covered in class as much as possible. I had to make tests that covered the elementary texts on that level. Poor kid still couldn’t pass. Currently I have 3 students with limited reading comprehension; they have to come in during the midday study hall and listen to the book on computer. Tests have to be read aloud. IEP requires extra time for assignments. Tests have to be multiple choice with limited responses (2 or 3 choises). Several years ago an emotionally disturbed teenager in my class (no aide) did learn to handle a scalpel. Two weeks later he fatally stabbed his adoptive father 23 times. I have to limit burn labs because of the in-class danger.
While special ed (learning disabilities classes) are limited by law to 10 students, I have had as many as 11 in one class, with 12 other students. The admin says it’s “because you’re so good with them”.
The federal government allows pull-out instruction in math,English, and social studies (because of the amount of reading). Science, although a core subject with specialized vocabulary and math, doesn’t meet requirements for pull-out classes. Go figure.