Charter schools can be a valuable reform and choice option. But they may not get better results. In fact, fourth-graders in traditional public schools scored an average of 5.2 points better in reading and 5.8 points better in math than students in charter schools, according to a U.S. Department of Education study released Tuesday.
Public schools also stack up well against private schools, according to another department report released in July. That study found that, with the exception of eighth-grade reading, children in public schools performed as well as or better in reading and math than comparable fourth- and eighth-graders in private schools.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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John Stossel’s “Stupid in America” showed and he admitted that Elementary Public Education was good and do as good as charter and private schools.
But public schools really start going downhill starting in middle school and then you get the very sharp drop off in high school.
Ever notice that on each one of these reports comparing schools, they always focus on elementary and little on middle school and nothing on high school grades.
Joe, our hometown middle and high schools are very focused. Nothing drops off, as you say, infact after going to our High School’s open house last night, I find it to be just the opposite.If our students in any class drop their grade below a C, they are required to be at school early for extra help that the teachers gladly provide, until their grades come up. In fact they are not allowed to skip any assignment and recieve zero credit, they must turn in all work, wether it’s late or not.What a change since I was in school.Average is no longer acceptable!!
If this is not the norm where you live, you’re welcome to move here!
I hope that’s the case.
I went through the Wichita Public Schools, but this of course was during the late 80’s and early 90’s, when the crack epidemic and gang crime was at it’s peak around the country, here and in our public schools.
The days of metal detectors, drug dealing, fights everyday and no learning enviroment. I don’t know if they do that anymore or not. And I know things are better now then they were back then for kids, lets hope they are a lot better.
I wouldn’t want to put a kid through the enviroment that I went through back in those times.
Good morning Joe, and I must agree about the learning environment.That’s why I’m so glad I moved out of Wichita and back to my little home town to raise my kids.
My son went to East High and he graduated from an Ivy League college.
Spin it however you want, but the opportunty for a first class education is at our public schools in Wichita.
As far as drugs, I’m sure that the rich kids at Collegiate and Independent NEVER use any drugs . . .
(heavy sarcasm)
I would rather see comparitive reports based on schools in Kansas than nation-wide. Nation-wide statistics are hard to validate and relate to here in Wichita. But I do agree with Tracy that high schools I am familiar with are working hard to improve achievement levels.
I don’t think how good a student does in school is related to the school. If a student has the desire to learn and the parental support to succeed, then the school is trivial; in my experience. Based on that, I would have to say that if private schools do better, it’s probably because the parents really care about their kids education, i.e. very involved in the kids education( if they are willing to pay a lot of money for schooling, not to say that public school care!). there is nothing wrong with a public school education.
Tracy,Your comment is encouraging but you mention that a student is no longer allowed to recieve a zero and must turn in all assignments regardless of being turned in on time. Isn’t this changing the playing field a bit? Kind of like giving everyone on a soccer league a participation trophy regardless of their team standing.
I think it does a disservice when these kids go to college and the real world when they realize that life is a series of deadlines with few exceptions.
That doesn’t mean they automatically pass.What it does mean is that they learn that there are no excuses for shirking responsability.If you don’t attend class and complete assignments on time,YOU WILL FAIL.You only get 50% credit of what your score would have been with an on-time assignment.This is teaching the opposite of what you were thinking.They teach personal responsabilty.If you refuse to turn in work completely, you will be expelled.
I have to lean more toward TRACY’s opinion about “personal responsibility” when it comes to turning in work or NOT. I just went through 3 years of allowing students to turn in late work. Even with this allowance they rarely turned it in.
I have followed the blog here for many months and have watched with interest. There appears to be an ongoing dual between heartlander and Apophis about public education. I know Apophis in a professional capacity and he clearly is an advocate of public education. Contrary to what heartlander thinks, Apophis is one of the best educators in his discipline in Wichita, the state of Kansas and perhaps the nation. On the other hand, heartlander seeks to destroy our traditional public education system because it does not serve his personal needs. I see heartlander as self-centered and just plain selfish. If heartlander would simply research the data outlined in the subject of this thread he would plainly see that our public schools are actually excellent institutions of learning. heartlander is plainly incorrectly biased. Public schools educate ALL, “charter”, private and parochial schools schools do not yet public schools nearly match or sometimes exceed the achievement levels of their competitors. Go figure. What are your opinions heartlander? Apophis?
I believe the recent studies that compare private and public schools make “adjustments” to account for differences in student backgrounds. Whether these adjustments make sense, and whether you want to go to schools that have to be “adjusted” is a different matter.
Bad Wolf,
I pay high taxes for other parents’ children’s education. I’d have to pay high taxes for a diversified program of traditional public schools, public charter schools and voucher programs that gave tax dollars to public and private schools. I don’t object to paying to have OTHER PARENTS’ KIDS ECUCATED, using MY TAX DOLLARS.
I don’t know how this means I’M SELF CENTERED. Any reasonable reader, including yourself, would realize this doesn’t imply “Heartlander is self-centered.” Helping OTHER PEOPLE’s KIDS is self-centered? So, you can admit you falsely characterized me. Do it, it’s good for your pscyhe.
CapnAmerica sent a child to the Ivy League. If this was one of the eight universities belonging to the Ivy League athletic conference, which is what the IIvy League is– Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale–it means this PUBLIC-education-promoting parent chose PRIVATE tertiary education for his OWN child. This might be considered self-interest-serving behavior. If not, why didn’t he send his child to KU, K-State or WSU? Interesting.
On the other side of the coin, KU and K-State have a substantial number of private secondary school graduates. It doesn’t seem there is a problem in connecting private secondary and public tertiary education. Interesting.
The truth is, I’d love to see OTHER PARENTS’ CHILDREN in Wichita achieve higher success rates. I’d love to see PUBLIC KU be a university that could charge non-instate-resident students $19,000 tuition like the University of Wisconsin-Madison, or $26,000 like the University of Michigan, charges non-state-residents, instead of $12,000. KU charges what the open market views as a reasonable price for the quality of the educational product. The University’s financial analysts would LOVE to be able to charge $19,000 to students from states like Illinois–if they could get them to pay this–because this supertuition would subsidize instate-resident students’ education cost and lower out own residents’ tuition. But KU isn’t perceived to be academically equivalent to UW-Madison or UM by the open-market consumerate.
You have low educational ambition here.
Take the East High IB program, for example. Here is why East High has IB, rather than AP. IB was originally developed for private schools serving international diplomatic staff in Geneva (1924), then other major embassy/consulate cities. The world’s largest IB school is the United Nations International School in NYC. These are high-tuition ($20,000+) PRIVATE schools.
The IB curriculum was and is designed to enable students to learn subject matter in their not-native language, i.e. English or French. IB courses are “slowed down” to enable students to learn the material in what is to them a second language.
This construct was felt to be applicable to public education in schools whose students didn’t have English fluency, to wit, black ghetto schools, then Latino-predominant schools. The first public IB pilot programs were enacted in Milwaukee and Cleveland inner-city schools.
The IB programme has scant university connections internationally, and zero university connections in the US. The AP program, in contrast, is a product of the College Board. It is intimately integrated with tertiary American tertiary (postsecondary) educational institutions.
Dumbkopfs prefer IB over AP. Why? Because IB is a purchased turnkey service, like Edison Schools. Edison Schools copycatted IB. Sell a turnkey product, train teachers, manage them externally, and set externally-imposed performance standards.
Most East High IB parents don’t know this, but IB staff in Bath, England compare students’ in-class grades and IB Exam scores, and IB Organization North America bureaucrats in NYC have the power to change teachers’ given grades,upon reviewing the Bath University evaluators recommendations. Today, the East High IB teachers have had enough time to be “clued in” and give “appropriate” grades, but the fact is, they can be overruled, if some teacher is too “soft” or too “hard” in grading. It’s in the USD 259/IBO contract.
Advanced Placement is an open system. There are multitudinous peer-teacher groups, online student study groups and published study guides for AP courses. If an AP teacher gives a “B+” average to her students, but her students AP exam scores average 2.5 (D+), the College Board had NO POWER TO CHANGE GRADES.
IB is a closed system. The public is not allowed to know what is in IB course curricula, except for the students, their parents and teachers of IB. IB is a funky Euro-designed system that most European nations have eschewed for their public schools. Switzerland, the host to the International Baccalaureate Organisation, has ZERO IB-programme public schools. The IBO president is French citizen. France has zero IB-programme public schools.
A large-portfolio AP program is much harder to develop than an IB. You basically have to do it yourself. There are tremendous resources, to be sure, but ultimately, you have to find and use them yourself for every individual course, so developing an AP program requires a lot of self-study, and collegial group self-initiative.
In 2002, a blue-ribbon National Research Council panel found serious deficiencies in AP and IB. AP was originally very rigorous. In attempting to allow spreading itself to most schools nationwide, the College Board allowed AP to be watered down. Following the NRC’s findings, the College Board acted to re-beef-up AP courses. The IBO found that because it had no American university connections, and because it had little money, it was impossible to revamp IB courses.
In closing, just because some coastal universities are willing to exercise differential academic-achievement admission standards to achieve geographic diversity, and admit “token” numbers of heartland students, does NOT mean that the East High IB programme is first rate. It does mean that it is FOURHT RATE, after: AP programs offering high-achieving students the opportunity to complete 8+ college-creditable courses (plus summer college courses), AP programs offering high-achieving students the opportunity to complete 6+ college-creditable courses, and AP programs offering high-achieving students the opportunity to complete 4+ college creditable courses and IB programmes (mostly in private international schools) offering students the opportunity to complete 4 Higher Level courses, versus IB programmes with a 3-college-course-creditable maximum and small-offering AP schools.
Just because CapnAmerica successfully pulled all the strings to make it possible for his rare child to qualify for elite-university admission, as a “token hinterland admit” does NOT mean Wichita has a terrific public school system. If you want real facts, consider KU and KSU’s 57% six-year graduation rate. The University of Virginia has a 91% six-year graduation rate. The Universities of Michigan, California, Wisconsin and Illinois have 80+% six-year graduation rates. Their graduation rates are based on their states students’ READINESS FOR UNIVERSITY STUDY.
We must point out that the Ivies, their peers Duke, Stanford, Chicago, Washington U in St. Louis, Hopkins, Northwestern, the “Little Ivy”, liberal arts colleges and other expensive (tuition $30,000+) elite schools on the coasts, relax their academic standards in order to admit kids from the hinterland. They seek geographic diversity. They reject New York applicants who completed 4-6 AP courses and earned a 4.5 AP exam average, as well as summer-school courses at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, to make space for a Wichitan who was involuntarily limited to taking 3 International Baccalaureate Higher Level courses (the max allowed), perhaps with a WSU summer course or two. The elite universities and liberal arts colleges want to be “inclusive”, which means applying different admissions criteria to students from different locales, just as they do for students of different races. Actually, applicants in JoCo are held to a higher academic-achievement standard than applicants from Sedgwick County.
Suppose you are not like CapnAmerica. Suppose that you can’t pull strings to ensure that YOUR CHILD gets Wichita’s best teachers. Where does that leave your children?
Am I self-centered? How can I be? My kids are already in, or graduated from college. I’m not collecting your tax dollars for my personal profit.
Apophis earned National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification. But now he repudiates it. 97% of teachers have repudiated NBPTS certification. They wanted to be like doctors. But 90% of doctors are board certified. Did they WANT to study extra to pass the bc tests? It cost them time and money. But to be credible, doctors set up a system, and the vast majority made the effort to become board certified.
Public school teachers created NBPTS. It was not imposed on them by some external body. Now 97% of them say, “this is worthless.” Then public educators proposed charter schools as an alternative to private-public school vouchers.
Now they say, “Aha, OUR OWN PROPOSALS DON’T WORK. The statistics prove that our ideas are full of s**t. Cuz, we’re so smaht, that we make sure that non-union-dominated public charter schools receive LESS MONEY than traditional public schools.”
It’s like the 1960’s New York Herald take-home lesson. The printers union protected its members for five years, so that EVERYBODY COULD BE JOBLESS IN YEAR SIX.
What the teachers’ unionists are saying is, “We want to make sure that anything we control, FAILS.”
Well heartlander, I see you are bashing my friend Bad wolf along with the IB AND AP program. It seems there is no satisfying you. Maybe YOU should take Bob Corkins job when he gets the axe, you seem to have ALL of the answers. I hear what you are saying: BLAME IT ALL ON THE UNIONS.
As usual heartlander you are just talking shit. I think the current studies showing that PUBLIC schools do as good as or better job than charter, private and parochial schools should shut your mouth permanently. Some how, I doubt if you are intelligent enough to do that.
Are you ready to come to a middle or alternative school and tutor some “at-risk” students in Math? Oh, I forgot, that’s beneath your level. You are a joke!
Apophis, you wanted professional respect. So you created a doctor-emulating national board. Most of your colleagues initially said, “Oh, that’s a great idea. A national board certification program will give us respect. We are going to create and run this program to show our commitment to teacher quality assessment and improvement.” But then when the idea was actually implemented, nearly all teachers ran away from it. I’m sorry, but if you think that your profession’s propaganda scheme of pretending to support and be capable of creating its own quality-assurance program followed by a rubber-hits-the-road repudiation of what they created, is credible, you’re living in an alternate universe.
Most of the time public educators blame school problems on other people. Negligent parents, television, taxpayers, governments. But this was your own baby. There’s nobody to blame here, except the teachers who abandoned certification.
As far as IB and AP go, you don’t seem to know much about the programs. It’s a fact that the College Board has an award for students who complete 8 or more courses and earn high exam scores. It has an award for students who complete 5 or more courses and achieve high exam scores. It’s a fact that IB allows some schools to enroll students in 4 college-creditable courses, but the standard regimen, that applies to East High is 3 courses.
It is also a fact that AP was from its inception designed to encourage kids to take challenging courses and better prepare themselves for academic success in university study. It is a fact that academics have never been IB’s primary focus, but rather its primary focus is to instill tolerance and “create a more peaceful world.” You can read the IBO Mission Statement. It says ZERO about ACADEMIC objectives. It’s too bad that you’ve never lived anywhere besides the Great Plains. You’re horizons are extremely narrow, and your vision is retrospective. In times of static economies, doing what you did successfully in the past is fine. When societies enter periods of rapid, monumental change, which education must address to prepare kids for the future, doing what you did 20 years ago doesn’t work. Doing a much better job of what you learned to do 20 years ago is ineffective. You need an entirely new job description, and you don’t have a clue what that description is. You need to create for yourself an entirely new skills set, and you have no idea what that is or how to create it.
It’s not your fault. You didn’t get to take creativity-cultivating courses. You’ve never seen an economy that depends upon, and encourages creativity. The United States is the most creative nation on earth. Historically, for example, we have dominated international patent issuances. China and India’s economies are rapidly growing. They’ve modeled their universities after ours, and are now emulating our research enterprises. Our universities and research institutions can probably hold their own amid growing international competition–but only if our K-12 system prepares kids for them.
Despite offshoring of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, there is actually a major shortage of people who can operate and program CNC and other advanced-technology fabrication machines. Toyota is setting up a plant in Texas. It is some 700 hires short in high-skilled positions, and is mounting a national recruitment campaign offering assembly-skills jobs paying $60,000+ starting salaries. They’re even covering moving expenses–for “blue collar” workers. What are Wichita schools offering to enable students to capture jobs like these?
I know a young person who’d love to spend every morning tinkering and building things. He can’t do it, because the school regimen doesn’t allow it.I really hope that he doesn’t lose his special gift, but he very well could. He gets down-graded for things he doesn’t do well in school because they don’t interest him. But schooling doesn’t offer the things he is extremely good at.
I remember when classroom discipline was strict, kids could only talk when the teacher allowed it, and mostly that allowed students to talk to the teacher, but not spontaneously to each other. Yet what well-paying jobs imposed this kind of natural-human-behavior-quashing regimen? How does the human develop oral skills? By talking a lot.
Public schools are becoming increasingly disconnected from society-at-large. They were always disconnected from parents. (Like 2 parent-teacher conferences a year really indicated a serious communication effort. Right.) They were originally tasked to service an industrial economy, which they did adequately in an epoch in which 80% of Americans did manual labor, and only 20% of Americans did work that involved reading, writing and mathematical calculations. In that era, regimentation was a primary goal.
This has been at increasing odds with the American economy for the last quarter century, and it is becoming highly counterproductive. It would be lovely if a 17 year old could join the Air Force, return to Wichita at age 21, get a job at the Boeing plant, and by age 25 use his GI benefits to purchase a house on a VA Mortgage, and begin raising a family with his wife staying home. But this isn’t happening: the 1950’s aren’t coming back.
I’m not going to try to argue math issues with Apophis because he doesn’t have an inkling of the subject. Like why don’t I try to tutor at-risk kids who have magazine-format “textbooks” that omit crucial subject matter, and who have teachers who fumble because they don’t understand the subject? Like, why don’t I try to work a miracle? And then when I failed people like Apophis would say I was inept. Apophis and company created a failing system. They could have created an afterschool tutoring program, long ago. They didn’t until NCLB created a federal mandate that threatened their federal schools subsidy. Now they don’t want to lose the money. I don’t join enterprises that have been created for bad reasons, such as today Wichita teachers are really concerned about improving kids’ math scores and so are calling out for tutors, but they weren’t concerned a whit three years ago, when the federal funds were flowing in with no strings attached, and nobody at USD 259 had ANY interest in asking members of the public like me to come to their schools to help young people, as a pure, altruistic, effort.
So Apophis is really proposing that he and his cohorts want federal dollars, and they want me to not only pay taxes, but GIVE MY TIME AND EXPERTISE AWAY FOR FREE, so THEY CAN HAVE MORE MONEY. Sorry, I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night.
When Apophis wants to get serious about teaching math well, which would mean soliciting guidance from math-and-science-educated members of the public, such as engineers and doctors, i.e., asking us, “What do we need to do to teach at-risk kids math so that they can EXCEL at math? Can you teach some classes?” then I’ll be more than happy to contribute.
Some businessmen in Orange County California conducted, with a school’s cooperation, an interesting experiment a few years ago. They offered monetary prizes for high math test scores. Although only a dozen or so kids made money, the scores of many students rose. This was a primarily Hispanic-population school. Its math score average rose to a level higher than several area white-predominant schools.
We pay teenagers to do menial McJobs. Studying well is hard work. Most poor kids need money. Suppose we had a plan that paid socioeconomically-disadvantaged kids for achieving specific scoring benchmarks. We could offer small awards for small, readily-doable improvement, and progressively larger ones, up to several hundred dollars, for very high scores. I would argue that we would like to go beyond saying, “If you study hard now, you’ll get into college in a few years, and by the time you’re 30, you’ll have a well-paying career.” Kids live in the now. So, give them tangible rewards now (or very shortly). Initially, the motivation to study will be extrinsic, but the skills gained will be internalized.
When I was in college, my research advisor knew I was poor. I was going to take two summer courses and work off campus. But my RA said, “Why don’t you work for me? I’ve got an allocation for a lab tech in my grant, and I can also give you independent-study research credit.” He may have been “bending” the rules to give me academic credit for a paid job, but in his mind it was similar to grad students getting stipends for their Ph.D.-creditable work.
I worked really hard and productively because my RA lent me a needed helping hand. It was taxpayers’ money, but still, he didn’t have to do this. He was a smart guy. Still is. He founded a leading biotech company, vice-chaired the California Stem Cell Research Initiative, and is president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (of “Moore’s Law fame, and Intel’s founding CEO).
The leading universities pay graduate students stipends that include cost of living essentials, such as food, clothing and transportation, in addition to tuition and apartment costs. They are paid to learn, so that they don’t have to seek evening and weekend employment elsewhere.
If we pay teachers to do the job of teaching, why not pay students to do the job of learning? If they succeed, they will eventually make major monetary contributions to society, such as higher taxes as higher earners. So we might consider study payments to be a form of “seed capital investment”.
PS. I am proposing the above for PUBLIC schools. I’d like to see them succeed. But to do this, they are going to have to be creative and think of doing NEW things that ed schools haven’t taught.
One other thing. Kansas is a befuddled, backward state. Apophis “challenged” me to do after-school tutoring. Been there, done that. In the early 70’s, a black-predominant district sought help from my university, in the form of after-school math tutoring. About two dozen eager, optimistic people signed up, I among them. After several months the experimental program was terminated, because the tutors reported that it was impossible to help kids do algebra homework problems who were not just slightly confused, but totally overwhelmed. These were some bright kids, who were ambitious enough to SEEK the tutoring program, which was totally elective. They were ghetto kids who WANTED TO GO TO COLLEGE.
We tutors could not, given the limited time available, and students’ understandable desire to complete current algebra assignments, go back and teach them a comprehensive foundation.
But actually, it wasn’t just a problem for blacks. When I took the SAT, only about 25% of students in SAT-standard states took it. Ninety-eight percent of examinees were white or Asian-American. The median SAT math score was 510. That was a little better than a 50% correct-response rate. In other words, students who were at the top 13% level of all high school students, and among the 25% who intended to go to four-year college, could only correctly answer half the SAT math questions, which is to say, they had some math knowledge, but were largely confused about the subject. We can’t blame this shoddy performance on minorities, nor on negligent parenting in an era in which the vast majority of these examinees’ mothers were homemakers. The schools did a crappy job. I know, because I had some of the crappy teachers, and as importantly critical-information-omitting textbooks that educators thought were “fine”.
Readers need to understand that policymakers deliberately created a system to deliberately under-educate kids in order to prevent “too many” of them from aspiring to go to college, and then aspiring to take up white-collar vocations. If “everybody” went to college, who’d work in factories, toiling in mindless tedium? Now, in reality, educating students well could have accelerated the evolution of men and women operating smart devices, like robots, instead of being robots themselves. But the policymakers didn’t want to substitute an unknown potential for a stable already-understood scenario. So America needed x numbers of steelworkers, auto assemblers, oil workers, building-trades workers, etc. And our educational system was tailored to fit the projected manpower needs.
Was this educating children to enable them to fulfill their dreams and potentials? No, it was processing them to meet capitalists’ machinations.
Watch the movie, “Stand and Deliver” about a mathematician/computer scientist who taught LA barrio kids calculus. What was the principal crisis that teacher Jaime Escalante had to overcome? It was a math chairwoman’s objection that these kids couldn’t possibly meet Mr. Escalante’s expectations, he would cause them to fail, and they would be devastated. Was she honest? No, she was deceptive. She knew that the barrio school’s mission was supposed to be to output menial laborers. LA needed menial laborers. Mr. Escalante’s proposal, if successful, could wreak havoc in the social ecology. Their difference was that Mr. Escalante believed in educating kids for THEIR personal benefit. The math chair had a “larger” view of supplying a CITY’s need for low-cost laborers. In a below-national-average-income hinterland industrial city, it is understandable that Apophis holds the LA math chair’s view. I hold Mr. Escalante’s view. I believe that if kids are educated to the utmost of their gifts, they’ll figure things out, and the social ecology will adjust to a well-educated populace. If it can’t do so locally, then they can move to other communities where their cultivated talents will be welcomed and utilized.
OMG heartlander, you ARE a jackass! I mention tutoring and YOU go off on a “black” diatribe. This shows how much you know about the current ethnic dynamics here in Sedgwick County. Yes, there is still significant poverty in the African-American community. However, there is also a growing Latino population many of whom do not speak English as a first language. There is also a significant Asian population in the schools as well as many other groups. You dwell on the superficial ethnicity issues, but that is not where the real learning problem lies. The real problem is poverty in general and lack of readiness for learning many of these children bring into the educational setting. Try reading some Ruby Payne literature on the subject.
heartlander………………….. you are of the type who would seek to destroy our public education system because it does not fit into your world view. Too damned bad for you that the system will likely never fit into your warped view.You really should run for the BOE heartlander. There is an election this next spring. I’d love to help run the campaign to deliver to you a rather humiliating loss. Maybe then you would see that your views on education are indeed out of touch with both the professionals in the education community as well as the public in general.
Apophis…you have a warped view. You are a very ignorant individual. In 1971 Leon Panetta issued an opinion that Wichita schools were segregated and correction would be mandated by the federal government. So, dumb USD 259 developed a busing plan. Scared and angry middle and upper-middle-class whites flocked en masse to private schools, chiefly Catholic at that time.
This desertion created a second-class educational system. Knowledgeable parents evacuated, leaving people whom the public education system could ignore, under the rubric, “You’re stupid, we’re experts.”
The desertion has continued in the rise of non-religious and religious schools here. The glitch is, that people who send their kids to private schools are the largest payors of public education. They know you offer second-class education, and they don’t care, as long as it doesn’t cost too much.
USD 259’s “showcase” college prep program is East High’s IB programme. Why do YOU think Collegiate and Independent offer AP, not IB? Public IB was developed for minority students, or didn’t anybody inform you. But it is used here to magnetically attract Wichita’s brightest white and Asian students, and the district then parasitically claims credit for IB’s success based on PARENTAL involvement in their children’s learning. The reality is, these kids could be advancing much farther with an AP program, something you know nothing about. Did you take AP courses in high school? Have you ever developed one? I didn’t think so.
You never had the aptitude and achievement scores to make some school recruit you as a student, to use your gifts to make itself look good in test scores. I was used for this. I learned the game long before you knew what was going on.
I want public education to succeed. You want it to fail. What do I mean? You want to fight a rear-guard delayed-retreat action to preserve your job and perquisites, and those of your middle-aged peer workers. You’re afraid of change, because you have a limited skills set, and you don’t have the capacity to reinvent yourself into a qualified 21st century educator. I sympathize with your plight. I really do. But it is ultimately going to wreak destruction on this community’s economy, and on the lives of your current students who will find the jobs that they are capable of doing are being offshored, which will put them into low-wage service jobs.
This is already happening. I talk to 25+ year olds who are trying to earn bachelor’s degrees. They’re doing 20+ hours of menial McJobs work. These are young adults who have the innate ability to have gotten through college in 5 years and been in the college-degreed workforce by age 23. They were held behind. They’re trying to make up for 13 years of K-12 undereducation.
That you don’t see things that I do doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’ve worked with people from a vast range of careers and education levels. You work in a dinky, isolated-from-the-world environment. Do you think you understand young people? If you super-looped, taking kids from third grade and staying with them through twelfth grade, you would. You’d understand human maturational processes.But you don’t do this so you see an extremely narrow profile. I’ve taught subjects ranging from initial reading to post-doctoral physiology. That’s why I know a lot more about EDUCATION than you can possibly ever understand.
You’ve only lived in the backward hinterland, whose stages of economies have been invented by people who don’t live here. Who oversees Boeing/Spirit, Beech, Cessna, McConnell, Excel, and Coleman, the primary cash-influx providers for this community? Let me clue you in: people who DO NOT LIVE IN THIS COMMUNITY.
Do you understand what a colonial-satellite econony is? Do you understand that a colonial-satellite economy is based on cheap labor capital? Do you understand what happens when Wichita could underprice labor costs in the Great Lakes States, California and the Northeast, but today it can’t compete with the Third World that has been invited to industrialize?
People should read Thomas Franks’ “What’s the Matter with Kansas.” They should go back further and read the Populist literature. When Kansans stood up and said, “We’re being screwed by the robber barons.” They tell us to produce more. We comply. Then they lower grain prices and raise rail shipment rates, so we don’t make any more than we did before. They are evil, greedy bastards. They connive us to work harder, and produce more, then they f**k us. They view us to be dumbsh**t hicks whose purpose in life is to be manipulated and abused by shysters like them.”
Really, I’m not talking to Apophis, because he doesn’t have the capacity to understand. He would be one of my C students, somebody whom I would pass, because I’m a softie, whom rigorous graders would give an F, because he doesn’t have a hard work ethic. He just doesn’t get the crucial lessons and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if he sacrifices young people to preserve himself.
But some readers here should have an understanding. It doesn’t matter if you are Republicans, Democrats, Independents or Greens. Apophis is propounding societal failure. Apophis says I want to destroy public education. Wrong. I’m trying to lesson stupidity and ignorance. Apophis’s personal “success” depends on the latter.
and this heartlander stating that “I” don’t have the capacity to understand………….what a jack ass.
going off on another diatribe heartlander? Blowing shit out of your mouth again? Pontificate all you want, YOU will never make a difference.
Here is how much heartlandr actually knows about public education in general and East HS specifically………..East HS actually offers AP classes!
I wish to thank Apophis for substantiating my point. AP started in 1955 as a Ford Foundation funded pilot program. It became well established quickly, in large part a response to the “Sputnik Crisis” and a call to boost college preparation, particularly in mathematics and sciences.
Fact: Kansas started teaching AP courses in 1964 in JoCo.
Question: What year did East High start offering AP courses?
Math Question: How many years after JoCo adopted AP, did East High, home to Wichita’s putative top public college prep program, start teaching AP courses?
Shawnee Mission East offers 21 AP courses out of 34 possible.
Question: How many AP courses does East High offer?
Question: Does East High offer either of the two AP Physics C courses (Mechanics, Electricity&Magnetism).
I don’t mean AP Physics B, which is just traditional 12th grade physics, requiring algebra and trig. This course, like IB Physics Higher Level, is only college-creditable for life-science (bio) majors, not for students whose majors require CALCULUS-based physics, i.e. chemistry, physics and engineering students. These latter students who complete Physics B or IB Physics HL are required to take first-year calculus-based physics for scientists and engineers. AP Physics C is CALCULUS-based, and is advanced-standing-creditable for physical-science and engineering majors.
In order to take Physics C-Electr&Magn in 12th grade, a student must complete a year of calculus by the end of 11TH grade. Physics C-Mechanics can be taken concurrently with calculus, but prior calculus is very beneficial.
I’m already aware that East High has offered Economics taught by WSU faculty, which is an AP course. It has been offered because the IB economic science course is not college-course creditable by KU or K-State.
It must be pointed out that KU only offers college credit for 12 of IB’s 36 HL courses (36%) based on the highest possible IB exam score 7, versus 32 of AP’s 34 courses (94%), based on the highest possible exam score 5.
Which is more credible as a college-preparatory program metric, 36%, or 94% college-course crediting? Maybe in Wichita, 36% looks more impressive. I don’t know. Last winter, a Northwest High student proposed, in an impressive presentation to the BOE, giving 5 GPA points for an “A” in AP courses, a nationwide practice. (For parents of college-bound students today’s application forms have “weighted GPA” boxes, and AP courses done well can generate weighted “weighted GPA’s” well above the old-fashioned “unweighted” 4.0 max.)
During Q&A, Winston Brooks asserted, “It is my understanding that IB courses are more academically rigorous than AP courses,” and then suggested assigning IB courses 5-maximum GPA points as well. In Wichita, KU’s crediting only 36% of IB HL courses may be construed to mean they are more rigorous than AP’s 94% college-credit-authorization rate, but in most places, educated people would infer from this disparity that Mr. Brooks was perhaps, uhm, a little confused. Not his fault. He started out as an elementary school teacher. High school college-prep curricula aren’t his area of professional expertise.
Kansas has 3 IB programs: Wichita, Kansas City, and Shawnee Mission. In the last case, the program is moribund, with only 24 enrolled students in 2004-2005. AP is running away with all the high-ability students in JoCo. Sumner Academy, formerly Kansas City High School, pioneered IB in Kansas. This was sound. It had a predominantly black student body, very few of whom were going to college. IB was adopted to change that, along with AP, to change that, and the strategy has worked wonders. For example, I met a Sumner student at an MIT recruitment conference.
It’s nice that USD 259 is capable of following Kansas City’s lead, even if tardily.
On the matter of the College Board, the following Kansas universities and colleges are members: KU, K-State, Baker University, Benedictine College, Kansas City Kansas Community College, and Ottawa University. None of Wichita’s universities is a CB member.
Among Kansas high schools, the following are CB members, and their year of joining:Bishop Miege 1985 Shawnee Mission (OMG, a religious high school!)Blue Valley High School 2003 StilwellBlue Valley North High School 2003 Overland ParkBlue Valley Northwest High School 1998 Overland ParkBlue Valley West High School 2005 Overland ParkLawrence High School 2001 LawrenceManhattan High School 1982 Manhattan, KSMcPherson High School 2005 McPherson, KSShawnee Heights High School 2003 Tecumseh, KSShawnee Mission Public Schools 1999 Shawnee Mission, KSSumner Academy of Arts and Science 1984 Kansas City, KS
As of 2005, no Wichita high school, either public or private, is a CB member. Notice that three Kansas high schools, including Sumner, joined more than 20 years ago. This is a serious marker of educational laggardness in Wichita, in essence, disconnection from tertiary education. I suspect that the Independent School may become Wichita’s first CB member, but only time will tell.
Unless there’s a plan to build a 20+ AP course program in Wichita (Collegiate says it offers 17, but I’m not sure it actually teaches all 17 courses in any given year), along the lines of JoCo, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Denver public academic-magnet schools, I would say that Wichita educators don’t really have a desire or the energy to catch up to the modern world. Maybe things will change, but Wichita has had four decades to create a full-spectrum AP program, and here we are, with about as many AP courses as other places had in the early 1970’s.
Last year, Kansas had 61 ELEVENTH graders who were AP Scholars with Distinction, meaning they passed FIVE or more AP exams BEFORE THEY STARTED 12TH GRADE. How many Wichita schools allow students to complete 5 or more AP courses this early?
Last year, Kansas had 16 12th grade AP National Scholars who passed 8 or more AP exams before graduating. Name the Wichita public high school that produced one of these students.
You can talk about kids getting 6 and 7 scores on 3 IB exams, or 4 and 5 scores on 3 AP exams, but that’s not the first-tier college-preparatory PUBLIC-EDUCATION standard. That was the first-tier standard THREE DECADES AGO. It was strong second-tier in the late ’80’s. Today it’s third-rate.
If Apophis and his colleagues will get a 20-course AP program implemented within the next five years, I’ll be ardently posting laudatory comments on WEBlog. I’m not against public education. I’m against lazy, progress-resistant, and indifferent public education attitudes in this community.
Let’s talk about board certification. The idea was first proposed by American Federation of Teachers now-deceased president Al Shanker. In other words, it was proposed by a leader of the K-12 teaching profession. An ardent unionist to be sure–the AFT is a component union of the AFL-CIO.
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is a public educator-lead enterprise. Eighty percent (80%) of the board of directors are K-12 teachers, or former teachers, with most of the rest being university ed school faculty, i.e. trainers of public school teachers. The founding Chair was not a teacher but a state governor, Jim Hunt. Who is the son of a schoolteacher, and a DEMOCRAT. AFT President, Edward McElroy is an NBPTS board member. National Education Association President Reg Weaver is an NBPTS board member.
So we can nip in the bud any preposterous arguments that NBPTS is some right-wing organization. It is DEMOCRATIC PARTY MEMBER TEACHER led.
Now let’s get down to the nitty gritty.There are 47,000 NBPTS-certified teachers in America. Some states have more people and teachers than others. Let’s use a population-adjusted method of analysis.
Our nation has 16 board certified teachers per 100,00 American citizens, nationwide.
The state of Kansas has 204 board-certified teachers, giving us 7.6 bc teachers per 100,000 population. In essence our state has less than one-half the national per capita average.
Wichita has 9 bc teachers, giving us 2.5 bc teachers per 100,000 population. This is one-third the Kansas statewide average. It is ONE-SIXTH the national average.
Apophis loves to play politics. He got board certified–according to one of his earlier posts, unless I severely misread it. So this gives him credibility to be a leader of other teachers. But then he has said, certification isn’t meaningful. Why would he say that? Because, if you’re leading a group of teachers that is overwhelmingly comprised of non-bc individuals, what are you supposed to say? Apophis is straddling both sides of the fence here. Or looked at another way, he’s promoting a two-class system. And guess who’s in the top class?
Board certification is being enthusiastically promoted in some states, but not others. Let’s look at the states that are leading the effort, and their 2005-certified teachers per 100,000 population ratios. Let’s also look at some less proactive, but still fairly supportive states.
North Carolina 19South Carolina 14
Mississippi 9.5Florida 8.6Oklahoma 6.1Delaware 6.1Louisiana 5.6Washington State 5.3
Arkansas 4.9Kentucky 4.1Georgia 4.0Rhode Island 3.8Alabama 3.3Maryland 3.0Illinois 2.5Hawaii 2.5Virginia 2.4West Virginia 2.3Nevada 1.8New Mexico 1.8
Kansas 1.1
Now these data tell us something. The New South is strongly supporting teacher board certification. Is it an accident that New South states are growing fast, as they attract both industrial-satellite jobs development and headquarters relocations and business startups? We also see the four states surrounding Washington, D.C. on the list. We see the West Coast’s most rapidly-growing California-transplant state, Washington. Apophis may have never been to New Mexico, but it’s far more advanced than Kansas, as it has two DOE labs that do state-of-the-art scientific and engineering research (Los Alamos, Sandia), a world-renowned arts colony (Taos), a university that does as much federally-funded research as KU and K-state combined (U New Mexico), and a nascent 21st century aviation startup (Eclipse) that has quantum-jumped Wichita’s business-jet manufacturers. Oklahoma hasn’t just promoted board certification. It has a nationally-renowned math and science residential academy for 11th-12th graders, the first biotech center in the mid-continent, first-tier AP programs in its two largest cities, and a flagship university president who is a former governor and U.S. Senator, also a Rhodes Scholar and Yale Board of Directors member, who’s really pushing research (David Boren).
In 2005 Johnson County got 12 teachers board certified. On a per 100,000 population-adjusted basis, that was 2.7, which is to say if it were a state, it would be within the top 20 states. Wichita had TWO, which represents 0.57 per 100,000 population. On a population-adjusted basis, poor befuddled Wichita didn’t have half the board certification rate of JoCo, it had ONE-FIFTH the rate. It had ONE-FOURTH the NATIONAL-AVERAGE rate (2.5).
Consider this: NBPTS candidates are guaranteed through national and state fundors, $2000 of the $2500 NBPTS evaluation fee. If a candidate passes, he or she is guaranteed $1000 annual income enrichment. In other words, even if a candidate had to pay the $500 cost differential to become certified, he or she would recoup it, PLUS $500 in the first year, and then $1000 additional salary every year thereafter. If I were a public school teacher, would I take it? In a New York minute. The only teachers who would turn this offer down would be those who concluded, “It’s TOO MUCH WORK.” Or, “I’d fail.” If you want this kind of attitude infecting your kids, then you’re making a mistake. In my opinion.
Apophis is lobbying for higher salaries for teachers. But these increments are arguably trivial to him. In my opinion, I would say wants to be able to travel on taxpayers’ dollars to meet with bigwigs. Eventually, perhaps even now, go to conventions in places like Florida, Las Vegas, D.C., California, on teachers union dues (read taxpayer dollars), stay in 4-diamond hotels, hobnob with power brokers, and enjoy a life very different from the rank-and-file he purports to “represent”.
I could be wrong. So let Apophis right here document his professional travel last year, the expenses, and who paid for them.
heartlander……….why should I (or would I) document my professional travel last year, the expenses, and who paid for them? I see no relevance.
Tell me heartlander, what would be the incentive for the majority of educators in Wichita to pursue NBPTS? Would this be because someone else will fund their candidacy? Would it be for the “$1000″ annually you describe?
You just don’t get it heartlander………few in this blog, or in the world for that matter, see your slant as important.
What would be the incentive for the majority of educators in Wichita to pursue NBPTS [certification]? I would think it would be the motivation to be tested rigorously, not according to standards I cooked up, but standards devised by master teachers–your own peers– and to excel in the difficult challenge posed. I think it would be good for the city’s economy, because a chief attractor of corporate main office and regional headquarter relos is their executives’ perception of local school quality: they think about their own kids, and the quality of the local hiring pool.
I think it would getting a large percentage of local teachers would be good for teachers’ self esteem. Board certification requires hard work. It isn’t a gimme, it is earned. The pay supplement represents a reasonable compensation for the extra effort made. Maybe it should be higher. Certification earned by more teachers would raise my taxes. I don’t mind paying the cost, at all, just as I don’t mind paying, as a taxpayer, the cost of modern medicine provided by highly-skilled board certified doctors, to you and your family, should you or they need this service.
The bottom line here is that Wichita is struggling. In 1990, Wichita’s median household income was 3% above the national median. In 2000, when aircraft production was higher than in 1990, Wichita’s median household income was 4% BELOW the national median. You’re a public teacher. Isn’t the Wichita federal-lunch-subsidy-eligible population close to 60%? These metrics are strong evidence of a potentially-failing economy. Turning this around will require multiple inputs. Education change must be a key component.
There are many who send their kids to private schools who don’t care if public education fails. I am not one of these people. I believe that society has to invest in ALL of its children. We’re not doing this. Our society has never come close to doing it. So it’s an unprecedented challenge. But something that is extremely difficult is not the same as impossible.
If the task must be done, and no one within the enterprise knows how to accomplish it, go to outsiders for information and guidance. This is what research universities and corporations are doing. They used to be organized with closed departments, “silos”. Interdisciplinary collaboration is replacing isolationism.
As I mentioned before, medicine has been revolutionized by the research of Ph.D.’s. Physicians didn’t invent CT, MRI or PET scanners. They didn’t invent genetically engineered drugs, statins or moderen antibiotics. They didn’t invent titanium alloy joint prostheses. Or ICU monitors.
Physicians used to have a NIMBY attitude. It hasn’t totally disappeared, but it has largely given way to respect for the ideas and contributions of non-physicians. For example, wise doctors seek and judiciously consider the advisement of pharmacists and respiratory therapists. The expanded medical knowledge base has grown far too large for doctors to command.
I believe this phenomenon is also relevant to education systems. You just need to open up your horizons, because the world has changed.
PS. In earlier posting I said that 12 of 36 was 36%. It’s 33%. So KU grants credit for 33% of IB course exams, versus 94% of AP exams.
It should be noted that many students who take IB HL courses take and pass AP exams, so some IB courses are commensurate with AP courses. The main problems with IB are the rigid structure of IB that limits the number of college-creditable courses students can take, and the International Baccalaureate Organization’s lack of financial resources and university connections to update and upgrade their courses in a timely manner, as demonstrated in the aftermath of the National Research Council’s evaluation of AP and IB, finding of deficiencies and recommendations for action. The College Board responded, “Thanks for the advisement, we’ll fix the problems.” In fact they went beyond that and beefed up ALL their courses, not just the science and math courses examined by NRC. IBO’s response was, “We already revamped our courses three years ago (which NRC’s study proved to be inadequate), so we’re not doing a new upgrade.” What IBO meant was, “We have no resources to undertake an upgrade effort, and our program satisfies admissions requirements for public universities in Europe, America and Australia, so it satisfies our objective.”
The International Baccalaureate program was established so that European kids whose parents worked overseas could qualify for home-country-university admission, and undeveloped nations’ administrative-class parents’ children could go to Europe (or America) to pursue university study.
There is nothing wrong with this. But AP’s purpose wasn’t to get American kids INTO university, it was to give them preparation to EXCEL in university study.
heartlander………….you ramble on and on and on and on and on just like a RW republican.
You just don’t get it do you heartlander?
Your paradigm shift isn’t going to happen just because YOU say so. Change will come when the NEA sees a change as educationally viable. Too bad, so sad if you can’t handle that.
Apophis, it’s almost fun to debate with you, because I can make you lose every time. But the reason that I don’t fully enjoy it is I am not really trying to beat you. I’d rather have you learn. Because I’m a teacher.
Let’s take what you have shown. You refuse to answer questions that you don’t want to answer. You see, I’ve laid a stream of questions, and you refuse to answer them. The last, of many, was a question about your taxpayer-funded trips. You said it was “none of your business”. Bad response, my friend. It’s my money, and other readers here, that is being spent. But you refuse to be accountable.
Let’s consider a hypothetical teacher. Smart students ask question the teacher doesn’t want to answer. The teacher has figured out how to marginalize them, and force students to ask questions the teacher CAN answer, and give these students higher grades.
If I were an adolescent taking such a teacher’s class, I’d ask questions that would discomfit the teacher. Which I did. But they responded by giving me a low grade. These kind of teachers are not fit to grade students who are deep-thinking questioners. Who gave them this false “authority”? You see, classroom teachers lack the capacity to grade students whose abilities are way beyond their own. It’s like somebody viewing the nighttime heavens with his naked eye could never develop ideas of the earth and other planets revolving around the sun, in ellipses, much less develop ideas of an expanding universe, quasars and black holes.
This is a limitation of teachers taking seriously circumscribed classes in academic fields, because their bachelor’s degree program required them to complete many ed courses. That’s why I have suggested that teachers, at minimum, complete regular College of Liberal Arts and Sciences degree requirements, and then take teaching-specific courses, for a six-year degreee.
Some people say, “We need schooling that meets the needs of kids who have talents outside the academic-course model.” I support this, for artists and technically-inclined students. I know how to create written phonetics-decoding literacy in one year or less, for 95% of students. But this isn’t the whole matter. I can teach 50% of students phonetics-decoding literacy in 6 months or less. I figured out how to teach a 6th grader how to apply the distributive property and expand
(a1 + a2 + a3 + a4 + a5)( a1 + a2 + a3 + a4 + a5). Try it out and see what you get . Do you have the mind of a 12 year old who has an IQ of 150.
I have a friend who can play guitar, and piano, and sing with a voice that transports you to another world. Can you do this?
I have a son who paints “Wow” pictures. He learned to paint by doing it 3 hours a day at home, before taking formal art classes, and having teachers say, “Would you like to spend the summer with me? You’re really good.” So, what 3-hour art classes is USD 259 providing?
I know you must conclude, “We can’t do these things because we are constrained by an industrila age ideology.” Which is why you are a rising union leader. You don’t get it that you are yourself trapped by an industrial age system which is utterly inadequate to educating today’s kids for a postindustrial world.
Heck, I had a son that scored 167 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test. I was told that that was the highest at that time in Wichita.
And thanks to your support of the radical right-wing, your kid now works at Wal-Mart.
But at least he can carry a gun anytime he wants!
TP,
Are you another dem who has a selective/short memory? It was the twin scumbags gore and clinton who championed nafta! It was the so-called whackos Perot and Buchanan who were(are) correct about so-called globalism and “free-trade”.
Viva La raza Blanco!!
I believe that someone needs to go back to school and find out what a right angle is.
It is neither an Obtuse angle (left leaning) nor an acute angle (right leaning) but is straight up and down in the center
Joe Williams,
You should NOT trust anything from John Stossel — doing that makes you appear stupid.
‘Stupid is as John Stossel does. Here — let ABC prove it:’http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh011706.html
‘Media Outlet / Personality: John Stossel’http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=19&media_outlet_id=19
http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/people/johnstossel
heartlander…………..I never lose and you are NOT a teacher.
Get over yourself.
heartlander……….if I do go on “taxpayer-funded trips”, I am not accountable to YOU or any other person on this blog. It is really “none of your business”.
Your “Bad response, my friend. It’s my money, and other readers here, that is being spent. But you refuse to be accountable” is totally asinine.Point 1: You (or anyone else in this blog) are not part of the chain of command I am responsible for accounting anything that I may do. My immediate superior is my capable building Administrator. Next in line is the District Superintendent who knows my capabilities and professional reputation well. The Superintendent answers to the local Board of Education. No where in this hierarchy is there an egotistical asshole who writes posts on the WE blog as “heartlander”.Point 2: I too am a taxpayer. I help pay my own salary.Case closed.
Off to bed now heartlander……….I have a long day tomorrow actually making a difference in the lives of our youth. This is something you will never be able to do. Remember, that offer is still open for you to tutor some “at-risk” students in Math. I could set you up in one of our Middle Schools tomorrow.I doubt if you could handle this.
Apophis,
You arrogant, holier than thou attitude is typical of public school functionaries. I only hope that more parents will choose our path and HOMESCHOOL their kinder!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!!
You are right, Ian. I don’t see how anyone would want their children to have any association with Apophis. The insults he/she spouts, passing them off for wisdom, this is all the evidence we need to hope that this person is stuck in an administrative post, far removed from contact with children.
Apophis is proof positive of how education majors are the lowest-scoring at any college campus. Not that scoring low is bad. Someone has to be last. But at least decent folks know they are in last place, and don’t act otherwise.
I have elsewhere defended you Ian.
Here, I will not.
One can only cringe at the thought of what you are imparting to your kids and how their social isolation will serve to make them as hateful and ignorant as you.
JR,
Our kinder are all very happy, very bright, very healthy and far from socially isolated. I am NOT ignorant, nor am I hateful and neither are my kinder.
I am generally a supporter of the working man/woman and organised labor but the teacher’s union is an exception!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
JR,
Thanks for calling my parenting skills into question. Maybe you should make an anonymous call to CPS?
V.L.R.B!!
Hey Ian…………I’ve been waiting all day to tell you and sd this: “KISS MY ASS”! I don’t answer to either of you or heartlander for that manner. I am arrogant and proud of it. It’s about time we had someone stand up for public education and say **** you if you don’t like it. Yes, I do teach your children daily and I am good at what I do. My students learn……..and you can’t handle that.
Again, KISS MY ASS!
Apophis is stressed to the degree of becoming irrational and lashing out with non-substantive epithets.
For example, if taxpayers like you and me are funding his trips, how can he assert that the costs are “None of your business”? This is a key problem in public education: aversion to accountability. If a privately-employed union, like the UAW, wants to secret its dues and expenditures (other than for campaign lobbying and other government-influencing activities), maybe that’s okay. But when the money is generated entirely through taxes that we pay, and a big part of the agenda is to scheme to get more money from us taxpayers, then accountability to us payors is entirely in order.
Does anyone disagree with this argument? If so, by all means say it, but please cogently justify your opinion based on facts and reasoned inferences. To say, “we don’t have to tell you how taxpayer dollars converted to union dues are spent, and it’s none of your business because WE SAY it’s none of your business,” is not ADULT argumentation. It’s a puerile temper tantrum.
We have to understand that public education was designed by, and for the benefit of, industrial capitalists. Originally, school board members were community business leaders, their wives and clergymen. The former class paid the lion’s share of property taxes that funded public schools. Schools WERE accountable, to them, but not working-class families whose kids were the bulk of school attendees.
Two things have happened over the past five decades. The property tax base has greatly expanded to include a much larger group of payors, including a large group of public school children’s parents. So, accountability should have shifted from the privileged-class overseers, to the general property-tax-paying public at large. This did not happen.
What did happen is that school systems started hiding their actions and expenditures from EVERYBODY who did not work in the schools.
Secondly, BOE control shifted from members being chosen by the upper-class to a majority of members being chosen by the teachers unions.
The unions apply flawed reasoning. The average teacher works in the system for 30 years. Kids are only in the system for 12 years. The teachers are adults, the kids, well children. Ergo, schools should primarily serve the institution’s workers’ interests, not the interests of children under their charge. (Remember, schools never did act to primarily serve the interests of children in them, so ignoring them under the new leadership paradigm was no great breach of trust, since no trust had ever been established.)
But you see, schools CANNOT primarily serve teachers’ interests. We’re not paying to create an adult-welfare program. We’re paying to prepare children to have fruitful, and I would argue, fulfilling, lives as adults.
Children are engaged in an asymmetric relationship. A teacher can send a poorly-performing student to the principal’s office. Where can a student sent a poorly-performing teacher? Teachers issue grades that impact children’s futures. Are students allowed to issue grades that impact teachers’ futures?
This is an industrial-ideology designed scheme that is obsolete, and highly detrimental to children in this new-economy century.
What’s the best kind of education in this century? I don’t know. I believe that it is one in which children are led closely at the outset, and then allowed, by puberty, to start creating their own education, with advisement and guidance.
Ken Robinson describes, in “Out of Our Minds” requesting to take art and German one year. His advisor said, “We can’t accommodate that. You have to choose one or the other. German would be much more useful.”
Educational systems, being mass-processing endeavors, can’t allow individual tailoring. When I decided to take metal shop as an elective in 7th grade, it didn’t interfere with my gifted-academics classes. But when my teacher said, “You’re too advanced for this, you need to take 8th grade shop,” and I went along, it wreaked havoc, because to put me into it required putting me in non-challenging versions of the classes I had been taking. I got a lesson about privileges that I had taken for granted: the top students got the best teachers. After that, the drop was precipitous. For example, my history teacher had a Ph.D., and as vice-principal, taught only two classes, gifted 7th and gifted 8th. The class I was transferred into had a functionary. It was still ostensibly “first track” in which almost all students went to four-year college, but it was not challenging.
So that’s what I got for taking a “blue collar” class. But to me, it was a fascinating experience, working with molten metal. The semester-long second-year metal shop class was hitched to a second-semester mechanical-drawing/drafting class, which was also terrific. I learned about perspective drawing, which helped my freehand drawing tremendously.
I read a Nobel Laureate physicist’s recounting of not being able to take “fun”, i.e. shop classes. Shop classes can be real mind-expanders, for academically-inclined and artistically-inclined kids. My brother-in-law is a rich dentist. I mean he has a net wealth of several million dollars. He LOVES to tinker. His parents have a beautiful mahogany stereo cabinet that he made in 11th grade woodshop. As a dentist, he’s a master craftsman. He got mostly B’s and many C’s in high school and college. School wasn’t his thing. Today he has a Napa Valley “Tuscan Estate” growing wine grapes. He’s obviously successful, despite teachers’ evaluations.
My cousin-in-law had a U Colorado football scholarship, but suffered an anterior cruciate ligament rupture (knee), that ended his playing days before reconstructive surgery. A “C” student, he was de-scholarshipped, and took up water-bottle carrying. With a bad knee, he had to try to compensate, and suffered a ruptured disc, and had to take permanent disability. His wife was a bank manager. His kids were not doing well in public school. So he home-schooled them. Today, his older son, who was denied admission to the University of California because home-schooling was deemed “suspect”, went to Sonoma State U, then earned a Ph.D. at the University of Washington, and today is a tenure-track assistant professor in an Ivy League university. His younger sister was admitted to a top-10 law school.
I have one Ivy League graduate son, and another in. I know Apophis doesn’t think I’m a teacher, but I was tutoring classmates in algebra and French in high school. I’m not a public school teacher, but my grandmother, a great aunt and great uncle were. Apophis’s idea of a teacher is very limited. I’m a very good teacher–and I say this based on things like students in med school’s evaluations, teaching two of my children math at home and their scoring 800’s on the SAT Math level 2 exam, after being labeled as “B” and “C” math students in regular schools, their own successful tutoring of OTHER students, and raising an early 6th grader’s ACT score from 13 (slightly above a pure-guessing score of 10), to 18 in 8 months of my teaching, then to 26 after another 6 months, midway through 7th grade. Collegiate and Independent’s 11TH-GRADER score medians of 25-26.
Do I know how to teach talented kids math? Yes. I was a National Merit Scholarship Finalist. That’s because I was a serious student. You can’t be a great teacher if you were and are not a great student. I didn’t just study course matter. I studied TEACHERS. I deliberately asked them hard questions that I knew the answers to, to separate superlative teachers who KNEW THE CORRECT ANSWERS, from excellent teachers who honestly said, “I don’t know the answer but I’ll find out” or “You need to go this resource to find the information”, to teacher-pretenders who either pooh-poohed my questions or gave false answers to maintain an aura of authority.
Was Apophis an NMS finalist? “It’s none of your damned business?” Did he get academic university scholarships, like I did? “It’s none of your damned business.” Did he graduate magna cum laude, like I did? “It’s none of your damned business.”
Somebody mentioned that teacher trainees are at the bottom of college-educated students. That’s true. When I was in university, students who got “C’s” in freshman year were advised, “You should consider teaching.” S**t, how do you become a great teacher if you are a lousy student? You don’t.
I’m a very good teacher because I have always been a keen student. Given the rantings Apophis has made here, one can only imagine how he deals with students over whom he has dictatorial control.
I feel for Apophis. He has limited abilities and few career options. He escaped blue-collardom–but not by much, which is why he is an ardent unionist. He sees forces of change threatening his livelihood. Change doesn’t scare me. It may force me to work hard to adapt, but I can do that. I can reinvent myself. I used to earn $400k per year, but I don’t need money. I am an empty nester. I don’t need this 5100 square foot 4-bedroom 4 1/2 bath house anymore. I drive a big $50,000 SUV. I’ve had a Porsche Carrera and a Mercedes-Benz. But I can drive a fuel-efficient compact car, like I did when I was younger. I can be happy living in a 1200 sq ft bungalow, even though it will mean having to abandon most of my 1500+ book library. If you ask me what my greatest treasure is, it’s my books. Really the ideas of OTHER people.
Apophis appears to not have the self-confidence to adapt to change. He seems to be trying to milk the old industrial-ideology system as much as he can for his own personal benefit. But that old system will be dead before he is. He can fight his rear-guard action, but it will fail. Unfortunately, children will be the “collateral damage”.
Apophis tried to draw me into, “Put your money where your mouth is and tutor at-risk kids.” He’s not educated enough to understand that A. trying to tutor kids in a mal-designed math curriculum is like taking a bucket to draw off Mississipi floodwaters, and B. highly gifted kids warrant specialized instruction, because no society can function without well-educated leaders. The idea of, let’s make a mass-equality education program for everybody appeals to the misguided. If I tutored at-risk kids and improved proficient-scoring kids by 5% would that be evidence of success? No, it would not.
You see, in the minds of public educators, under the NCLB gun, small incremental improvement for at-risk students represents “success”. It isn’t.
Furthermore, Apophis would say, “Okay, you already contribute a couple thousand dollars annually to public education, but put your money where your mouth is.” Excuse me? Putting a couple thousand annually, or $15,000+ since I moved here, even though my own children didn’t attend local public schools, IS putting my money where my mouth is. Duh!
But how do you deal with incompetent charlatans? You can’t because they are ignorant, and dishonest.
“Show me the money!” Okay, here is the money, what are you doing with it? “It’s none of your damned business.”
This is why Wichita has a failing economy. You have teachers who are promoting procrastination in their students and short-term-memory cram-for-examination habits. How many multiple-choice exams does Apophis give? “It’s none of your damned business.”
Here is an interesting institution offering the following courses:
neurobiology, marine biology, DNA science, and quantum mechanics. All students are required to complete an introductory Java computer science course. Starting with the class of 2008, the computer science course must be completed before junior year. Students are also required to participate in the Senior Technology Laboratory Research program, in which seniors are required to complete a year-long research project or an off campus mentorship through one of the school’s several research labs, devoted to fields including robotics, microelectronics, computer science, chemistry, prototyping, optics, video technology, computer aided design, astronomy, oceanography, energy systems and biotechnology.
The school also offers a strong humanities and foreign language curriculum. Japanese, Chinese, and Russian are taught in addition to the more traditional German, French, Spanish, and Latin.
Computer facilities include a Cray SV1 supercomputer.
Does this sound like something Wichita State should aspire to?
Actually, it is a PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
TJHSST is one of 89 schools nationwide that is a member of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology.
Twenty-seven states have at least one member school, including Kansas’s neighbors Oklahoma and Missouri. This is basically what was proposed two years ago to the USD 259 superintendent and board. Based on the superintendent’s office’s recommendation against it, the BOE voted it down.
Many of us whom Apophis would LIKE readers to believe are ANTI-PUBLIC EDUCATION, are in fact PRO-PUBLIC EDUCATION. We’re just against obsolete 19th-early-20th-century designed public education, cuz this is neither the 19th nor early 20th century. Kansas educators can be backward-looking if they want to be, but they’re not serving the interests of kids who will have to work in THIS century’s career-fields, not those of A CENTURY AGO.
Apophis first accused me of being a “right wing nut”. I disproved that, and so he was forced to abandon that label. So, he decided I was an “outlier” which he equated with a “radical”. I support public math and science school initiatives to train future leaders. I don’t think that promoting the ideas that have taken hold already in 27 states, including 2 of Kansas’s next-door neighbors, exactly qualifies me as a proponent of “radical” ideas.
The North Carolina School of Mathematics and Science opened in 1980. The Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics opened in 1986. The Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science has been operating since 1987.
Kansas may build a statewide-serving math and science academy which will not open until 2007 at earliest, more likely 2008. You don’t have to be the first to try something. But you can’t be far behind the curve, and say, “We know what we are doing, we’re keeping up just fine. With our new math and science school, we’ll be only 24 years behind Mississippi (1983), 18 years behind Alabama (1989), and 13 years behind Arkansas (1993).”
heartlander………..you ARE still a “right wing nut an “outlier” and a “radical”. Give it up, even with your voluminous tomes, you are still irrelevant. Your views are WAY outside the norm. You just can’t stand that I am a successful educator and my kids actually learn and excel despite what YOU wish to believe to the contrary. Put your money where your mouth is buddy!
Heartlander,See what you’re arguing with? Read Ap’s last post: is that classic neo-(take your pick) hogwash, or what? No wonder SOME schools are so far behind the curve. The world, bro, are flat!
Apophis,
I will put our five homeschooled kinder against your public school inmates anyday of the week.
You all did a great job with ray-ray and the carr brothas fo sho. No child left behind, my backside!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
You gonna send ‘em to Bob Jones University, Mestizo-boy?
Because it’ll be interesting to see what the spawn of Ian bring home once they see that Daddy is a Nazi . . .
Guess who’s coming to dinner, Ian.
Capn,
My kinder will NEVER behave shamefully, thanks.
V.L.R.B!!
Apophis, you are right. I am irrelevant in Kansas. You are relevant in Kansas. Of course your state is irrelevant.
But I’m not totally irrelevant. I’m leading a small number of people to understanding. Like helping some young people, not all of them my own children, become courageous enough to see the outside world, and realize that Eastern Europe transplanted to the New World, isolating themselves, isn’t ALL OF AMERICA.
In my first two years here, when I met other outsiders, they told me, “These Kansans are really stupid.” I tried to defend Kansans. And I still will defend many. Like KFG. And Ian. How can I defend both at the same time? Because they’re GRAPPLERS. They are willing to challenge the status quo. Ian and his wife could buy more consumer goods if both of them worked. But they’re sacrificing. Unfortunately as a Spaniard, which is white, Ian denigrates Spanish-speaking Indians, and Mestizos. Ian, if you can speak Spanish, go down to Baja California, driving. Get way past Tijuana and Ensenada, and go to small villages on the Sea of Cortez. Take some snorkeling and fishing gear, and rent a panga. Camp out. You’ll meet some amazing people. I guarantee it. Do it three times, and YOU WILL BE CHANGED.
Ian is smarter than most people. He’s willing to sacrifice the easy American consumer lifestyle.
KFG is bucking her community. She’s feisty. She’s seen the larger world. She’d like to change her hometown. If she doesn’t TRY, who’s gonna do it? She could take the easier path of moving back to Austin, or the West Coast, and “fit in”.
I’m from California. Actually, first from New Mexico and Texas. I might move back to California, settling into my grandparents home, now occupied by my mother. Or I might try Costa Rica or Hawaii. I once lived with Melanesians in Fiji. A highlight of my life. I had Mexican, Chinese, Filipino, and African-American friends growing up. I remember teaching my sons how to body-board in Hawaii. (We lived there too. The white “haoles” who tried to talk Hawaiian pidgen, were really obnoxious. “Get offa my wave.” The Hawaiians and Asio-Hawaiians were totally great. You show them you know the ocean, and you take turns riding waves, and compliment each other, and you’re brothers.
I mentioned a shop teacher who pushed me to move up a year. He was a full-blooded Navajo.
I guess that makes me a “radical”, cuz I know how to get along with a lot of different kinds of people, and appreciate them.
Apophis is relevant in an increasingly irrelevant state. You’re going to lose a Congressman by 2012. Join the Dakotas. If you understand logic, at all, developing self-power in a poor and declining state doesn’t make you respectable. Rising to teachers union power in one of America’s most backwards educational systems? Big whoop. Especially when you are playing a key roll in maintaining your society’s backwardness, and weaking your state’s children’s futures. Apophis hates home education and vouchers, and parent-teacher-controlled charter schools. These are only attempts to get children out of the trap of an obsolete, enslave-the-masses ideology. An ideology that Apophis strongly endorses.
Some of you may say I’m a radical, but I’d rather be that than an medievalism-promoting dinosaur like Apophis.
heartlander, Ian and JM Walker………….Kiss my ass
Apophis,Great answer, dude!
Heartlander,Kindred spirit, bro. I’ve spent most of my life roaming, and the rewards far outway the setbacks. I’ve lived in many states, real and imagined, and been to a few foreign countries.
I was in Guam, playing in a band, in a small village about eight miles from the capital, Agana. During a break, I started talking to one of bartenders. He asked me if I ever played in Agana, and what the dity was like. This guy was in his mid-twenties and had never been to Agana. Is that something? I couldn’t imagine living without seeing and experienceing what’s all out there.
I get the feeling Apophis is kind of like that bartender.
Sticks and stones JM………….you have to do better then that.
To all young parents: I hope you start saving money now so that you can afford to send your children to a school where the likes of Apophis can’t be found.
JM that’s so cool you were in a band. Making music is something I don’t do very well, but I have dreams when I’m sleeping, not every night, but several times a year, about playing the guitar and making beautiful sounds.
Many Kansans, not you and not some of the WEBLog’s readers, are really self-isolating introverts. I took my youngest son to Florida last year. We swam with manatees and kayaked in the Keys in calm water. I have a lot of ocean experience, so I figured a sea-kayaking trip in the Northwest would be fun. It was supposed to be in island-shadow calm water. But it turned out there were really strong tidal currents. It was an ordeal at some points, but we had a really amazing guide who grew up in coal-country Pennsylvania. (You don’t have to be from the West Coast to be an adventurer.) He took us oyster gathering and whale watching. He timed most of our open-water crossings to make slack tide, and kept us together as a pack when we had to face rough water.
Anyway, afterwards, when we talked about it here, some people couldn’t conceive of sea-kayaking, and they’d never been to British Columbia. There are people here, a LOT of them, who’ve never seen blue water, or a waterfall, or a snow-capped Rocky Mountain peak, even though all of these things are less than a day’s drive away.
Personally, if Apophis is a social studies teacher, which I have a hunch he may be, I wouldn’t want my kids learning the subject from somebody who had no experience living in different-from-Kansas cultures, and/or no desire to experience this. KU’s chancellor is from Nebraska. KSU’s president is from South Dakota. WSU’s president is from southern Illinois. ESU’s president is from North Dakota. This is a very interesting social studies lesson. My university’s chancellor in California was from New York. His successor was from Taiwan. His successor is from Canada. This is a very interesting social studies lesson.
When a state chooses, as university leaders, “people who are like us,” that’s a sign of a debilitating inferiority complex. You LEARN a heckuva lot more from people who are DIFFERENT from you, than those who are your cultural kin.The latter reinforce what “you already know”. But if the world is undergoing tremendous change, what you already know may not be effective in the future.
I have pointed out that compulsory mass public education was invented to serve an industrial economy, but it’s not my original idea. This is well-understood in teachers colleges. The late John Ise’s “Sod and Stubble” describes late 19th century Kansas schooling, as he personally experienced it. The fundamental objective was molding kids, mostly the children of immigrants, to accept authority and be compliant to it, to prepare them for mindless toil as industrial-economy workers.
Apophis is an exemplar of the industrial age, as he is a unionist. He works in a factory school. But look at our economy. The industrial jobs base is shrinking. Right here in Wichita, the linchpin industry aviation’s job base is less than half as large as it was 40 years ago. Coleman has similarly shrunk its local workforce. An education system designed for an industrial economy long ago, with minor incremental “reforms”, is not going to work in this postindustrial age.
Wichita has been sinking into obsoleteness for some time. The post-Civil-War and early 20th century businessmen were outsiders who knew they were moving to the hinterland, but wanted to create a modern, cosmopolitan city, and they did so. But the Depression and FDR created a rural-disaster-mitigating scheme that pushed backward agrarian peoples to migrate to Wichita. The result has been a hinterization of the city. People who came from a failed rural economy now constitute a majority of citizens.
I was recently reading about the history of television. I can’t remember a time without TV. It was first developed in New York because RCA and GE were there, with tiny-image public broadcasting starting in 1928, showing films. LA followed suit in 1930. Chicago, and IOWA CITY took up TV broadcasting in 1933. By the late 1930’s they were broadcasting live persons. In 1948, St. Louis and Ft. Worth opened TV stations. In 1949, in response to network New York-to-midwest coaxial cable being laid, Omaha, Albuquerque, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Kansas started broadcasting network TV. They showed events like the Berlin Airlift, the second Truman administration, the Eisenhower-Stevenson contest and the Korean War. Wichita, Kansas’s LARGEST CITY, didn’t begin broadcasting until 1953. It was “only four years” behind Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Huntington, West Virginia. Wichita was by then no longer a modern city. It was already disconnected from the modern world, i.e. a world of instantaneous visual electronic communication.
I read Craig Miner’s “The Sunflower State”. In this, he extolls the lesson of the movie, “The Wizard of Oz.” Actually, the movie totally mischaracterized Frank Oz’s books. In them, Oz was a fun place, overall, like Narnia, in which the protagonist returned time and again for adventures. In the movie, Dorothy was portrayed as a victim of delirium, so she couldn’t return, and it was extremely scary, so she didn’t want to. This was a propaganda piece, the MGM companion, for Midwest consumption, of “Gone With The Wind” for Southern consumption. “Oz” was California, and “The Emerald City” was Los Angeles. Frank Baum was by then deceased, but he settled in Los Angeles and built a whimsical house, “Ozma”, which is now open for public visitation. Remember the “Munchkins”? A large proportion of them built a communal compound by the sea in La Jolla (Spanish for “The Jewel”) where there was never any winter frost ever recorded, or oppressive summer heat.
The movie, not the book, was a calculated attempt to stem the tide of Dust Bowl refuges whom Californians did not want invading their state and ruining their pleasant lives. GWTW was similarly designed to discourage Southern destitute peoples from deluging Northern cities, by reminding them that Yankees were their “enemies”. Both movies were designed to send the message” “Life is hard where you are, but STAY WHERE YOU ARE.” If anyone thinks that urbane Hollywood Jews had a deep sympathy for anti-Semitic mid-continent farmers, and racist white southerners, they’re delusional. “The Grapes of Wrath” also sent the same, “You don’t want to move to California,” message.
How many Kansas kids have watched “The Wizard of Oz”? How many Kansas social studies teachers have explained the central purpose of the movie, as a social-behavior-modifying media experiment using Kansans as human guinea pigs?
I find it ironic that we have this anti-Mexican-immigration sentiment being whipped up. Because this is what California’s leaders did against Euro-American peasant refugees from Kansas and Oklahoma 70 years ago. Don’t believe me. But it is a historically documented fact that Los Angeles County illegally sent sheriff’s deputies into ANOTHER COUNTY, Riverside, to stand at the California-Arizona Route 66 bridge, and examine would-be entrants’ points of origin, via license-plate inspections. If the would-be entrants were from Oklahoma or Kansas, driving rickety vehicles with several passengers, they were told, at gunpoint, “Turn your car around. You’re not allowed to come into this state.”
Some intrepid individuals then swam across the Colorado River to get into “the land of milk and honey”. They were “wetbacks”. Some of them may very well have been related to some WEBlog readers and contributors.
I meant to say KANSAS CITY, MO started TV broadcasting in 1949.
SD…….you can join the ranks of “kiss my ass”. heartlander, I’ve told you before that i do NOT teach Social Studies. Get a real life, better yet move back to California.
I’ve mostly stayed out of the Apophis Heartlander wars.
I’d weigh in only with this.
Heartlander posts of experiences I have never had and could never have. Nor will those experiences find my son.We don’t have the money.
Apophis posts more from a real world take on things.
Thanks for the acknowledgment JR.
heartlander thinks his allegedly “real world” experiences makes him more of an expert on education than educational professionals and organizations. He acts as if the current educational system still teaches kids how to plow a field using a mule. It’s far from that. heartlander’s agenda is vouchers, using tax dollars to further someone’s personal agenda.
Let us all hope for vouchers soon! Escape from failing public schools.
SD…………..read the article that started this thread, public schools aren’t failing. Private schools and charters aren’t performing better than public schools. The only thing that is “failing” is you and your anti-public eduction allies.
JR, I grew up poor. My wife’s family came to the U.S. with five suitcases, and they didn’t contain money. I have a cousin-in-law who home-schooled 3 kids on disability payments and his wife’s small-town-bank job as a loan officer. All of his children earned university degrees, one of them a Ph.D. I grew up with Chinese-American kids whose parents came here with nothing but a resolve to push their children to study hard and enjoy the American dream that the parents themselves could not access. I grew up with Japanese-American kids whose successful farm- and business-owning parents and grandparents lost everything due to internment in WWII. But after the war ended, they went to work, rebuilt their lives, and re-achieved what they had done before.
I’ve hitch-hiked and ridden Greyhound buses. Stayed in Motel 6’s, youth hostels (long ago), slept on friends’ sofas and floors. I did a lot of inexpensive camping for vacations growing up.I loved fishing. I had a rod and reel with a retail value of $10 acquired with Blue Chip Stamps. It wasn’t very good, but it caught fish. From shore, or the public dock, because we sure couldn’t afford a boat, until I was 15 and purchased a $50 inflatable WWII-design life-raft at an Army-Navy surplus store, with my summer-job earnings.
When I visit the West Coast, I love to go to piers and talk with Mexican, Filipino and Vietnamese fishermen. I remember doing same on a Florida bridge last year, albeit the fishermen were black. Poor folks just trying to bring home some fresh seafood. Enjoying the wonderful world of nature and the companionship of their families and friends, instead of cooping themselves up in front of the boob tube.
A lot of kids would like school better if they offered a fishing field trip once in awhile.
JR,Apophis’s outlook on things is exactly the outlook we don’t need anymore. Real world? Only if you expect to live and die in one spot. Maybe that’s good for some, but not all.
Experience comes from learning about all things; or learning comes from experiencing all things. Life is only there once, and, unless you’re limited by various causes, in my opinion, should be filled with both learning and experience. And you don’t get too much of that from teachers such as Apophis. His line of reasoning is part of the problem we are so far behind the rest of the world in graduating scientists and engineers.
There really does need to be complete evolutions in what public schools stand for and what they should, or should not, teach. We are being trampled by foreign competition in many areas, and much of it is caused by today’s’ school curriculum, and the reasons that curriculum still stands. Our children are not being taught the skills necessary to compete with the rest of the world. There’s a reason for that and the reason is there are too many Apophises teaching our kids their version of the “Real World.” There needs to be more Heartlanders with out-of-box suggestions for bringing our public school system into the 21st century.
Oh I’m all for innovation in the schools. We won’t get that by disbanding them into a collection of privately funded enterprises though. That is what vouchers would do.
And if the Apophis’ of the state’s public schools refuse to innovate? Do you then leave your kids to be backwater-trained in worldly affairs, or allow them the freedom of joining the rest of the world?
Vouchers may not be a good answer to the public school problems, but they sure appear better when compared to what Apophis has to offer, which is apparently the samo-samo.
I saw two C-SPAN shows on education today. In one, the speaker mentioned going into a class and thinking, “It was a Rip Van Winkle experience.” In the other the speaker said it was “deja vu”. In a recent LA Times article by their lead education writer, he said he experienced anxiety, and had to remind himself, “You’re an adult now.” These people went to public school in the 50s. But little has changed. I said, quite a while ago, that you could take somebody from 1900 blindfolded, put them into a classroom today, sans students, and they would recognize exactly what it was. Take them to an airport. Would they recognize what it was, watching the planes land? No. Take them to a hospital radiology suite. They’d have no clue what it was. Take a 1900 engineer to a microprocessor fabricating plant. He’d be mystified.
One of the speakers, Joel Turtel, mentioned something widely discussed: public schools require coerced attendance for parents who can’t afford private school, or don’t think they can home-educate. Taxpayer financing is coerced.
If somebody suggested developing such a scheme de novo today, most Americans would say, that’s dictatorial. It’s fascist. It’s communist. It’s anti-American.
In fact, compulsory public education was substantially rejected by the American people in the late 1800’s. It’s ONLY selling point that gained any traction was the argument that it was necessary to socialize the un-American unwashed masses of immigrants. The immigrants didn’t want it forced down their throats. It was invented in Europe where the masses of peasants were not free-citizens, but SUBJECTS of the crown. Public education has always been ANTI-FREEDOM.
Disagree? Suppose you live two blocks from a former neighborhood school that is now a magnet. Let’s say it does things well, and is way oversubscribed. Can you choose to have your child go there? Maybe if you ARE EMPLOYED BY THE DISTRICT. Maybe certainly if you are a district principal, or a higher officer in central administration. But if you are just an ordinary taxpaying parent? No, you have the right to enter an open lottery. If you lose, your kid gets bussed. She may lose an hour a day of study time, but as Apophis might say, “Too bad, kiss my ass.”
In whatever school the “authorities” decide your child must go to, they also pick her teacher. Even if that teacher has a reputation among insiders for not being very good. If your child is gifted, she may be put into that teacher’s class to illusorily “improve” that teacher’s performance, by inserting high-talent students who will be effectively held-back insofar as not achieving their maximal potentials, but will nevertheless help pull up the class’s standardized-score average. Cute trick.
Mr. Turtel, who isn’t saying anything knew, points out the weirdness of same-age class segregation, in pointing out that home-educated kids are socialized more beneficially by having intensive interactions with kids of different ages and adults. I saw this with my children, who connected with younger and older young people, and adults.
Age-segregation is an incredibly bizarre industrial-ideology invention.
Bob Wise, former West Virginia congressman and governor head up the Alliance for Excellent Education. He points out that 30% of 8th grade American students still drop out or do not earn their HS diplomas on time, and 30% who do graduate don’t have the skills employers want, nor the ability to tackle community college level courses, but need remediation. He decrys the double costs we pay to put kids through HS courses, where they pass, often earning B’s, and then have to retake the same subject matter they have already passed.
Let me give you an example of how public education could be really neat. Suppose we had non-coercive non-dictatorial school placement. Suppose that successful public schools were enabled to address high application rates by expanding, and low-application-rate schools were allowed to shrivel and close. Suppose that starting in 8th grade, kids could enroll in as many or as few classes as they and their parents wanted, and highly desired classes were differentially expanded (making more of them available). I would in particular think of foreign-language classes and hands-on classes ranging from science classes with labs to art.
Mr. Turtel points out that home-schooled kids average 4-5 hours a day of academic-subject work. ACT.org finds that they have higher ACT scores than public students who have been advised they should apply to 4 year colleges, and so take the ACT.
Apophis has some facts wrong. ACT.org has reported for many years that private school students have higher ACT averages than public school students, and the ca. 2 point differential is very significant, because in the vast majority of private schools in ACT-primary states, 100% their 11th and 12th graders take the ACT, versus only 60-80% of public school students. In other words, if you only tested the top 60-80% of private school students, the ACT private vs. public scores disparity would be higher, more like 4-5 points. When you then consider that most private-school ACT takers attend parochial and protestant church schools with less than $4000 tuition, compared to $6000-10,000 per pupil public costs, it is irrefutable that private education creates a lot more bang for buck.
We could talk about the fact that in private schools, it is typical for 60-80% of kids to play at least one interscholastic sport, versus less than 15% in similarly-situated public schools. (Small rural public high schools have much higher rates, but you don’t have private high schools in these communities.) Is there a learning experience differential here? It is common for 10-20% of small private high schools’ students to have involvement in yearbook and the high school newspaper. Versus typically fewer than 5% in same-community large public high schools.
It is true that the larger public–and parochial–schools generally have better athletic teams and higher-quality yearbooks and school newspapers. But, most of their participants aren’t going to play NCAA sports, much less play professionally, nor become professional writers or editors for their livings. So what’s wrong with greater participation rates, even if the product is not as good? It’s a learning, contributory experience that matters. Apophis almost certainly doesn’t understand this private-school benefit. It’s not even measured by standardized tests. It is evaluated in college/university apps, which is one reason why private-school graduates have higher 4-year college admissions rates than public school students who have the same GPA’s (in colleges and universities that have “very competitive” admissions standards–Kansas has none of these) because grades are less inflated in private schools, and kids do more transcript-recorded extracurricular activities.
On vouchers, you can forget about them in Kansas before 2015 or 2020. It’s like TV: Kansas lags far behind the trailblazers. Wait for 25-35 states to have vouchers. Then Kansas will get onboard with a “pilot program” after vouchers are standard elsewhere. Vouchers probably will not even affect Apophis’s own career here.
heartlander……….don’t you ever get tired of the crap you type? It really means nothing. Vouchers are a failure as are charter schools. You are the one who just doesn’t get it. All that comes from you and your anti-public education comrades is blah, blah, blah.
A government monopoly is not likely to change in any significant way. It would be better to demolish the current system of public schools rather than attempt years of reform that probably won’t work, and to lose another generation in the process. Look at how arrogant Apophis is. Could he/she ever be persuaded to change?
JR, I wonder how schools funded through vouchers would qualify as privately funded. Don’t vouchers come from the government?
By the way, the studies that show public schools performing well use stastical “adjustments” to make that result happen. It’s like saying “if” public schools weren’t so bad, they’d “be” better.
Why is it, do you suppose, that public school teachers send their children to private schools at rates above that of the general public? Especially since, if you listen to the teachers, they are paid so poorly, private school tuition must be quite a financial burden.
Nice try SD.
Before it can get students and their voucher money, a voucher school would have to be set up. That takes money. I don’t like too much the idea of those who already have the money to start a school as a business being trusted with the education of my or anyone else’s kids. Buisienesses are about the bottom line and that thinking is already FAR too prevalent in this society.
Look at heartlander. Educated fellow, thoughtful poster. And no offense meant here heart, but swimming with manatess and kayaking the ocean are the province of the wealthy. His suggestion that these experiences are within the reach of the average citizen is born of another time when the American dream was remotely possible for the average American. At 41, I don’t even remember that time.
As Apophis says he is a teacher, I trust his perspective somewhat better.
By the way heart? My kid in the public schools has been on field trips to fish at the Great Plains nature center. Just last week his class helped out at the foodbank. The trips to Pizza Hut and McDonalds I liked less, but I let him go.
My only problems with the public schools are related to the “no child left behind” initiative of the bush administration. STILL not fully funded, it allows the military to talk to my son without my consent unless I file paperwork forbidding them to do so. I was tardy filing that paperwork and my son was automatically inducted, without notifying me, into the JROTC last year!!! I quickly stopped that.
I like a bumper sticker I saw once.
It will be a good day when the schools are fully funded and the Air Force has to have a bake sale to buy a bomber.
Thing is, JR, profits, the bottom line, tell us whether a business is making efficient use of resources.
After all, are there any businesses that can force customers to patronize them? There may be a few such examples, but almost always a business must provide a product or service that the customer is pleased with. Otherwise, customers have alternatives.
Now it may be that some parents would choose a product, er, school that provides a different type of education than you think is appropriate, and is different than what you would choose for your own children. Is that a bad thing?
Suppose that conservatives had swept the recent elections, and it looked like they would be successful in forcing your child to learn ID (or whatever they call it) instead of evolution. Wouldn’t you welcome the opportunity to remove your child from these schools and choose something else?
This is part of the danger of relying on politicians to run schools. If you don’t agree with what the politicians want to force on your children, your’re in a tough spot, aren’t you?
Relying less on government to provide education lets everyone get what they want.
Again, nice try SD,
“Thing is, JR, profits, the bottom line, tell us whether a business is making efficient use of resources.
Uh no SD that is not the case. Profits only indicate that money is being made. The use or misuse of the “resources” is a secondary consideration to profit.
You then go on SD to query what would I do if those who differ from me ideologically were to control the schools.
Well thing is SD? That happened. It was taken care of by the recent primary elections and will be further addressed in the general elections. Even in Kansas, most understand the separation of church and state…..at least on some levels.
You close with….
“Relying less on government to provide education lets everyone get what they want.”
Now I KNOW that is the DREAM of the right SD. Only those with the bucks get educated. The rest must apprentice themselves to the more well heeled…..learn to answer to them early on. No thanks.
I wonder SD, would you be in favor of vouchers for Muslim Madrassas? How about vouchers for schools that educate kids to be agitators in the work place? Hey why stop there?
Maybe we should have voucher schools for only white kids? It would sell you know. So would a school for only far right Christians or far left atheists. Do you really want kids reaching adulthood never knowing folks who differ in thought?
What a society that would be?
“Nice try.” Is that sarcasm, JR, or reasoned argument?
Tell me, how can someone make profits unless they are satisfying their customers? And doing so efficiently?
Because if someone is not satisfying customers, won’t customers go elsewhere? And then the business, the one that doesn’t meet customers’ needs, go out of business, thereby freeing resources to be used elsewhere?
As to your questions, I would be in favor of people associating (or not) with whomever they want, for whatever reasons they may have. I would suggest, JR, that public schools today, even our universties, enforce a uniformity of throught and speech that is quite harmful.
I do not know why you are adverse to market processes. Markets represent people choosing, freely, what they want, not what government believes they should have. What could be wrong with that, unless they choose something other than what you think they should have chosen.
I would think someone with leftist views like you have, someone who doesn’t even want to work for fear of being exploited, would appreciate that freedom.
SD?
“As to your questions, I would be in favor of people associating (or not) with whomever they want, for whatever reasons they may have.”
Hey that is a recipe for a society aint it! It is working out REAL well in the Balkans and the Mideast isn’t it? It worked real well before the Brown vs. BOE Topeka decision didn’t it?
“Markets represent people choosing, freely, what they want, not what government believes they should have.”
Um no SD markets favor those who have at the expense of those who have not. Survival of the fittest with a prejudice to those with a head start.
Who was it that extolled a society where “the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.”? Why are you in opposition to that SD? What is YOUR agenda?—–
Markets are imperfect. Nevertheless, most of us trade our skills and work efforts for income, which is to say ultimately for goods and services that we either need or desire.
There’s a new company in town called Go Wild Seafood. The owner had a vision of bringing in fresh fish and shellfish to sell to Wichita’s higher-end restaurants. It was marginally profitable. So he decided to open a retail business. Then he decided to start serving lunch. Then opened a bar. Each of these venue-expansions required more work. Each generated a small revenue stream. In combination they’re generating a viable small business.
At Sedgwick County Park on the west side, and outside Green Acres health-food store on the east side, local farmers sell wholesome, tasty produce to the public. S & S meats has been selling free-range hormone- and antibiotic-free poultry raised locally.
This is enabling some local farmers to wean themselves, at least partially, off federal-subsidies growing cheap-commodity-grain, most of it livestock feed, and produce nutritious human food. These farmers are marketers.
These and other “outside the box thinking” marketers are changing Wichita. They are developing niches outside the giant agribusiness and multinational food-industry sector.
Now, you might say, “That’s not education.” First, how about considering a different kind of education that promotes self-initiative, creativity, and effective analysis? Second, these small producers and sellers are definitely GETTING AN EDUCATION, as they experiment, and figure out what works and what doesn’t. Their children, watching their parents develop new ideas, are getting an education from these new enterprises.
We are suffering a breakdown in the social contract. Factory-design public education, which was instigated by industrialists, carried a quid-pro-quo: after children finished schooling, the industrialists would provide them jobs. Now the industrialists are going offshore. School completion no longer leads to guranteed lifelong employment. This gives us very good reason to begin figuring out how to make education work for young people’s benefit.
Consider a new society in which adults will, on average, change jobs 5-7 times, and even career fields one or more times. This will require very different skills and temperament sets than traditional schools, public and private, instill. I’m not saying it is good or bad that this new economy will precipitate instability that requires people to exercise nimbleness. It’s just different from what we have previously known, and we either prepare kids for it, or we don’t.
Apophis is firmly fixated on a notion that I am anti-public education. I am not. Suppose that we envisioned a system in which per-pupil expenditures were $25,000. I’d support this, if the money were used to create new public education paradigms. Why? For one thing, you could prepare 90+% of young people for good jobs, or college, in 10 years rather than 13.
Now take the total cost: $250,000 per average student. That’s an investment. People live longer. They’re going to have to work longer. So take an average working life of 50 years, and the initial educational investment for that working life is $5000 per year. That’s actually inexpensive.
Now, returning to $25,000/year, consider average class sizes of 12 students. Consider giving teachers less classroom time, and more time to assign and grade longer written assignments, and “blue book” type tests, in which students must organize and cogently express ideas.
Consider a new education paradigm in which highly effective teachers are paid more than principals. Consider individual schools having teacher-parent-student boards that give administrators marching orders.
Is these ideas radical? Yes. Are they too radical? I don’t think so. Because our economy is radically changing. So education thinking must also be radical. You have to invest, and reinvent public education, to produce a high-value workforce. This is really the promise of human progress.
Yes, JR, it’s the job of government to protect us from violence, harm, and coercion. How does that mission conflict with market provision of things rather than government supply?
By the way, the schools that were segregated prior to the Brown case, and the schools that forcefully resisted court-ordered integration: where they public schools, creations of government?
“Apophis is firmly fixated on a notion that I am anti-public education. I am not.” I wouldn’t actually use the word “fixated”, but yes heartlander, you are firmly anti-public education. Education is not marketable commodity, contrary to what you might believe.
Apophis equates industrial-design public education with public education. They’re fungible. Public education was created, de novo, as an experiment. It was successful, just as horse-drawn public-passenger trolleys, invented about the same time, and steel-clad coal-driven howitzer-armed battleships were successful. But they’ve been superceded.
It’s time to reinvent public education.
One of the problems with public education is that it was designed to turn most kids into underachievers, because the instigators, WASPS, didn’t want dirty immigrants aspiring to attend college, then law and medical school, then compete with WASP children in the higher-echelon labor market.
It’s still prejudiced in this direction. Jaime Escalante at Garfield High was a real radical. He took general math kids and turned them into calculus aces. Impoverished Latinon students who were “supposed” to work at K-Mart, fix cars and mow lawns after graduation went to Berkeley, UCLA, Cornell and MIT. The math chairwoman was totally discomfited. She understood these students’ “proper place” in society. Mr. Escalante believed they had a right, in America, to rise as high as their talents and work ethic drove them.
Dunbar High in Washington, D.C., nearly all black, used to run circles around any school in Kansas, in academics and the arts. It followed W.E.B. DuBois’s concept of “The Top Ten Percent”. DuBois went to Harvard. He had to battle people like Booker T. Washington, who felt putting black kids up against white kids in academic striving was too risky, in that it would precipitate white resentment and backlash. Washington, who favored non-white-threatening vocational training–even for the smartest and most artistically talented black kids–won, because he said what whites wanted for blacks. Dunbar was ultimately converted to a whites-comfortable crappy school for blacks.
We see awful talent destruction in public education. Bush was given talking points by former Secretary of Education Rod Paige. “The Tyranny of Low Expectations” was Paige’s, not Bush’s phrase.
An article in today’s Washington Post points out night-and-day discrepancies in state-exam putative “proficiency” levels and NAEP scores. Examples given are Maryland, where 82 percent of state-exam fourth graders are reported as having reading proficiency, and Virginia, where 86% proficiency on state-exams is reported. But on the NAEP exam, the numbers are 32% and 37%.
I knew a long time ago that the scam proposal inserted into NCLB to allow state testing was going to be manipulated. With multiple-choice tests, all you have to do is give one potentially correct-appearing answer choice and three totally ludicrous choices. As opposed to one correct answer choice and one or more “almost correct” choices. The latter require much higher reading-interpretation and reasoning skills.
We have no idea how Kansas students do, from direct concurrent evaluations. What we do know is that Kansas’s lowest reported six-year graduation rate is WSU’s 36%, and its highest is Washburn U’s 58%. Of the 34 states admitted to the Union before the end of the Civil War, only Kansas fails to have even one university with a 60% or higher six-year graduation rate. Even Kennedy-Johnson era white Appalachian poverty poster-child states West Virginia and Kentucky have one and two, respectively.
Kansas isn’t geared for tertiary education. Its K-12 system isn’t designed to generate an 80% + six-year graduation rate at flagship KU, as one sees at U Wisconsin-Madison, U Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, and U Michigan.
I don’t know where Apophis earned his degree. All of Kansas’s originally-normal-school regional state universities have six-year grad rates under 50%, and these aren’t in urban cities like WSU that support extended-degree-earning while working full-time white-collar jobs. Essentially, more than half these regional public universities’ students are dropping out.
So, these data inform us that Apophis is anti-public-university education. Because he’s for a public K-12 system that causes Kansas’s public university students TO FAIL, TO GIVE UP THEIR DREAMS. Or at very least, defer them for extremely long periods, because they aren’t prepared to tackle university coursework.
BTW, Emporia State’s website’s FAQ page for applicants says that it is “proud to be enrolling home-schooled students.” That must be like a knife-dagger to Apophis’s heart, given that ESU was Kansas’s very first public-teacher-training school. ESU faces pressures. Like trying to raise its six-year graduation rate. Home-schooled students are HELPING ESU achieve this goal. Kansas public schools are UNDERMINING this goal.
I have reported USD 259 Superintendent Winston Brooks’ fatuous opinion that IB courses were academically more rigorous than AP courses. But the one I really like, published as an Eagle Op-Ed in May 2003, was that Kansas’s ACT average was “among the top ten states.” I checked ACT.org data for the past decade. Mr. Brooks apparently didn’t. It’s nice to report a “readers, feel good about Kansas schools,” but it’s not helpful to report FALSE INFORMATION.
Very importantly, he was trying to glom Wichita into the general state average. But USD 259 has a lower-than-Kansas average ACT. Even if Kansas were a top-10 performer, USD 259 reduces the state average.
He also mentioned Kansas having a top-four-state SAT average. That’s nice, given that only the best-performing public students, and a large percentage of private-schools’ students take the SAT. It is a factually-true, but meaningless datum. Let’s have all 4-year-college hopeful public school 11th and 12th graders take the SAT. Oops, Kansas would be an average-national state.
But of course, it helps in the ACT and SAT averages to have miniscule percentages of Latino and African-American students taking these tests.
Apophis says he is for public education. He’s either lying or deluding himself. Taxpayer-paid-for education IS NOT PUBLIC. An institution that both runs on taxpayer dollars, AND provides detailed information on its students’ performance IS PUBLIC, in the true sense of the word. USD 259 administrators DO NOT WANT TO PUBLICLY REPORT things like district-wide ACT averages, and racially-disaggregated ACT averages. Because they don’t want PUBLIC COMMENT, CRITICISM AND PRESSURE TO IMPROVE these scores.
I have always totally been in favor of public education. This means a system that REPORTS TO THE PUBLIC IN FULL, THE DATA THAT DEMONSTRATE its SUCCESSES AND FAILURES. If Apophis is truly an advocate of PUBLIC EDUCATION, including EDUCATING THE PUBLIC ADULTS WHO PAY FOR IT, then he’ll side with me, and admit we have common ground to work from.
If, on the other hand, he were to personally judge, “These rubes don’t need to examine the education-outcome data,” then he would be ANTI-PUBLIC EDUCATION. He would be, in this circumstance, in favor of private, secretive PRIVATE endeavors, using PUBLIC DOLLARS. The latter is NOT PUBLIC EDUCATION.
To any reader who does not follow my argument, let me restate it. Public dollars support USD 259. A large percentage of students, of diverse backgrounds take the ACT. So it is an important test, otherwise the students wouldn’t be taking it.
I want to know what percentage of late-11th grade and early 12th grade USD students, disaggregated into Euro-American, African-American, Latino-American, and Asian-American students TAKE the ACT, and what their component subject and composite 95th-percentile, 90th-percentile, 75th percentile, 50th-percentile, 25th-percentile, 10th-percentile, and 5th-percentile scores are. I’d like to see how these compare to other Kansas district disaggregated score breakdowns, and the nation as a whole.
Is this radical? No, it is called rigorous education-outcome analysis. It is also known as reason-based examination. If that’s considered “radical” for Kansas, then Kansas has a very serious problem: some people want to spend YOUR MONEY, but NOT provide you with sound information about WHAT THAT MONEY DOES. Information that could generate public pressure for CHANGE.
Let me put it another way, just because some public education leaders want your money, but don’t want to be held accountable to public information-examination and public input in response to this examination, doesn’t mean these public education leaders are doing a good job. It just means they want to do their own thing, behind closed doors, and convice you to foot the bill.
The Post article can be accessed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/02/AR2006090201041.html
The education system never taught kids how to plow a field with a mule. This is an example of Apophis’s main debating technique: the nonsequitur.
If you want your kids as young adults to make $8-10/hour and live in their childhood bedrooms until they are 30, and maybe even get married and raise their kids in your their parents’ house, because they can’t afford to live independently, which may have some positive consequences, in resurrecting under-one-roof-living extended family habitation, but you have to think about whether this is what you want or not, then if you decide yes, vote for Apophis. Because, he’s for economic reversal to ancient standards.
I fear heart, that you are distanced by your wealth earned in ages past from reality.
You are all about hope and exploration. But that is not what this nation is about anymore. I do wish it were otherwise.
This nation is now about the bottom line.
Do YOU trust the education of our kids to a bottom line?
heartlander………………….. no “knife in the heart”, I am not a graduate of Emporia State University. It’s a good institution but I have never even attended a class or workshop there. As for your other tripe: more heartlander BS, nothing more. Public Education will continue on, constantly reforming itself……..despite you and your anti-public education cohorts.
Apophis, where did I say you attended ESU? What I said was that Kansas’s very first teachers college now welcomes home-schooled students. I was making the point that it must gall you to no end that ESU, as well as every other Kansas public university with a school of education, admits home-schooled students, and overall, is pleased to have them, because most of these students are self-organized, studious, and socially-active contributors to these public universities.
It was hard for ESU, like its younger peers, to acknowledge the usefulness of home education, because this institution was created and still operated in order to make public schools possible. In essence, home-schooled students’ parents rejected the schools that ESU and peers created, but now these universities want these students.
In truth, ALL Kansas public colleges and universities admit home-schooled students. As do all top-nationally-ranked colleges and universities. Something has CHANGED here. When my cousin’s son applied to Berkeley, the institution rejected home-education. That was a decade ago. But Stanford accepted them. So Berkeley followed suit, and with it, the entire University of California system. Once the nation’s foremost public university accepted it, other states’ flagship universities opened themselves to home-schooling.
They have not turned back. My home-educated youngest son was rejected by Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and Duke, but nevertheless got into one Ivy League school, as well as our region’s top university, Washington U in St. Louis. He was accepted by the University of Colorado and the University of Washington, two outstanding public research universities. Had he chosen either public university, I would have strongly supported his choice.
Here is the deal: public K-12 schools are increasingly failing to prepare kids for college, which represents an incongruity, because increasing numbers of young people MUST BECOME COLLEGE-EDUCATED in order to prosper in the 21st century economy. This is why evergrowing numbers of families are opting out for private schooling and home-schooling. If public schools were operated soundly, this exodus would not be occurring.
Here are some opinions of a “radical”.
1. Public childhood education is not going to be destroyed. It will have to be fundamentally changed, to become accountable to its fundors, parents and students, and prepare the last for a very different economy from that which public childhood education was designed to serve. Apophis–you aren’t going to lose your job.
2. Vouchers are good. The GI Bill was enacted to give the sons and daughters of uneducated workers the opportunity to do things their parents couldn’t have dreamed of. Most WWII vets took their vouchers to public universities. Some chose private institutions. My father, a WWII vet, chose a public university. The follow-up Pell Grant program saw the same public-university-predominant choice being made. For example, this is what I did, and I don’t regret my decision in the slightest.
3. Teachers union leaders are mostly right-wingers, even if they doesn’t understand this. They work in a right-wing-capitalist-designed system. Instead of working to fundamentally reinvent this systm to serve children’s and most Americans’ future needs, the union leaders try to get a larger piece of the right-wing-enterprise pie for themselves, like enjoying those nice conferences and staying in expensive hotels built by Republican corporations.
In essence, what I mean is, Karl Marx envisioned communist revolution leading to control of resources being taken by the proletariat, i.e. the majority of people. Instead, Communism morphed one ancient plutocracy into another. The “Union of Soviet Socialist REPUBLICS”, the “People’s REPUBLIC of China, Cuba, (North) Korea”. Apparently, they were designed to be CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN strongholds. New faces in charge, same ol’ same ol’ few people control the masses regimens, and live high on the hog.
Just because somebody attaches a “Democratic Party” label to himself or herself doesn’t mean he or she is a small-d democrat. NAFTA was championed by Bill Clinton. When the Clintons decided to move to New York to advance Hillary’s senatorial ambitions, did they move to the Bronx? No, they chose tony Westchester, to live among Republican executives in a million-dollar mansion. How much money did Bill make on his book, “My Life?” How many times has he attended the posh Davos, Switzerland economic conference hobnobbing with rich people?
I consider REAL democrats to be people like former Colorado governor and DNC Chairman Roy Romer, who decided to take on the herculean task of superintending the Los Angeles Unified School District. (He’s cashing in his chips: the LA United Teachers Association wore him down.) Jimmy Carter, working to help the poor and bring democracy to the Third World. Former Oklahoma governor and U.S. Senator David Boren, who gave up tens of millions in Beltway lobbyist opportunities to preside over the University of Oklahoma. My spouse who has saved the lives of thousands of children, many of them from working-class and impoverished homes. Both of us giving all patients, no matter what their backgrounds, the same levels of care we would want our own family members to receive.
A lot of public educators think it is okay to give public school students a second-class education. Their parents aren’t paying for the education, as the parents of private-school children are. So they don’t “deserve” the same level of education. That’s as right-wing as you can get, because the outcome is the vast majority of the public-school group doesn’t earn 4-year degrees, while the vast majority of the private-school group DOES.
One of the fascinating things about Wichita private schools is the teachers. Where did they earn their degrees? The vast majority in public schools of education.
Let us notice: they forego higher salaries and benefits to work in the private sector.
Would Apophis call them “traitors”? Are they “traitors” because they choose to work in schools that are accountable to parents, for whom administration-teacher-parent-student COLLABORATION wasn’t just discovered yesterday, but has been in operation for DECADES? Schools that CAN expel students, but do their utmost, in the vast majority of cases successfully, to get wayward students on track, and RETAIN them? Public schools don’t do this. They just shunt these students to crappy classes, typically staffed by fresh-hired teachers, because seniority-privileged teachers get to choose more pleasant assignments. (Does this make young teachers who respond to this”hazing” by going to private schools “traitors”?)
Are the public-educated, private-school teachers “traitors” because they choose schools that invented food-drives for the poor decades before the public schools decided to get involved? Schools in which organized after-school activities involve most students, not just some students?
Are these teachers “traitors” because their students get good jobs as adults and pay above-average property tax rates that make government services possible, from federal Social Security to local Social Services?
You all decide. It’s not Apophis’s or my place to be the “decider”. I present ideas. He presents ideas. We’re in opposition. I don’t mind, because when he presents his ideas, I can marshall facts to puncture his ideology-inflated hot-air balloons. He refuses to answer questions. Let’s see, abhors educationally-germane facts, doesn’t want to engage in question-and-answer discourse.
If some of you want this kind of teacher for your kids, I’d say you have the right to make this choice. But you don’t have the right to dictate this choice for OTHER PEOPLE’S children. Not if you truly possess a democratic spirit.
I don’t care heartlander. just babble on and on and on………..
I think that Apophis must care what we say; otherwise he/she wouldn’t read and respond.
The sad truth is that Apophis is like many members of the government school bureaucracy. They are convinced that only they know what others’ children need, and that only they can provide it.
They would be more believable if they would give up their state-protected monopoly on the public financing and provision of schools.
How about it, Apophis? Must you rely on the power of the state to provide you with a place to work and children to indoctrinate year after year?
JR, on the sea-kayaking trip, it wasn’t for wealthy people. One kayaker was a Bureau of Land Management staff biologist. Another was her boyfriend, an Oregon teachers union representative (who was fantastic playing folk guitar, and a thoughtful person). There was a retired German couple who camped out during almost all of their U.S. stay. The husband had been the art director for Germany’s auto club (equivalent to Triple A), his wife a mid-level manager for Avery office products’ German sales branch. Another was a student, whose affluence level I never determined. So at least 80% of our co-kayakers were middle class, by conventional measures, and it may have been 100%.
The cost was $650 / person for 5 days. The meals were basic, comprised mainly of bulk-bin rice and beans, some veggies and fruit, Maxwell-house-grade coffee, and hot cereal for breakfast.
Now, consider a $3500/ person 5-day salmon lodge stay in BC or Alaska. Fly-in via private seaplane. Gourmet meals. One professional guide/fishing instructor for every two guests. $700/person/day. Add airfare to Vancouver, an overnight or two in a hotel, and meals, and the cost is over $800 / person / day. That’s an affluent person’s vacation. Or a save up for a once-in-a-lifetime middle-class fisherman’s dream vacation, and fishing fanatics do this.
Spending $130/person/day, plus travel costs, is a middle-class vacation.
But you can spend even less, and have a lot of fun. This summer we went canoeing on the Buffalo River in Arkansas. Rental for two: $50. They have comfortable cabinettes renting for $60, or you can do a two-day canoe rental for $80 and take your own camping gear for your overnight stop. It’s possible to do a family getaway weekend for four, taking your own food and beverages, and spend less than $200. Of course, you can instead spend more money staying in Branson, seeing their live music and comedy shows, and taking thrill rides at Silver Dollar City. Branson is a middle-class- family destination-vacation center.
I took two sons camping in Colorado last year. Gas was the major expense. Even with one hotel night and a semi-upscale dinner in Durango, we spent less than $400 for a three-person 5-day trip. We did some great fishing, drove in the high country and backpacked. Except for one couple that was on a private-guided horseback trip–they passed us slower foot-walkers–we really didn’t see any other signs of affluent tourism. We did see a lot of subcompact cars and small SUVs with bike racks, mostly driven by young adults. We shore-fished on a public lake with families who seemed to me to be pretty regular folk. We used worms to catch DFW-stocked 12 inch trout, as they did. This was no tony $300/day Rocky Mountain private-fishing-lodge experience.
You can do fun Ozark and Rocky Mountain family vacations on a mid-middle-class budget. At least that’s my impression from the people we’ve met.
I know it’s harder to get to outdoor tourist places from here than in three of our neighboring states. OKCitians and Tulsans can get to the beautiful Ozarks and pinewoods Ouachitas in a 3 hour drive. KCitians St. Louisians can get to the Ozarks in 2 hours. Denverites can be in the heart of the Rocky Mountains in less than 2 hours.
A 6-hour drive southeast or a 12 hour drive west is harder, but it is nevertheless doable for tens of thousands of middle-class Wichita families. You may have to make trade-offs like seeing fewer movies, renting fewer DVDs, and forgoing some dining out. Maybe drop cable TV for awhile. If you decide you’d rather be plugged into the Hollywood/New York mediastream than experience some of America’s most beautiful outdoor spots, which aren’t very far away from here, that’s a choice, and it is everybody’s right to make one or the other.
SD has alluded to not just the government-jobs-provision of public schools, but children’s indoctrination.
The latter is a key issue. Except for children whose parents can afford private schooling, all other children are FORCED to attend public schools. Suppose they weren’t. Suppose the State said, “Keep your kids off the streets, and out of trouble, and if you do this, their upbringing isn’t the State’s business.”
What would happen then? If school attendance were elective, like college attendance, then public schools that wanted to ATTRACT STUDENTS would invent ATTRACTIONS. I don’t mean this frivolously. Educators would figure out how to make school INTERESTING for students. They might develop morning-long music, art, agriculture, horticulture, mechanics, computer-science, humanities, math and science courses. Courses that instilled creativity, in-depth understanding, and a passion for learning.
The idea of coerced education is just wrong. The first compulsory-attendance scheme was devised by Massachusetts’ theocracy in the 1700’s. It required 3 hours of attendance 6 months per year for 4 years. Most parents just ignored the law and kept their children at home.
It doesn’t matter whether a church or a church-influenced goverment (pub ed from 1870 to 1962), or a secular government imposes forced indoctrination, particularly for 7 hours a day for 9-10 years ( some 30% of students drop out after 8th-9th grade, and are allowed to disappear), the basic construct is misguided. It rests on a theory of “We are the authorities. We have the power to dictate the terms of your children’s development, except for children whose parents have the financial means to escape our influence.”
I attended two Los Angeles Unified School District schools during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. They were very good schools. Most of my classmates were white.
Today, close to 90% of LAUSD students are nonwhite, even though one-third of district-residing families are white. In essence two out of three white families living within this district’s boundaries send their kids to private schools.
Why are only one-third of LA-district-residing families white today? Because millions of white-flight families moved outside the district long ago, to escape busing and forced “integration”.
This is highly unfortunate for several reasons.
Crucially, court-ordered busing made parents feel that their neighborhood public schools were no longer “theirs”. The schools were put under federal government control–by dictatorial federal government fiat.
Vast sums of money previously used for instruction instead went for diesel fuel and bus-fleet operations.
Parents could have said, “Okay, we’ll eat this new federally-imposed cost, and restore classroom-funding for our neighborhood school.” But their kids were being sent all over the city. So, it would have taken a citywide classroom-funding-restoration drive, which never materialized to maintain prior education quality. Instead, white-flight beyond the busing zone began.
The reduction of educated-parents’ involvement in local public schools, really brought to the fore the educators’ conceit of “We’re the experts in education.” Previously, educators had to deal with parents who were as well educated, or close to it, or more so than the educators themselves. But with white flight, the remaining student body’s parentage was largely uneducated. Schools lost the vitally important guidance of educated non-school-employed citizens.
Public schools were never, ever designed to be self-guiding. In the old days, community leaders and spouses held all BOE seats. BOE membership was not a “starter internship” for people who aspired to rise to higher government office, e.g. state representative. BOE membership was a community volunteer service provided by Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, and country-club-member businessmen, professionals and their wives.
When the federal courts intervened to solve the segregation problem, and sent kids willy-nilly all over the place (as far as 25 miles from kids’ homes in LA’s case), BOE’s leadership power was demolished.
In the vacuum, educators themselves tried to exercise leadership, but failed.
In essence, superintendents were previously analogous to corporate CEO’s operating under Board of Directors’ orders. Principals were analogous to individual “factory” (building) managers. When the courts intervened, they disempowered the Boards of Education, and issued their own marching orders from the bench.
But the judges didn’t have time to provide the close management that BOE’s had exercised. So, the education administrators had some directives from “on high”, but were otherwise forced to make decisions without the sage counsel and directives of the old BOEs.
Moreover, BOEs eventually became controlled by odd mixtures of politico-wannabes, teachers union reps and community activists, in various proportions.
I am going to conclude with an argument that many of you may disagree with. I believe that neighborhood public schools represent community. They invite parental involvement, and instill a sense of neighbors’ “being in this together”.
When you have a diffuse, humongous district operating under a “magnet mandate”, that arbitrarily sends one ten year old to a school 2 miles from home, and her best friend across the street to another school 5 miles distant (or much farther in places like LA), you destroy community spirit.
This isn’t a white issue. Black parents want restoration of neighborhood schools. They rejected INFERIOR neighborhood schools that were underfunded relative to white-neighborhood schools, but never did they reject the idea of having their own well-funded schools. “Separate but Equal” was never rejected, because it was never tested in any court. The problem addressed by the courts was “Separate and UNEQUAL”.
If we return to neighborhood schools, and implement local governance, then central office white education administrators and BOE members should not presume that if blacks are given control of the money for their schools, they will waste it. Because they won’t. The African-American community here has some very wise leaders. They aren’t going to waste the opportunity to help their kids.
So let’s downsize central administration, restore neighborhood schools, and hand their governance to the people who live in the neighborhood. We taxpayers will get a lot more bang for our buck, and our community’s children will thank us for our wisdom and kindness.
SD………I do NOT depend on the “government” to provide a job for me. Truth is, I worked in industry outside of education for a good number of years. I chose to again join the ranks of public educators because it was the right thing to do for myself and my future students.
Apophis, good on you, as the aussies say, for trying different things. So you have confidence in your versatility, and hopefully, you can impart this to your students.
But here is this looming question. Do you favor a return to neighborhood public schools, and putting them under local public control? If you say, “the people in some parts of our city cannot be trusted to exercise sound governance of the schools in their neighborhoods,” that’s elitist authoritarianism.
If you say, “It won’t be fair because some affluent white neighborhoods will create non-government funding schemes to boost their kids’ advancement.” But minority-predominant schools can get Title I funding, Gates Foundation grants, federal pilot program funding, special state allocations and other monies, plus volunteer class-teaching contributions by well-educated members of the community, to level the playing field.
Furthermore, if neighborhood-controlled schools motivate thousands of private-school parents to reevaluate things, and conclude, “We don’t need to send our kids to private schools anymore,” wouldn’t that be in accord with what YOU would like to see?
I believe that you think you have to work within the current paradigm, but if you have some real gumption and courage, you can consider and devote your efforts to CHANGING the paradigm.
This is just another of your un-workable ideas heartlander………it isn’t going to happen.
“How about it, Apophis? Must you rely on the power of the state to provide you with a place to work . . . year after year?”
SD, what a prick you are!
Why don’t you ask a policeman or a fireman or a soldier the same question?
What’s that you say?
I can’t understand you with half your teeth on the pavement . . .
CapnAmerica, You’re very smart and insightful. People respect what you have to say, most of the time, because what you say makes sense. You have a lot more going for you than resorting to ad hominems.
You weren’t posting a couple months ago, but here is what happened between Apophis and me.I made some arguments. Three weeks later, Apophis made the EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS. But he didn’t attribute them to me. What he did do was to re-state what I said as if they were his original, which was okay, but then call me “misinformed”. Which triggered me to lambaste him. My weakness, because I presumed he was using an underhanded debating method, and skewered him. Our discourse has not gone well from there. In terms of formal debate points, I’ve whipped his a**, but I haven’t reached him. I really made a bad mistake by attacking him, when I should have said, “You’ve reiterated my point from three weeks ago. Please don’t call me ‘misinformed’ when you repeat my statements. Otherwise, you are labeling yourself as misinformed, too. I don’t think you want to do this.”
Don’t let this happen to you. You have too many good ideas to get into pissing matches.
SD is trying to figure out some things. I think all of us WEBloggers are. We all have “baggage”. But we all have experiences that are important for ourselves and others to understand.
I made a mistake responding to Apophis’s first-post demeaning of me by demeaning him. A BAD mistake. I am sorry. So now, belatedly, I am trying to find out where we may have common ground to work up from. He rejects charter schools and vouchers. All right. How about neighborhood-control public schools that are equitably funded across the board? He hasn’t responded to that question.
If you are a public schoolteacher, think outside the Industrial Age box. Wichita public schools WASTE A LOT OF TALENT. So do its private schools. Science talent. Artistic talent. Literature talent. Mechanical talent. Let’s figure out how to cultivate human talent. Are you in support of this?
Capn, you left out the part about the indoctrination of children! I thought that was the best part, if I do say so myself.
By the way, the services that policemen, fireman, and soldiers provide can be distinguished from what the public schools provide.
The services the first three provide are public goods, I believe an economist would say.
The last is to some degree, but only a little bit.
I see that Apophis rejects neighborhood school control as an “idea that isn’t going to happen.” That’s really myopic. Apophis is proving himself to be anti-public education. “Public education” without the controlling oversight of the public is a sham. It’s an oxymoron. Using public money for secretive uses, and with secretive outcomes is NOT a PUBLIC enterprise because IT IS NOT ACCOUNTABLE TO THE TAX-PAYING PUBLIC. It’s a private enterprise that relies on compulsory public funding. If you say, “No it’s a public enterprise,” let us see the disaggregated ACT scores of your 4-year college hopefuls. Let’s see the income quartile distributions of your graduates five years after graduation. Let’s see the percentage of kids who finish 8th grade, and graduate from high school, here, and in other districts. Let us see the percentage of eighth graders who have college/university degrees ten or fewer years later. Let us see the racially-disaggregated income quartiles of USD 259 1996 eighth graders in 2006.
The data exist. Crunch the numbers.perform the data analyses and report them to the public who pays for public education. If you don’t do this, you are anti-public education: you want a private scheme paid for by public dollars.
heartlander……….. I fully believe that you could “crunch the numbers” to make the data say anything YOU want it to say. Did you happen to read the title of this particular thread? I do believe it is “Public schools stack up well”. What don’t you get about that statement?
FYI heartlander………….. you have NEVER whipped my ass nor I have knowingly “used” your talking points. You’re not important enough for me to go back into the archives to see what you may have posted in the past.
SD and Cap’n crunch………….blow it out your ass. I dion’t answer to you two either.
don’t
Apophis,Why is it you’re unable to recognize anything that is not pounded down your throat by the Kansas Public school system? Do you think it’s okay for our kids to be left behind the rest of the world when it comes to education? Do you think educating the kids of this state to conform to an industrial driven norm, which, in this country, doesn’t exist anymore, is a good thing?
Are you under some mistaken impression the United States is looked after by God and will always be numero uno in the world? ‘Cause it ain’t so, dude.
We are rapidly falling behind the rest of the world in training scientists and engineers, but are leading the world in lawyers graduated. Gee, guess which one is more important to this countries continued existance?
In my opinion, it is the Apophis’s, the Connie Morris’s and the rest of the establishment, which holds that old school is still current school, that is keeping us from changing the face of education.
The old adage holds true here, Apophis: Lead (You certainly are not capable of that), Follow (That you do very well: lap dog), or get out of the way (and that is something you should contemplate).
JM……………how dare you even put me in the same paragraph as Connie Morris. After all, I am one of the group who actively worked to slay her. She would shudder if you even mentioned my real name in her presence.
You are no different than the other anti-public education cabal. You just do not get it, public school students are just as successful as their counterparts in the non-public sector, including charters.
Specifically, I know that I am a far superior teacher than any of you give me credit for. I challenge my students daily and they are successful. I have MANY students who are practicing physicians, engineers and attorneys to name a few professions. Another thing you don’t want to understand is that me and my type are quickly moving into the key leadership positions in this district and around the state. We are not complacent to sit around and allow your anti-education cabal attempt to destroy a functioning system. In fact, I have guided many educators to this blog to at least observe the forces of evil who would destroy public education if you had your way. Most of these educators do not choose to blog but many do find your ignorance amusing. They also see that our enemy, you and your anti-public education cabal, is out there spewing garbage.
You will see in the coming weeks exactly what kind of political force the teachers in Wichita really are. Your rhetoric is just that. We are the experts in education, not you. You may be a “taxpayer”, but we answer not to you directly but the the local BOE. Deal with it. If you want change you will have to follow the democratic process and effect change in the voting booth.
This thread became tiresome after about the first half dozen posts.
Why does everybody think they’re an expert on education just because they’ve had the dubious distinction of completing 12 years of schooling?
Doctors don’t have to take this crap. Even policemen and firemen don’t have to take it. Look at SD . . . he respects THEM even though they consume their weight in doughnuts every three months.
You never hear the SD’s of the world saying that since they live in a gated community with a private security force, they shouldn’t have to pay taxes for police protection.
But that’s what they say about education.
BTW, Apophis, I’m totally on your side. You may not care or even want me on your side, but you still got it.
Keep up the good work, but I wouldn’t waste too much time arguing with these logically-challenged folks.
JMW, Apophis has popped his lid. We now know with certainty he wants to be a pseudo “public” servant who denigrates the children whom he is supposed to SERVE. With respect to “physicians, engineers, and attorneys” among his students, first let’s be accurate: taking one class, Apophis’s among three dozen does not credit Apophis for their success.
Call me wrong. Let Apohis name the students, and HAVE THEM SPEAK about ther former English teacher’s influence on their career paths. I can’t speak for lawyers, but I can tell you for a fact that engineers and the vast majority of physicians have virtually no regard for their former English teachers.
The fact is, unless a student comes back to visit a teacher, that teacher has no idea what became of the student. Engineers don’t go back to talk to their English teachers to say, thanks for encouraging me to study math and science. An occasional family doctor or pediatrician could conceivably return to thank an English teacher for inspiration.
I don’t want to accuse Apophis of overly active imagination, but it is hard to avoid.
Agreed, heartlander.
Apophis, I put you in the same catagory as every other individual who has no idea what it is to think for themselves, including Connie Morris. Your rhetoric is so off base as to make one think you’re talking about another subject entirely.
Not once have I made any statement regarding the elimination of public schools. Not once have I made any statement that even suggests eliminating public schools.
As an english teacher, it appears you have a serious problem reading and interpreting the written word. That does not bode well for your students.
What I have advocated time and time again is CHANGE in how and what public schools teach. From your prior posts, I have no doubt change is something you would be totally unfamiliar with.
My suggestion to you is to learn to read and properly interpret what you read, open your mind to new ideas—because that is what students’ minds want—and learn to quit whining everytime someone posts something you can’t or wont understand. Answers such as: “SD and Cap’n crunch………….blow it out your ass. I dion’t answer to you two either.”, “heartlander, Ian and JM Walker………….Kiss my ass”, really add nothing to a conversation and tend more to show the ignorance of the poster. Personally, I pity your students; they deserve better.
One of the interesting widely-reported facts about public education is the loss of nearly 50% of young teachers in their first five years from the profession. Some undoubtedly will return, but most probably won’t.
These are idealistic, energetic young people, who have just come out of universities where they have been exposed to fresh ideas. But they take teaching jobs where middle-aged fixtures run the show. In urban districts new teachers are assigned to sink-or-swim in schools and classes that their competent counterparts escaped from as a perk of seniority. The senior teachers in the “undesirable” schools are there because they’re not desired by the “desirable” schools. (There are dedicated senior teachers who stay because they have a personal mission to help at-risk students, but they are exceptions, not the norm.) This isn’t my ranting, it has been described by retired New York Teacher of the Year John Gatto, former Assistant Secretary of Education and NYU Education Professor Dianne Ravitch, master mathematics teacher Jaime Escalante, and many , many other highly credible sources. In fact the phenomenon has led some urban districts to offer good teachers additional pay to either stay in troubled urban schools, or move to them from “desirable” schools. The National Governors Association’s education task force has examined the matter.
In earlier societies, age was equated with wisdom. A person cannot become a U.S. President before age 35, for example. In times of major change, in which old rules and practices don’t suffice, younger people often become leaders. Consider the information revolution. The PC was invented by young people. Microsoft was started by three twentysomethings. Google was started by two twentysomethings. Amazon was founded by a 30 year old. Today’s Internet is primarily a product of young minds.
The Scientific and Industrial Revolutions were driven by young minds, such as Isaac Newton who developed calculus at age 21, and James Watt who began working on the steam engine at age 27. Nikola Tesla invented the alternating current induction motor at age 29, and essentially gave the world AC electricity, which was capable of long-distance transmission (DC wasn’t). He invented the modern x-ray tube at age 31 and wireless radio transmission at age 33. Paul Nipkow invented the first television at age 24. Philo Farnsworth began working on the modern television at age 19.
Alexander Graham Bell received his telephone patent at age 29.
Thomas Edison opened his invention shop in his mid-twenties, and invented the phonograph at age 29.
Orville and Wilbur Wright did far-reaching aeronautical research in their twenties, and Orville made his first flight at age 32.
Andrew Carnegie began building railroad sleeping cars that obviated the need for trains to stop overnight, vastly speeding up long-distance transportation, at age 24. He entered the steel business at age 27, and the oil business and became a millionaire at age 30, when “millionaire” was a rare accomplishment.
Albert Einstein discovered the photo-electric effect and devised the theory of special relativity in his early twenties. Quantum Mechanics was developed by scientists who were mostly in their twenties, such as Wolfgang Pauli (exclusion principle age 25), Werner Heisenberg (matrix mechanics age 24, the uncertainty principle 26), and P.A.M. Dirac (quantization rules age 24, authored “The Principles of Quantum Mechanics” at 27, became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge at 30).
Linus Pauling, America’s greatest chemist, began work that revolutionized our understanding of chemical bonding in his 20’s. Caltech made him a full professor at age 29.
In times of enormous, rapid change, the last thing you want to do in education is to put it under the control of seniority-fixated people. This is NOT the time to drive out young teachers by telling them, “This is the way we’ve always done things here; look, you don’t have any experience; we’ll teach you how things are done, you don’t teach us.”
I have given the preceding examples–and I could cite a book’s worth–because we live in a science-and-technology-driven society. Young people constitute the vast majority of our innovators. Young people DRIVE PROGRESS. They are willing to take risks. As we become older, most of us become more risk-averse. We think of security.
To put it into a nutshell, public schools are run by post-midlife adults. Their ideologies and objectives are the antithesis of youthful.
Why is this a problem? Because their students aren’t fortysomethings. They are YOUNG PEOPLE.It isn’t that oldsters have nothing to teach youngsters–I hope not as my head keeps getting grayer–but they cannot CONTROL young people. To try to do so is to ruin their minds and spirits.
Public education is a CONTROL ENTERPRISE. Apophis has spoken on this. He’s against public charter schools. He dismisses outright the idea of a return to neighborhood schools where kids can walk to school as we remember, and spontaneously play with their friends at school and carry it on to after-school play, as we did. Who didn’t spend recess and lunch hour with the same kids they played with after school? One might argue that distant-school attendance broadens kids’ horizons, but the truth is, it diminishes the strength of companionship bonds, which are at the core of the human psyche.
You can actually design “healthy schools” for kids. Schools that don’t need police officers. My public schools never had any. The private schools here don’t have any. We, as a society, have accepted a degradation not just in academic standards, but in young people’s social maturation. Public schools are degrading our community’s children.
Return to neighborhood schools, that families identify with, support as “their schools”, that motivate parents to keep their kids on track.
Why does Apophis oppose this? I suspect that he may harbor prejudices that he can’t acknowledge. For example, who doesn’t believe that upper-middle-class and middle-class neighborhood schools can be effectively governed by their residents to benefit their children? This is obviously true to all. So is the problem that poor-family neighborhoods’ parents are incapable of governing their own schools? If one argues this, what is the factual basis? The proposition has never been tested, so there are no facts, only pre-suppositions. I would call this prejudice. It doesn’t have to be that EVERYONE in a neighborhood has the ability to exercise local-leadership, you merely need a cadre of qualified leaders. I think you can find them if you look.
Does anybody remember the ITA experiment carried out in the late 1960’s?
This was the really wack-o concept that because the English alphabet doesn’t correspond one-to-one with the sound of a word, we should use a 45 character special alphabet that does.
Special books were printed in the new alphabet (based on the International Phonetic Alphabet). Children from coast-to-coast were taught with the new books.
It was a massive and expensive failure. Children didn’t learn to read any more easily with the new alphabet. On the contrary, it caused severe problems when switching to the standard English alphabet, as any linguist could have explained.
The standard alphabet reflects MORPHEMIC information (shape of the word) at the expense of PHONENEMIC information (sound of the word). Because it does, it is actually easier to read the standard alphabet that a special phonetic one.
Anyway, I wonder how many kids never really learned to read very well because of this wrong-headed educational “innovation.”
Hrtlndr and JM, you can experiment on your own kids all you want.
As for me and mine, we’re sticking to what has been proven to work.
CapnAmerica, you SHOULD stick with what you believe has been proven to work for YOU AND YOURS. We can have not just a centrally-designed system, but multiple locally-designed systems, and you and your kids can find/create a niche. If you’re a teacher, you should be able to attract like-minded parents to your school, if they agree with your ideas, class content and student-accomplishment standards.
Home schooling got two of my kids here into the Ivy League. Is this to say it was perfect? Not even close. It was an experiment, and a work in progress until time ran out. It WAS A LOT OF FUN, and my kids learned that LEARNING WAS FUN. When they attended high-school-student programs at the University of Chicago and Harvard, they had a blast. One of them was asked by a 28-year-old African American reentry student if he could tutor her in calculus. He asked me for permission, and I said, “If it doesn’t interfere with your own studies, GO FOR IT.” And she stuck with him for 8 weeks, paying him out of her own pocket, so he was a decent teacher. (The free market at work!) He got two rec letters from professors whose evaluations carried a lot more authority than Kansas Homeschooling Dad’s. My kids had to earn A’s to get great rec letters. (These programs, and others like them at Johns Hopkins, Duke and Northwestern offer scholarships, all the way up to full-ride, to deserving students, so you don’t have to have a lot of money to send your kids to them.)
I would have LOVED it if I could have called Andover High and said, “I’m home schooling. We need some Spanish, chemistry, biology and physics. I’m not interested in doing the state home-school curriculum. We just need a few courses.” But that was impossible. Never mind that I had child doing calculus at age 14, reading at age 16 more than 10,000 pages of American history books written by university scholars for university students, professors and well-educated history buffs, picking up and reading several Great Books on his own initiative at age 17-18, e.g. Aristotle, Plato, Heroditus, Cervantes, John Locke, et al. Not to mention exploring surrealism by painting ideas from his mind. (When he took his first formal art class, his instructor invited him to spend the summer in Chatauqua with her.)
We found that time was the fundamental important quantity. I expected 4 hours of morning study when my kids were children to young adolescents. Then we were free to explore other things, ranging from growing tomatoes to building radio-controlled sailboats and racing them.
In school, they were “ordinary”. In fact my calculus-teaching teenager, who scored a perfect 800 on the SAT Math Level II exam, got a “C” in 4th grade math, which was the lowest grade the teacher gave. CapnAmerica, I am sure you will agree that something was amiss in his “math” instruction, no? Frankly, I evaluated his mathematics skills, and they were awful. But I had faith in my child. I believed that he needed a different kind of teaching, and I gave it to him. That’s why my son, who if he had been in class with one of your children in 4th grade, would have been deemed to have less mathematical ability than yours, but today he can run circles around yours in mathematics. That’s because your schools don’t have a clue how to teach mathematics. Wichita’s top students are learning it at home, and schools are falsely taking credit. MATHCOUNTS is a nationwide competition, most of whose participants, and whose top participants are public schools. But in Wichita, The Independent School and Collegiate are the only top-Kansas-20 schools. Your public schools are ruining mathematics talent.
How do I know? MATHCOUNTS results. ACT results. Personal examinations of glossy picture-laden magazine-format “math” textbooks. Local teachers denigrating hotmath.com, whose only “sin” is presenting to students full solutions to odd-numbered textbook exercises, just like EVERY college mathematics textbook offers (Students Solution Manuals). The textbook publishers support hotmath. But Wichita-area math teachers don’t. Who knows more mathematics? Does Apophis object to Cliff’s Notes? Or looked at another way, does he advise students analyzing literature to go to the WSU library and read experts’ analyses?
My kids acquired the habits of self-initiation and self-discipline at home. They chose the universities they applied to. Got everything in well before deadlines. In college, they readily adapted to a 2-hours-study for every hour of lecture regimen.
The idea of giving kids six 50-minute period classes is a Bozo proposition. You need to train kids to focus for prolonged periods. It’s akin to long-distance running and swimming training. It doesn’t matter if they choose arts, mechanical vocations, or academic subjects. Developing mastery skills is the key. Wichita school leaders don’t understand this. Coaches do, which is why sports-talented kids spend 2-3 hours a day practicing.
CapnAmerica, naybe your kid got into the Ivy League on a baseball scholarship. Mine got in on academic skills.
CapnAmerica, you can experiment on YOUR OWN KIDS, as much as you want to. Busing kids to magnet schools is a social experiment. Teaching kids watered-down versions of traditional subjects is an experiment.
If you’re a teacher who has used “insider connections” to get your kids into classes whose teachers have “good reputations”, while sitting back to allow OTHER PARENTS’ KIDS to be placed wherever the Wheel of Fortune dictates, then you’re a fraud perpetrator. If you haven’t done this, then you’re not. So have you pulled strings to get your own children placed with good teachers, or not?
I can empathize with heartlander’s opinion. I recieved a public school education and thought I was ready for college. But I had a hard time in my calc1 class because I didn’t really know the basic algebra manipulations. But I worked hard and earned straight A’s in a physics majors schedule the first year, including a 103% in calc 2 (currently have 101% in calc 3 but still taking that class). What I’m getting at is that public schools didn’t fail me, they just didn’t teach in the best way for me. But there are teaching 30 kids who all learn differently. Teachers are using the best techniques that appeal to the majority of students.
Thats great that heartlander could home-school his kids, but you must understand that some families- most families need two incomes to pay the bills, or atleast don’t have the knowledge to school their own children.
According to this year’s US News and World Report ranking, here are the top 11 ranked doctoral research universities:
Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Caltech, MIT, U Penn, Duke, Dartmouth, Columbia, Chicago.
All of these are private universities that have majority enrollments of out-of-state students. All provide sufficient financial aid, chiefly scholarships, to ensure that all of their admitted students can graduate, regardless of financial condition. In aggregate, 62% of their students are graduates of PUBLIC high schools.
They ENROLLED 14,960 freshmen this year. Wichita has about .12% of the nation’s high school graduates. This means, that all things being equal, Wichita should have sent 15 students to these universities. Wichita public schools should have sent at least 9 students to these universities.
I’d like to know how many were actually sent. NOT ADMITTED, but ENROLLED.
And I don’t mean substituting “just as good” university enrollments, like Wash U St. Louis, Northwestern, Brown, Hopkins, Rice, Notre Dame, et al. because these fine universities have their own enrollment numbers. In other words, looking at 11th-20th-ranked-university admissions, USD 259 should have an ADDITIONAL 10-11 admissions, or 19-20 top-twenty-ranked- university ENROLLMENTS altogether.
There are single working moms using online courses to do home education. I’m not saying this should be tried by a lot of single parents, but it may work in some cases.
But my primary argument is: return to neighborhood schools. Strengthen neighbors’ bonds. Don’t expect some distant “experts” to do what is best for YOUR children. Superintendent Winston Brooks used parochial elementary schools for his kids. How many of you are aware that he has only TAUGHT IN PRIVATE SCHOOLS? But he got an administrative parochial education position, and made a transfer to the public school sector as an adminitrator.
At any rate, he then chose public high schools for his kids, or at least his daughter. What are the odds that this administrator didn’t use the power of his office, and his insider knowledge to ensure his children’s (or daughter’s) placement with the best teachers in USD 259? If you had this power and knowledge, and your child’s education was at stake, would you use it? I would; that is if I couldn’t get rid of poor teachers I would take steps to keep my own children out of their classes. And I know of people who have done this, in other communities. It’s a natural human impulse. It is much harder to develop high-quality-education across the board. But if we don’t then children are being abused, i.e. ones whose parents can’t pull strings on their behalf.
CapnAmerica………I do appreciate if you are on my side of the public education issue. My apologies if you were the recipient of a harsh remark. heartlander and his cohorts are just so anti-public education and there a re times all can say to them is “kiss my ass”, they deserve no better.
I also do not understand where this idea that I teach English is coming from. I actually teach Science and Mathematics as my main topics.
heartlander……….. really, not too many bloggers actually care about the pseudo-statistics you post here. AS always, one can twist data around to make it mean just about anything they want it to mean.
Here’s the bottom line: Public schools stack up well.
Here’s the bottom line: Public schools stack up well.
Posted by: Apophis | September 06, 2006 at 04:10 PM
Are you sure they didn’t leave out a comma? Could have been: Public schools stack up, well.
right angle …………… who are you to judge the effectiveness of public schools?
Apophis–no harm, no foul, and thanks for all you do.
Heartlander–what? you couldn’t teach your kids Spanish? Shoot, with your genius kids, I’m surprised you didn’t just teach yourselves Sanskrit.
My son went to Dartmouth, and he didn’t go on a “baseball scholarship.” I wish he had. It would have done him more good than calculus. He graduated from East High. I didn’t pull any strings to get him the best teachers–I wouldn’t have known who they were anyway.
His best friend, also an East High grad, recently got admitted to KU Med School after working at the NIH.
I guess the students who WANT to do well can still do well at a public school. It’s just a matter of “personal responsibility.”
BTW, how’d you manage to homeschool your kids and work a full-time job at the same time?
well said Capn ………….heartlander and his anti-public education cohorts just love to distort the entire education picture. The last of my 3 children graduates from East High at the end of this term. You are correct, much of a student’s post secondary success has to do with personal responsibility. You know, the old adage “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” is befitting. My parents raised 4 children who all put themselves through college on their own. That type of work ethic is seen little in today’s “give me, give me” world. Capn has hit the nail (actually one of many nails) on the head with this analysis.
Heh, thanks, A.P.
The “personal responsibility” remark was actually a little joke–right-wingers love to say that when people drown in New Orleans because George W. doesn’t give a damn or when people can’t get jobs because they were outsourced to China by Wal-Mart, the victims simply lack “personal responsibility.”
However, when kids don’t do as well as the right-wing think they should in public school?
Oh, well, then it’s entirely the fault of the school system!
I knew where you were going with the comment, but of course there was a ring of truth to it. Those of us in the trenches daily see some things the general public do not.
This has turned out to be somewhat interesting. I say somewhat, because both CA and AP claim to be democrats, as far as I can tell. At least that is what their “right-wing” remarks lead me to believe. Calling heartlander right-wing is foolish. He is talking about change; not change inclusive of religion, as some of the voucher people want, but change in the fundementals of teaching.
He has put forth SUGGESTIONS as to different roads education can, and some think should, take in the near future. His ideas are sound, and should be discussed on their merit, not slammed by so-called democrats whose only comeback to said suggestions is with “”SD and Cap’n crunch………….blow it out your ass. I dion’t answer to you two either.”, “heartlander, Ian and JM Walker………….Kiss my ass”, I have to wonder about their party affiliation.
It’s the DEMOCRATS who used to be the party of ideas; the party of change; the party of caring about the children. I can read from both of your collective ramblings that doesn’t apply to you. Ideas? Why, we’ve done it that way for centuries! How dare you suggest anything else! Changing world? Hogwash! That job at the mill will still be there for my son when I retire! What next? Health insurance? Go out and get your own, you useless bum!
You both may claim to be democrats, but you both serve the same tired, non-changing, middle-aged masters, who in turn served their masters,et al, and that, dudes, is more a republican creed that anything remotely democrat.
I leave it to you two to carry on as before: Boy, that’s a redundant statement.
JM Walker ……………. your equated my lack of support for heartlander’s proposed “educational reforms” does not make me a Republican. I am far from that. I have no need to prove to you my Progressive, Democratic credentials. To me, that is just like providing any data to heartlander about my professional development that is funded by “his” tax dollars.
I think we can agree that not ALL change is good. Is it always good to totally scrap a societal system in lieu of a new idea? This is what heartlander and his cohorts propose, exactly like Lenin did in Russia around 1917. Was that a good move?
You make it sound so inviting, let’s allow “choice”, let’s do what’s “best” for our children. The latest shill out of heartlander’s mouth is let’s go back to “neighborhood” schools, let parent’s in the neighborhood exercise direct control over their schools. To sum it up, it’s asinine and isn’t going to happen.
Why don’t the lot of you anti-public education people do something constructive and support your public schools?
Apophis,Again I ask: Where have I even intimated I am against public schools? What I suggest is looking at changing the face of public teaching to better represent the needs of the children as they enter the workplace of tomorrow, which is rapidly becoming today. We currently are not doing that.
To equate heartlanders suggestions to Lenin is disengenuous and fails to look at what is useful in his suggestions. That, in my opinion, is how the republicans do business: if you can’t understand it, call it communism, fascism or whatever ‘ism they want to obsfucate the point.
“You make it sound so inviting, let’s allow “choice”, let’s do what’s “best” for our children.” Actually, it should be. The children are the ones who will run the businesses and country, and they deserve the best they can get from public education. I don’t think they are getting it now.
JMW, you are correct when you criticize the writings of Apophis. This is why I hope that parents of young children who are considering sending their children to public schools where they will be taught by the likes if Apophis, read these messages.
If anything will spur them to save their money so that they can afford private schools, Apophis will. He/she is a good advertisement for them!
SD and JMW and whomever is an anti-public education critic, you could only dream of having ME as one of your children’s teachers. Dog me all you want. I am good at what I do. Just because YOU think I may not be a good teacher doesn’t make it so.
As a teacher in the Wichita Public School district, I want to encourage parents and community members to take a closer look at a curriculum that is being implemented in the elementary schools. It has been decreed from on high (the 9th floor administration office) that all teachers will teach “Investigations”, a constructivist approach to mathematics. While there is nothing wrong with using some of the components of Investigations, if it is used as a core curriculum like we are being told to use it, math scores will continue to plummet in our district. The sad part of all this is every teacher is supposed to use this curriculum, even if their students scores on the state math assessment last year were above average. Ironically, Investigations only covers the very basic concepts of math, does not adhere to standards, and is hopelessly behind in what our students need-a return to the fundamental ideas of math.I won’t even mention the fact that we are also not supposed to teach spelling to our students. Ask any elementary school principal in our district about that new “rule” and see what they say.
“SD and JMW and whomever is an anti-public education critic,”
Hmmm . . . does he really know what he said here? That SD and I actually are anti-public education critics? Wow, maybe he is starting to understand, though I doubt it.
YOU might be getting it now JMW. Your true colors are showing.
Why, Apophis, you write as though being against public (government) schools was a bad thing!
For me, the less government involvement in education, the better. What’s so hard to understand about that?
Oh I get you “SD”
Less government in EVERYTHING.
Like wages and worker rights and the education of kids.
You are a corporate feudalist SD. You want kids taught to say yessir boss!
Aint happening.
Oh, I get you JR. More government is EVERYTHING!
Does capitalizing make it more truthful?
Because that’s the only relevance that I see you bringing to the debate. Mre government, more tyranny.
Tell me, what does government have to do with education? Is it possible to have one without the other? Or is the only way to have education is through govenrment?
Hey SD you little corporate rat.
My guess is you want education privatized to those that can afford it.
Don’t squeak at me about “tyranny” you are an adherent to the most tyrannical adminisrtation in history you fraud.
Public education is and important aspect of our society that shouldn’t be abandoned or ignored. You don’t have to look back very far in history to see a time when only the very wealthy could afford a true education, while the rest of society was cast into manual labor roles.
At the same time, our public schools must succeed at what they do. It is easy to attack the teachers and say that they are not doing there job, when the system is pretty screwed up. This over emphasis on standardized testing has led to teachers having to focus on these instead of real teaching. It has also lead to the neglect of other very important aspects of education such as the arts and music.
Common, a strong public education doesn’t mean a tyranical government.
Well said JB!
Hey SD? You have pretty much limted yourself to running comentary on this forum.
In the matter of education you are more vocal.
I wonder why that is.
Tell us about you SD. Got any kids in the school system do you? Or…..are you attempting to discredit and destroy it for your own personal ends?
Are you an employer SD? Is it your own interest to keep working folks stupid and happily answering to their employers?
I know when I smell a rat “SD”. And you stink.
I have read back over this post with some amount of frustration. There seems to be an anger toward teachers.
I am in my fifth year of college.I have taken around twenty hours a sememster and worked twenty to thirty hours a week that entire time. I am studying vigorously and intently while my wife and I live on very little so that I can be a teacher.
And guess what? Maybe when I do graduate I won’t have a job because people will no longer consider my area of study a priority like reading and math.
I’m not a member of any union, and I am working my ass of to try to graduate because I love to teach. I know I’m young and naive’ and optimistics, but there are alot of others like me.
We CANNOT abandon our public schools. Without them there would be people who would never have the chance to make it.These calls for vouchers are ridiculous. So you move everybody to a new school. Give it ten years, and that former private school will be in the same position that the public schools are now. That is not an answer, it is only postponing the problem.
I don’t have the all the answers, but I know the best choice is not just giving up.
Public education is just another form of statist social engineering and it stinks. I will never forget the state sending badge wearing thugs to club White mothers so they would submit to the forced busing of low iq negores into South Boston PUBLIC schools.
My wife can homeschool our kinder, in half the time, and far better than the government indoctrination centers. We teach our kinder to think and reason in a logical manner. That is something lacking in government school.
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
Don’t home-schooled kids perform better academically than public school kids? I remember a lot of statistics showing that.
JB, I couldn’t agree with you more, and if Apophis had any cognative skills whatsoever, he would have understood my posts for what they are: An attempt to generate serious discussion on raising the bar of public education, not the abandonment of same.
“SD and JMW and whomever is an anti-public education critic,”
Apophis, lets disect your little attempt at flaming:
“SD and JMW and whomever is an’ Should be: SD, JMW and whomever are . . .
“anti-public education critic,”
That implies that both SD and myself are critics of anti-public education, which would make us spokesmen FOR public education. Pretty much what I’ve been writing, but your brain appears unable to comprehend your own writing, so understanding mine must be like reading petroglyphs, huh?
And you TEACH? Stay in your own comfort zone: Mad magazine.
Boy, the insults are flying!
This is all the more reason to escape the government monopoly on schools. Those who speak against the current system, look at what happens.
I guess freedom has little meaning these days. It seems that according to the left, we all must rely on government, and only government, to fulfill our needs.
Yes, we should not rely on government, which is why vouchers are so stupid!
Step One:Govenment gives money to student to attend private school.
Step two.As many students as possible transfer to the private school with government assistance.
Step three:Old public schools rot away, lose teachers, millions of dollars lost trying to figure out what to do with old buildings.
Step four:Since government is funding private schools, they start dictating the curriculum, ect.
Step five:Former private schools are pretty much public schools with parochiol names.
Final result:”Private schools” are having all the same problems that the old public schools did. The problem has just been transfered to a new building, and the government has spread a dangerous tenticle into a church institution.
Brilliant!
Your logic is a little twisted.
“Boy, the insults are flying!
This is all the more reason to escape the government monopoly on schools.”
If you were a sailor, SD, you would abandon ship when people started arguing about which direction to go. Something broken? Eh, don’t worry about fixing it, just abandon it!
Nothing wrong with the public schools that I and my family have attended.Nothing.
I have read your posts, and it sounds like the schools in your district are very good, Tracy.
I have attended both Wichita schools, and then later, a suburban school. The standards at the suburban school, at the time I was there, were much higher, and I found myself having to work much harder.
Alot of problems in Wichita are discipline problems. Just witness what has gone on at North High to see that things can change, however! From what I have heard and read the last principle really turned things around there.
My point is for SD, who continully says we should abandon our public schools, which is just stupid.
We’ve had brief periods of turmoil.I can attribute those times to one or two bad apples in just the wrong job, such as Principal or Superintendant.Fortunately, in a smaller town they get weeded out before too long.Yes, discipline can be much easier in the smaller schools too.One of the few benifits of the small town atmosphere.
Sorry, I was gone for a couple days.
Courtney has enormous COMMITMENT. She’s going have a great life. Now, I want to ask Courtney a few questions:
1. Are you studying Green’s Theorem, Stokes Theorem, multiple integrals and vectors in Calc3?
2. Are you using James Stewart’s textbook? I think you are. Aophis says I am ignorant, so tell everybody that I am wrong, and you haven’t been using this textbook.
3. Are you using the available students solutions manuals for calculus and physics, or do you judge, “I don’t want to look at other people’s methods and answers to learn these subjects?”
4. Do you think students solutions manuals could have helped you better understand math and science in high school? If not, why not?
Now, Apophis, do your students have odd-exercise solutions manuals? Do you tell them to sign up for hotmath.com, so that they can examine odd-numbered exercised solutions, through a question and answer format?
Here are two practical applications of algebra problems. Show WEBlog readers how to solve them. I didn’t invent the problems, it they were devised by math educators for 8th-9th grade students.
Exercise 1: A painting is stretched over a rectangular wooden frame whose length is two-and-a-half times its width, in feet. The sum of the length and width was cut into four pieces. How long was the original piece of wood in feet?
What length board, cut into four pieces, is required to be cut into four pieces, to make the frame?
Exercise 2: If Hank pays $3.75 for each bunch of lilies, and then sells the lilies for $10.25 per bunch, how many bunches must he sell in order to make a $250 profit?
Correction: “The wood for the frame came from one piece that was cut into four pieces. How long was the original board, in feet?”
Hey JM Walker, I don’t even slam on heartlander for grammatical/spelling errors and he claims to be educated to a higher level than I am. For god sakes, this is a BLOG, not a formal essay. What I usually find is that when people have to resort to “nit-picking”, it means they have no valid backing behind their argument.
Quick now,How many sharps in the key of D?
Key signiture of b flat minor?
What is the tuning tendancy of a trumpet compared to that of a clarinet?
Ensemble music that is available to children of all economic background. Brought to you by, you guessed it: public education!
heartlander……………….. I’ve told you before, I don’t pay much attention to whether or not the math books have odd numbered answers in them. Why should I? I teach science where we practically apply mathematics. What I do know about our math teachers is that the bust their butts. Believe or not, they actually do a good job and have closed the achievement gap in our building. What more could you want?
These questions are open to anybody who cares to tackle the problems
Apophis, invite me to teach YOUR fellow teachers some math. But I want you to give me responses to the two questions I posed, for a reason. When you answer, the reason will become clear. If you present correct answers, I’m going to become your supporter. I know you have a herculean task to perform. Let me help you do it better.
The problems were presented to me. I spent a lot of time working on their answers. And I’m pretty good at math.
The problem with the ship analogy is that it assumes everyone has to (or wants to) sail in the same direction. That’s the case when we rely on government for schools. Government supplies one system that everyone has to use, whether they want to or not.
Markets let people choose what they want, without imposing their preferences on others.
Also, when people have choice, and they sense that the school they’re going to is having problems, they can change! That’s the power of markets and choice. When things go wrong, the bad institutions go out of business and cease to exist. With government institutions, they go on and on, changing ever so slowly, if they do change at all.
Why should I spend my time doing anything YOU ask?
PS. I think that most of the math textbooks still have odd-numbered ANSWERS, at least at high-school level. The issue is SOLUTIONS, which are multiple-step presentations that LEAD TO FINAL ANSWERS.
So, what is your point heartlander?
SB, you have choice right now: tax dollar funded public schools, privately funded schools or religiously funded parochial schools. What other choices do you really need?
Apophis, tell us how to solve these algebra problems, cuz you are a math teacher. If I you can’t or won’t do this, then are you sure you really are a MATHEMATICS teacher?
I don’t know if Apophis went to WSU. Founded by Congregationalists. First principal was a Darmouth grad.
CapnAmerica. Interesting to hear your child went to Congregationalist-founded Dartmouth.
Well, Apophis hasn’t solved the problems.
Problem #1. The multiple-choice “correct answer” is 14 feet.
That’s the correct answer for a rectangle’s perimeter, when the length and width are given as 7 feet. But as any child who has taken wood-sho can tell us, that’s wrong. If you lay the original board horzintally, cut 45-degree mitred joining angles with zero kerf (saw blade’s width0, and take the top edges to be the outide edges, you get 14 feet.
For a real sawing problem you have to add the saw kerf, so you get more than 14 feet.
But if you cut to get two lengths of the original board’s top section upper- piece to be “outside” and two to bottom pieces to be “outside” the correct answer, including kerf, is less than 14 feet. The length of the original board depends on WIDTH. Also if you cut at 90 degree angle, the total original board depends on width. So the answer to the multiple-choice answer, for a”practical problem” is WRONG. It can NEVER be 14 feet.
On the flower-selling problem. the real wholesale-buyer, retail-seller’s PROFIT will depand upon how many bunches of lilies he BUYS, and how many he SELLS AT FULL RETAIL price. In real practice, nobody sells all of what they bought at wholesale, for full retai pricel, If they buy to little, and sell out, they buy more next time. At some pont they sell the last of their product for a lower price,or throw it away.
So-called “practical problems” devised by math educators often fail because real-world problems aren’t the same as theoretical pure-math problems. Real world problems are good. Making students give wrong answers in order to be credited is bogus.
Why have you now stopped your insults and name-calling, Apophis? I was just getting used to it. Developing a thicker skin, sort of.
If parents can’t afford private school tuition and they don’t agree with what the various religious schools are teaching, then they don’t have much choice, do they?
Still we must all pay to support our failing public schools, and then pay again to get our children a decent education.
Why don’t public schools just decide to relinquish their government-enforced monopoly? Open themselves to the forces of markets and competition. If, as government education bureaucrats claim, public schools are good, they should have no trouble retaining their market share. Then, at least, the people there will be there because of their choice, not because of government decree backed by force.
I would respectfully say to Tracy that, after having read some of your posts on this system, I can conclude that you have been fully and successfully indoctrinated by our government school system.
Apophis,Your last post regarding me would be hilarious if it didn’t support my doubts as to your cognitive ability. I do believe it was yourself who derided those who disagree with your nonsense: “SD and Cap’n crunch………….blow it out your ass. I dion’t answer to you two either.”, “heartlander, Ian and JM Walker………….Kiss my ass”. And you refer to me: “What I usually find is that when people have to resort to “nit-picking”, it means they have no valid backing behind their argument.”?
As to suggesting corrections to your post: you claim to be a teacher; I shouldn’t have to. And interpreting your “anti-public school critic”? My God, how stupid can you be? You actually think for one minute I believe you are a good teacher, if indeed you even are a teacher?
As stated before, too many times to count: I am not against public school in any way; I do, however, reserve the right to comment on its current effectiveness in teaching children to cope with this continually ever changing world. And that is what I have done here. Your inability to understand that makes you a weight on the public school system. One of many . . . too many in my opinion.
I did not, and would not resort to private email to call you out. I will tell you this: Do not take this into private grounds. Post anything you wish on the blog, I can handle anything, but take it private again, and you will damn sure not like what you find.
SD,your solution still makes abosolutly no sense.You say that the government is failing at education children so you want to give government power over private schools.Don’t kid yourself. If the government starts funding private schools through vouchers, they will take over the private schools eventually.
I agree with J M Walker. It is our responsibilty to question the public schools, and to hold them accountable.
But SD, you say that you don’t want to rely on the government, then you want vouchers from the government to fund childrens education?? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense I’m afraid to say.
Public education provides oppurtunities for those who could never afford a private education. SD, what failures in the public schools, exactly are you talking about? Please be specific.
A friend gave me some “practical algebra” “word problems” to help her 8th grader to solve. Pure mathematics is useful, at least I think so, because I learned a lot of it. Applied mathematics is good too, because I learned a lot of it as well.
One of the key things about applied mathematics is, you have to include difinitions and parameters.
Too many K-12 educators don’t get this.
I guess JB is saying that he/she finds the GI Bill and follow-up Pell Grant program, which allow young people to study at private colleges and universities, at taxpayer expense, to be wrong. But we haven’t heard any REASONS WHY THEY ARE WRONG.
Heartlander,I am a prospective teacher music, so I can’t speak for classroom teachers.I can say that for music we have specific standards that come from concepts that we have to teach. Teaching concepts leads us beyond just ‘teaching the kids a song.’ There is a reason for teaching the song, a specific concept that is trying to be taught.In this way we are teaching ideas that they will remember- giving them the basis to be well educated members of society. They will remember concepts far longer than they will remember words for a song.I don’t know about math, but we music teachers are intent on making our lessons applicable to real life, and we have a specific process and way to do that. We’re not just all ignorant suckers stuck in front of a classroom.
Heartlander,I concede that you make a very fine point concerning GI bill and Pell grant.Remember also that college costs are rapidly increasing (I would know) and that fewer people are able to afford it, even with the help of such programs. I would hardly like to see that be the case with education for young children.Still, I see your points, and I am very willing to concede that their are two sides to the argument.
You are right, JB, in that if government has power over private schools, they will become like the present public schools. The solution is no government involvement at all. Vouchers, though, with scant regulation, are a compromise.
How are the present public schools failing? Here’s something I read on a blog recently:
From the National Academy of Sciences report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” published last year:
Fewer than one-third of US fourth grade and eighth grade students performed at or above a level called “proficient” in mathematics; “proficiency” was considered the ability to exhibit competence with challenging subject matter. Alarmingly, about one-third of the fourth graders and one-fifth of the eighth graders lacked the competence to perform basic mathematical computations.
A recent study by the American Institutes for Research contained this:
More than 75 percent of students at 2-year colleges and more than 50 percent of students at 4-year colleges do not score at the proficient level of literacy. This means that they lack the skills to perform complex literacy tasks, such as comparing credit card offers with different interest rates or summarizing the arguments of newspaper editorials.
According to the report “Reading Between The Lines” issued by ACT earlier this year, only “51% of ACT-tested high school graduates met ACT’s College Readiness Benchmark for Reading, demonstrating their readiness to handle the reading requirements for typical credit-bearing first-year college coursework.”
Do you need more evidence?
SD,I will have to do some research and look at the research and survey structures used for the studies that you cite. It will be interesting to see how they collected such data, especially concerning literacy amoung college students.
SD, I have some personal experience in public school. My parents were able to move to a suburban district when I was in middle school, and I witnessed for myself the differences in what was expected. I went from a four point student to getting C’s for a semester until I realized that the quality of work that cut in one school wasn’t going to cut it any more. I graduated on honor roll, and received a full scholarship for college.
So I agree that the schools have problems, I just don’t think that abandoning them is the answer.Perhaps competition as you propose is the answer.I would still be inclined to believe that it would lead to more ills than good, as I have stated above.
KM Walker………….I could give a rat’s ass if you think I am a teacher, much less a good teacher. As I have stated in previous posts, I do NOT answer to you, heartlander or anyone else on this Blog.
Nope heartlander, I did not graduate from WSU. Sorry, you crapped out again.
JB, you were fortunate, and I personally am glad for you, that your parents were able to exercise school choice of sorts and move to where the public schools were better.
Now, what about poor people who can’t move to where schools are good, given that those places are usually expensive to live in?
Here’s something else I read:
An article in the March 2, 2006 Wall Street Journal by Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star Tribune tells of the large numbers of African-American families in Minneapolis who send their children to charter schools or to schools in other districts, thanks to Minnesota law that allows district-crossing.
The families in Minneapolis have ample incentive to look elsewhere for schools. “Last year, only 28% of black eighth-graders in the Minneapolis public schools passed the state’s basic skills math test; 47% passed the reading test. … Today, this tradition of choice is providing a ticket out for kids in the gritty, mostly black neighborhoods of north and south- central Minneapolis.”
Does this choice work? Are parents pleased? “At Harvest Preparatory School, a K-6 school that is 99% black and two-thirds low income, students wear uniforms, focus on character, and achieve substantially higher test scores than district schools with similar demographics.” This is a school that was founded in 1992 in the home of its founders, showing that it doesn’t take a lot of money to start a good school.
Some people say that parents, especially those with little education, will not be able to judge the merits of a school. They say that some parents are incapable of making a wise, informed choice, and that someone else must do it for them. Besides being condescending, it is simply wrong:
“The city’s experience should lead such states to reconsider the benefits of expansive school choice. Conventional wisdom holds that middle-class parents take an interest in their children’s education, while low-income and minority parents lack the drive and savvy necessary. The black exodus here demonstrates that, when the walls are torn down, poor, black parents will do what it takes to find the best schools for their kids.”
SD,I agree with you that I was fortunate.Still, I must argue that vouchers aren’t nessasarily the best solution. I think that taking the good ideas that work in other schools and applying them to the public schools. The schools aren’t inherently bad- there’s nothing cursed about the building.
There was an article a while back about how Denise Wren was able to turn things around at north high with discipline and working with minority students. Telling them that they don’t have to fail, that they are capable of succeding. The article also discussed the improvement in the test scores at North.
You are right that we must consider all options seriously. I am just weary of government intruding into private schools, and I don’t want to abandon our public schools.
Either way, I am pleased that we are haven’t an intellegent conversation without any name calling.
Let me try that again.i am pleased that we are HAVING an intellegent conversation without any name calling.
JB, I appreciate you thoughtful comments, too.
Although this may sound heretical to you, I urge us to reconsider education starting at the very beginning.
Should education be compulsory? It is one thing to value education (and if you knew me, you would know that at a time my friends were driving around in new Corvettes, I was spending the same amount on tuition to earn an advanced degree in my field, so yes I do value education); it is entirely a different matter for the government to compel education by force of law, both in terms of attendance and finance.
SD,hmmmm. Interesting thought in regards to students being required to have an education. I just fear education becoming something that only a few can afford, as it was before public schools. I don’t want to give glib unthoughtout answers, so it will take me some time to think this over. Right now it’s bed time. Thanks for the thought provoking debate.
Hrtlndr–
Good congregationalists all, no doubt. How else could they have killed off the Indians with such alacrity?
Anyway, you still didn’t answer my question–how did you homeschool your kids and work a full-time job?
And not only that, but how realistic is it that other people can do what you did, given George W. Bush’s economy in which the middle class and poor lose spending power every year?
And finally, if public education is so terrible, how did YOU turn out so well . . . smart enough even to homeschool your kids to a perfect SAT math score?
Oh wow the late hour HAS to have caused THAT slip!!!
SD: “Should education be compulsory?? /Snip/it is entirely a different matter for the government to compel education by force of law, both in terms of attendance and finance.”
There it is folks. There is what I posted about SD on this thread from the very start.You are an elitist SD. The rest of your post I just lifted from demonstrates THAT.Perhaps you are the owner of a small or large business. This would explain your just CONFESSED desire for a significant portion of the population to fend for themselves as to education. It is in YOUR interest that you get to be the “smart” guy telling them what to do.
That last was SO descriptive of you SD. I know my friend TRACY is familiar with the movie “Caddyshack”.
From now on when I see “SD” I’m gonna be picturing “Judge Smails”.
Busted.
How can you have any faith in the government study cited above? They Dept. of Ed. commissions a study that somehow contradicts all the other evidence and says public/government schools are doing just fine. Read the fine print. They adjusted the scores. That means that kids who are expected to do poorly, did poorly, and hence met expectations.
Your government at work.
The object [of my education bill was] to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind which in proportion to our population shall be the double or treble of what it is in most countries.” –Thomas Jefferson to M. Correa de Serra, 1817. ME 15:156
“The general objects [of a bill to diffuse knowledge more generally through the mass of the people] are to provide an education adapted to the years, to the capacity, and the condition of every one, and directed to their freedom and happiness.” –Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. ME 2:204
“A bill for the more general diffusion of learning… proposed to divide every county into wards of five or six miles square;… to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects, to be completed at an University where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:399
“This [bill] on education would [raise] the mass of the people to the high ground of moral respectability necessary to their own safety and to orderly government, and would [complete] the great object of qualifying them to secure the veritable aristoi for the trusts of government, to the exclusion of the pseudalists… I have great hope that some patriotic spirit will… call it up and make it the keystone of the arch of our government.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:400
“My partiality for that division [of every county into wards] is not founded in views of education solely, but infinitely more as the means of a better administration of our government, and the eternal preservation of its republican principles. The example of this most admirable of all human contrivances in government, is to be seen in our Eastern States; and its powerful effect in the order and economy of their internal affairs, and the momentum it gives them as a nation, is the single circumstance which distinguishes them so remarkably from every other national association.” –Thomas Jefferson to Wilson C. Nicholas, 1816. ME 14:454
“The less wealthy people,… by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government; and all this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen.” –Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:73
I’ve got Bill Murray’s speech about looping for the Dalai memorized…..so, I got that goin’ for me!
JR’s attitude shows how far we have come in giving up our liberties to government.
If government were to stop requiring compulsory attendance in schools, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they would stop funding it, does it?
(I was going to say stop compulsory “education,” but what goes on in schools today is often far removed from education.)
Must government tell us everything that is good for us to do?
There is great danger in relying on government for something as essential as education.
For example, if the recent Kansas school board elections had gone the other way, and the cons felt empowered to impose their agenda (whatever it is), perhaps requring the teaching of evolution to the exclusion of all else, what would someone who disagrees with that do then?
I would think that those on the left would be especially sensitive to the loss of liberty that compulsory government schooling imposes. But that’s the way things have turned around, I guess.
By the way, have you ever read about how literate Americans were before public schools?
Also, JR, I have not seen the movie you reference, so if you meant that as an insult, you’ll have to fill me in on the joke.
SD,It is fact that there are families that don’t value education as much as others. These families don’t promote there childrens education, don’t help them, don’t do anything.
So what if education was compulsory? Do you think these children would find themselves in school? Or would you find them on the street, in gangs, raising the crime rate with their absolute lack of education?
When a student is required to attend school for a certain amount of time, there is always a chance. Not a guarentee, mind you, but a chance that their lives will be touched by an affective teacher and they will be able to rise above their situation.
Is is moral or ethical to deny whole groups of people that chance?
To pine for what was- ie the ‘good ol’ days’ of the one room school house is a bit silly at this point. One hundred years ago the plains of Kansas were sparesly populated and you could fit a whole county’s worth of children into one building.
Now we must take a different view of education. Believe me, there are good things that come of the bigger schools that we have now. Being a music teacher, music is the first thing that comes to mind.
So I ask you only to think carefully before you consider making education not required. What do you think these children will be doing when they are not in school? Sweat shops? Bean fields?
If we are casting for a Caddyshack remake I want to be Bill Murry as the crazy groundskeeper. Nothing like blowing up rodents for a hard day’s work.
I think that if our children dont learn it before the end of their 8th grade, than they aint going to learn or use it…
All High School is, is one giant social hour… High School is where children learn to play nice with each other and start interacting on an adult level…
What i think should happen is that high school students should start getting training and planning for their careers… People who are going to be accountants and scientists start taking lots of math, those who want to be mechanics, can stat taking auto shop and those of us like me who are computer people, start taking cert classes.
High school should be a time to start training our youth to enter the work force right out of high school. Enter a real work force, not McDonalds. If their direction is toward collage, than let them start the prereq classes and prepair them for collage.
CapnAmerica,
I’m not sure if the Congregationalists can be blamed for killing the Indians. The Pilgrims apparently survived their first winter by scavenging abandoned grain stores. Some historians speculate that local Native Americans were hit by a devastating epidemic, possibly smallpox, shortly before the Plymouth party landed. Spaniards initially introduced European diseases to which the New World people had no resistance. Pigs that were released may have accelerated disease-spread, because they can harbor many viruses, including influenza.
Anyway, Congregationalists founded WSU (as Fairmount Academy), Washburn U, and KU. That’s a pretty impressive track record in advancing public education in Kansas.
(Congregationalists also spearheaded the founding of the Universities of California and Wisconsin, and through private Johns Hopkins, introduced Germany’s graduate-school model, which has been disseminated to all 50 states.)
I took an extended leave from medical practice to home school, and we were fortunate to have a two-doctor household, so one income could be sacrificed.
Most home-schooling families make much more significant financial sacrifices.The fundamental matter is that they choose to “un-institutionalize” their children. That’s difficult to envision, because the parents were institutionalized when they were young. But it turns out that when you individualize children’s education, they progress much more rapidly and fluidly than in mass-education settings. By spending most of their waking hours in a thoughtful, caring, human-scale setting, they become thoughtful, caring people.
As home home education grows, it enables group resources to become established, such as parent-teacher cooperatives. There are many pre-formatted home-school-useable curricula, and online courses. Will it ever become the dominant motif in education. That’s hard to envision. But then home education per se was really hard to envision a mere thirty years ago, which is worth thinking about because a mere 150 years ago–just two human lifetimes–home education WAS the dominant method of childhood instruction. Compulsory mass public education was a social experiment. It proved to have significant utilities, and some significant drawbacks. The utilities, in a postindustrial economy, or a “smart-industrial economy” where human industrial workers command sophisticated information machines, are rapidly diminishing, which makes the drawbacks increasingly conspicuous.
In a previous post, I mentioned a frame-building problem to stretch a canvas. Absent the ability to post images, this is hard to describe. What the problem essentially wanted was one “correct answer” based on the following way of cutting a board into four pieces to make a frame, with a 14 foot long rectangular perimeter, width 2 feet, length 5 feet. Let me see if I can present it. The word-problem constructor wants a student to take two statements,
1. A woden frame’s length is two-and-a-half times its width.
2. The sum of the length and width is 7 feet.
The problem’s putative answer doesn’t require the student to find either the length or width of the frame. He or she just has to know that the frame’s perimeter is 2 x the width and length.2 x 7 = 14.
However, the givens actually enable us to derive more information. You can create two mathematical statements, i.e. equations. Let’s give width the variable letter w and length the variable letter l. Doing this gives us
2.5W = LL + W = 7 ft
This is a two-variable, two-equation problem.We use substitution to get:
L + W = 7 ft =>2.5W + W = 7 ft =>3.5W = 7 ft =>3.5W/3.5 =7 ft/3.5 =>W = 2 ft.
Therefore if
L + W =7 ft thenL + 2 ft = 7 ft, thenL – 2 ft = 7 – 2ft = 5 feet
So here is the way the problem constructor envisioned cutting a board into four pieces to make a frame
\—–/\–/\—–/\–/
The dashes represent the number of feet of the “top side” of the board that ultimately constitute the exterior edge of the frame, with 45-degree mitred cuts to create a rectangle. Ignoring saw kerf, the length is 14 feet. But any wood-shop student or home-handyman carpenter knows that saw-blades “eat” wood. Even a thin saw will take out more than a sixteenth-inch width of wood, so at very least, one would need 14 feet and 3/16 inches of starting board. Anyone who took a 14 ft board and cut it into four pieces would find himself or herself with a frame of less than 14 ft perimeter.
But now, what if you do THESE CUTS:
\—–/__\—–/__\
where the 2-foot lengths are measured from the BOTTOM of the board? The two five-ft lengthwise frame pieces are measured along the top of the board, but the width pieces, measured along the top of the original board (with 45-degree mitered cuts) ARE SHORTER THAN 2 feet.Now the original board can BE SHORTER THAN 14 feet. How much shorter? It’s a function of the board’s width. The wider it is, the shorter it will have to be.
Let’s try making an end-to-side frame with 90-degree cuts.
|—–|–|—–|–
A 14 foot board will generate a significantly larger than 14 foot perimeter frame. The exact perimeter depends on the board’s width. Or, alternatively viewed, to end up with a 14 ft perimeter, you need significantly less than 14 ft of original board.
So the problem has, mathematically, an infinite number of answers, and practically, if one uses standard lumber, at least several answers. Not one of which is 14 feet, the putatively “correct” answer.
You can decry a society that channels its mathematical minds into university careers in quantitative fields such as pure mathematics, physics, statistics and economics, computer science, think tanks, high-level federal and state analytical occupations, engineering, scientific research, medicine, et al. But that’s life in America. I ranked first in mathematics in my cowtown high school. My second and third-ranked friends majored in mathematics and went into computer-science careers. My fourth-ranked cohort, who was good in math, but well-behind the first three, teaches calculus in a community college. By the time you get to middle-school teachers, who were willing to put up with “soshy” types’ visions of what ed-school students should learn, you encounter a humongous drop-off in math and science ability. Because if you are really good in math and science, you aren’t going to put yourself under the direction of people who AREN’T very good in math and science.
Apophis said I should volunteer-tutor kids after school. Excuse me? I know a heluva lot more math than Apophis.
Am I being arrogant? If you think so, you don’t get it. I could be teaching math to Apophis, and young people directly. All of my children knew more math, as teenagers than most Kansas math teachers. That’s why two scored 800’s and one a 780 on SAT Level II exams. THEY tutored other kids as teenagers. They must have been pretty good teachers, because the my kids’ tutoring was ELECTIVE FOR THEIR TUTEEES: their tutees had the power to say, “This isn’t working,” but they LIKED my kids’ teaching, and found figured out they were LEARNING MATH. Their improved math grades objectively corroborated the tutees’ “Oh, now I get it,” experiences.
Courtney said her algebra skills were weak, based on her high school experience. But what a charger she is. Suppose somebody had said, in high school, “I think you’re somebody who could benefit from two-hour math classes. You’ll have to give something else up, if you want this, but do you want to try it?” I think Courtney would have said, “Yeah, I want to study more math, with enough time to really enable me to understand it.” Who said that 50 minutes math class is ENOUGH? Who came up with this anti-math dunderhead notion?
Come on, JB, Bill Murray did a lot more than blow up rodents. He invented the first grass hybrid of Kentucky Blue, and Maui Wowie. ;)
Or was it sensimilla? Maybe I’m thinking of the Cheech and Chong movie where Cheech’s labrador ate his stash. And Cheech “recovered” it. ;)Actually, my fave BM movie is Groundhog Day, where he stopped trying to manipulate people, learned to make great music , saved somebody’s life, and landed Andie MacDowell by finally appreciating her total womanly beauty. Too bad we all can’t relive a day until we “get it”.
Heartlander, I agree with many of your comments. For me to succeed at algebra in eighth grade I had to have and outside tutor, which was much more than one hour a day of math. I am also think that, especially at younger ages, students benefit from music education, so I am leary of sacrificing ‘other things’ for more algebra classes.I learned alot of real life applications in my elective classes. Critical thinking in debate, leadership, responsiblity in band amoung many other things. I have always been interested if there are music ensembles for homeschooled students, as there are sports teams. I think it is important that students are able to experience aspects of education outside of math and science.
tony,If high school was a big social hour for you, remember that you are responsible also for your education. I knew I was going into music, so I took music electives. I wanted to be challenged more, so I took AP classes and college credit classes.
SDYou mentioned how literate Americans were before public schools. I would be weary of anecdotal and even survey evidence from that period, because you don’t know what groups were being studied. Most likely white male land owners. Ofcourse they could read? Groups left out- slaves, most the poor, ect. The good ol’ days weren’t always as good as we like to think.
JB, great comments.
I don’t play any instrument–we were too poor to afford instrument rentals or lessons–but I love music. I used to do a spot-on Beach Boys falsetto. My mother had an excellent voice and late in life learned to play the piano. I found a keyboard teacher for my youngest son who has a marvelous voice and plays lovely piano and guitar. Music is a quintessential human activity, found in every society on the planet. We’ve had season tickets for MTW and the Wichita Symphony. It’s inspiring to watch people express their musical passion.
I find your math-tutor-education experience very interesting. I have a friend, who because of a congenital anomaly, required a lot of hospitalizations and missing school. She got way behind. So her parents hired a tutor, and she rapidly “caught up”. Her parents settled for that. If they had realized how brilliant she was, and if they wanted to invest in her, they could have continued the personal tutoring regimen. But they didn’t. They settled for, “Now your up to where your classmates are, you don’t need a tutor anymore.”
You received personal music lessons. Suppose that you hadn’t. Where would your musical understanding and talents be today? The most effective teaching is one on one. One-on-twenty+ represents an industrial economy ideology.
John Taylor Gatto, retired New York City and New York State Teacher of the Year, who today has no faith in public education, has discussed estimated antebellum white literacy rates being very, very high. In the South, it is indisputable that laws prohibiting anyone from teaching slaves how to read and write were enacted–the information is in archived state records–because A LOT of slaves were learning to read and write, and disseminating tracts of dissent. So they were FORCED to be ILLITERATE.
Based on my personal experience, teaching basic phonetic decoding skills can be done in 3 months time. The alphabetic system was invented to convert spoken and aural phonemes into symbols. Spanish is reportedly the best language with respect to maintaining very high consistency between written symbols and sounds. English is much more variant, due to mixed Romance and German-language influences. Consider “height”, “freight” and “receive”. Or consider Kansans’ pronunciation of Arkansas, El Dorado, Greenwich.
The one that really gets me is pronouncing L’Ouverture school, by TEACHERS there, “LO vur chur”. That’s a really horrid pronunciation by any linguistic accounting.
There is no question that whole-word memorization of many English words is necessary. This being said, I believe, from experience, that it is still best to first vigorously teach phonetic decoding, and then later introduce kids to exceptions, rather than mixing phonics and whole-word look-say at the outset. The real problem is schools take something that can be learned quickly by 90% of young minds, and make it much more drawn out and difficult than it has to be.
I’m not going to lead an education reform movement. Why not? Because it is too hard an assignment for me. I’m just a little experimenter. I’m best at one-on-one to maybe one-on-four interactions. But even small-scale people like me learn lessons. One of which is that one-on-twenty+ students can’t be best for all, or even most students. Children need more personalized attention than mass-education, whether public OR private, can provide.
Who is America’s greatest historical thinker? I think it may be Ben Franklin. He got a “job” manning a printing press for his uncle. He could have just done this, but instead, he decided to READ what he was printing. He didn’t have any WRITING assignments. Interesting. Because he later became a prolific writer.
Heartlander, you are correct that some of the best education takes place in a one on one enviroment. Yes I have had private music lessons, and have benefited from them greatly.
There is only so far you can go with solo work, however. You can read all day about ensemble playing, but never truly understand it until you actually play in an ensemble. I will yeild to you on the teaching of almost any subject and say that it is most effective in a one on one setting. Imagine the works of mozart and brahms, the great symphonies, without ensemble work. You learn turning with other instruments, ensemble playing- knowing that you aren’t always the most important part- teamwork, the list is endless. So I must insist that while solo work- one on one lessons are important, it is only half of the big picture when it comes to music.
As for other subjects. Yes, it would be wonderful if every student could receive one on one tutoring. What a perfect world that would be. Unfortunantly my parents do live on a two doctor salary. I do not mean to play a class warefare game, but my parents both work full time long hours, and I have multiple siblings. Homeschooling is simply just not a possibilty. And even if it was, my parents neither have the temperment or the will to do so.
I have nothing against homeschooling. I have some very good friends that homeschool their children. It just simply isn’t an option for everyone.
So where does that leave us? Can we provide tutors for every child in the city of Wichita? I’m sure that you are quiet aware of the number of tutors that would take. So how do we choose who gets the tutors? Those that can afford it? Those who according to tests have the greatest potential? Or those who need the most help? Imagine the costs for the tax payer of a school system that hired private tutors for every student!
So yes, children would benefit most from personal education! Obviously, that is logistically just not possible. So do we give up on education? No, we do the best that we humanly can, which means larger classes, and hope that parents do there part at home in helping with education, which you, heartlander, are obviously committed to doing.
JB, you make very thoughtful comments. You learned certain fundamentals of musicianship with one-on-one teaching. Could you have learned them in a group setting? Almost certainly. But with one-on-one teaching, your teacher was able to give you undivided attention, which accelerated your learning process.
My surmise is that when you began ensemble performance development, you had substantial skills, and performing in a group created a new learning dimension. I would say that ultimately, most people work with others, not isolation, and group instruction and enterprise is natural. Humans are social organisms, after all.
I can understand your parents’ not wanting to home educate. It was really hard for me to give up my doctor persona, having spent years and years developing and honing it. But, I deeply felt that my children had amazing gifts, and they were being shriveled in school. I mentioned two of them getting 800’s. One was marked as the last-ranked student in math in his class, the other a nondescript B student. How do you reconcile these mind-boggling incongruities? Only by understanding that exceptional talent, “outlier” talent, cannot be cultivated in most American schools. Math and science are denigrated in them. My prejudice? No, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (1997) found that American students’ performance in 4th grade was above average, but by 8th grade was in the lowest tertile, and by 12th grade was essentially at the bottom of industrialized nations.
People talk about different learning styles. Which makes more sense, if you use group-education fomat: to group kids of different ages together who have the same learning style, so that the teacher can use this consistently, or force kids of the same age, but of different learning styles, to be in the same class, and have the teacher do a little of this, and a little of that?
I would never say I could be an outstanding teacher for all kids, or 80% or even 20%. What I do know is that I connect with SOME kids, as a teacher, and some adults as well. So that’s what I try to do.
John Taylor Gatto, whom I would recommend that any thoughtful reader here Google and read some of his ideas, pointed out that teachers have very little personal communication with individual students, some 7 minutes per day. That may sound “too low to believe” until you think about entering a classroom, sitting in it, and leaving. Somebody like you has probably approached teachers before and after class, as I did. But look at the majority of your classmates. Do they do this? I think not. I remember being able to talk to some of my teachers specifically because OTHER STUDENTS DID NOT DO THIS. In college, I went to several professors’ office hours, but not most. Yet they could have 1-hour-per-week office hours for 40, 100, 500 students, precisely because very few students went to office hours. I believe they didn’t do this because they never had the opportunity to talk to their high school teachers one-on-one.
My spouse spent 30-60 minutes every week for a semester with a Nobel Laureate, because she wanted to understand chemistry, while everyone else in the class was too cowed by the professor’s “celebrity” status. Yet he was teaching freshmen chemistry, when, as a perquisite of his top-echelon status he had the option to only teach graduate students and post-docs , because he wanted to CONNECT WITH YOUNG PEOPLE.
I know math. I make errors, but I know the subject. How can I assert this? Because in high school I raised my hand and challenged my math teachers’ blackboard errors, when everyone else was mute. They admitted I was correct. They then had me give blackboard presentations of my solutions to difficult “C”-category problems, which were sometimes different from the teachers solutions manual. I was selected to compete in mathematics contests by my teachers.At age 21, I read a late chapter in George Thomas’s Calculus and Analytic Geometry, the esteemed “Bible” of calculus texts, because I was, although no longer in any math class, interested in the Poisson probability function. I found an error in this authoritative textbook. In a much later edition, my 15 year old son derived an answer different from the answer key in the back of the book and the problem-attack used in the students solutions manual. I worked the problem, and got my son’s answer. I wrote up a solution and submitted it to Dr. Thomas. He told me that my solution was correct, i.e. the answer-key and student solutions manual were wrong. I self-studied statistics and passed a challenge exam for a university statistics course. I also wrote statistical-analysis computer programs at age 22 to speed up data analysis for my biomedical research project.
Mathematics isn’t the four arithmetic functions. It’s a visual art. It is a language art. It is an esthetic subject. This is why mathematicians say things like, “This is a beautiful proof.” “This is really elegant.” How many school math teachers use these descriptives?
Heartlander,Actually, I didn’t start lessons until middle school, although I do teach private lessons for all ages of students. I have started several students out on my instrument, and I am not a perfect teacher, but I am willing to learn and adjust and I am constantly trying to get better.I am also training to teach in large group settings- ie band class in the near future. I do that because I love the intricasy and the beauty that ensemble music offers. Music speaks to me in the same way that math seems to speak to you, and I have the utmost respect for your passion.
You are very passionate about math, that much is very clear. I to lament the fact that some teachers get burnt out and no longer look upon what they are doing as an art, but a job. I hope that I never get that way.
You have some very good ideas about math teaching. I know you mentioned earlier that you didn’t want to spearhead education reform, but your ideas could be of benefit to public education.
My main point, I suppose, is that I’m not ready to give up on public education just because it has failings. I know that you never said that, you have made it very clear, heartlander, that you are not against public education, but you want to see it held accountable. I couldn’t agree with you more.
How exactly do you plan to make it more accountable, more “tests”?
The fact is that heartlander and his cohorts seek to destroy public education.
I think you are going to love teaching band. Music and art classes are considered “peripheral”. There are no NCLB tests nor curriculum guidelines for these. At times, funding may be tight, but the nice thing is, you don’t have to fill out reams of paperwork to satisfy federal mandates. So you get to work with young people who love making music, and that’s going to be FUN. My great uncle was a high school band teacher.
Apophis- more then understand your anger toward the trend of excessive testing. I don’t, however, think that heartlander has once suggested this as a solution. I like you, have been a supporter of public education all through this post. I learned in my high school debate class (in public high school), however, to listen to the arguments that are being made and respond to them accordingly. If you feel that public education perfect as it is, I would love to see your evidence. I think, however, that a true supporter of public education accepts and realizes challenges, and meets them. If there are problems, you recognize them and work to overcome thme. Doing any less is a disservice to those who rely on you for their public education.
Your arguments have continully been two dimensional and silly. If this was a debate round you would have been laughed out of the room. Saying that your oppenent is blowing shit out of his mouth is not an affective argument to counter his points. If he cites a study you don’t agree with do some research on the study, find out if the methods and surveying teqniques were accurate. Come up with a real argument besides empty insults.
Automatically closing your mind to suggestion for improvement is what truly destroys education.
JB, good luck on your public teaching career! Because of projected largescale retirements over the next decade, schools will have to hire a lot of young people, and very likely older, alternative-certified people who have invaluable society-at-large working experiences.
I sincerely hope that you fresh-minded teachers can change the system. It won’t be easy, and there is a risk of failure, but you have a chance to succeed, and the risk is worth taking. Whatever happens, you will learn invaluable lessons.
You might want to contact John Gatto. He has talked about a technical/vocational school in Massachusetts where teenagers attend weekly school-administrative meetings, and proactively co-shape with their teachers their school’s operations. They’re treated like young, responsible adults, and so they behave like young, responsible adults. They’re plugged into community internships, where they do tangible, productive work. No participating sponsor has quit the program. It works really, really well.
Ultimately, true education is a personal pathway. When people are allowed to exercise choices, and I don’t mean vouchers or charter schools, but choices of knowledge pathways, such as “I’m a 14 year old who loves music, and I want 3 hours of it a day, I don’t need physical science or biology or chemistry”, or “I love building electronic devices, I want 4 hours of robotics-lab a day, I don’t need language arts or social studies,” or “I love literature, I don’t need math and science”–you’ll find a large percentage of teenagers can make sound, healthy-for-themselves decisions. If the choices are healthy for them, they will ultimately be healthy for society.
Actually, what we did at home was “unschooling”. I showed my kids different things they could choose to work on, and they did. Then they devised their own time-schedule regimens. Had this degenerated into doing nothing productive, our experiment would have been a failure. But they chose to be productive doing things they had an interest in pursuing. And they did the things they chose very, very well. They became true discovery learners. They essentially created their own educations.
I have a son who taught English in Ethiopia this summer. The coordinator took classroom photos of four young teachers. I wish I could post them here. In my son’s photo, seven out of twelve kids were shooting their hands upwards and toward him at a 45 degree angle, with big smiles on their faces. You know what that means? It means he was CONNECTED with them. Was he connected to everyone in the class? The photo says no, but actually this is hard to judge, because the kids who weren’t raising their hands were closest to the camera, and “mugging” for it. To me, a teacher who fires enthusiasm and joy in his students has the gift of teaching.
BTW, what was my son’s evaluation of the experience teaching these black children? “It was awesome, Dad.”
I think I have said about all that I can on education. People have to make their own decisions. The decisions Wichitans make will create the future of this community.
PS. The hand-raising kids were also half-standing out of their seats. That’s my son. He’s a teacher!
JB………… with your attitude, I hope you never get into a bind during your teaching career and need some assistance from the association. Maybe when you actually join the ranks of public education you might begin to see reason.
As for heartlander……….you are hopeless…..and pointless.
“Change will come when the NEA sees a change as educationally viable. Too bad, so sad if you can’t handle that.” — Apophis
I have been reading some of this and was confused by the above quote. Does the NEA actually have a say in education policy? What is the extent of that say?
Since the NEA is a uniion of teachers, isn’t that a potential conflict of interest? Surely the teachers union’s interests don’t always align with those of the students.
Apophis–my last point was while the forced-”education” cartel whines that it’s “impossible” to educate all these hopeless black kids–and having failed there, the cartel can now move on to whining about the hopeless task of educating kids in which Spanish is spoken at home. Gee, how did my extended family’s German, French, Russian and Spanish-speaking immigrant members ever become well-educated? Aliens must have abducted them and planted language-translator chips into their brains. Not!
My son found impoverished black kids who are enthusiastic about learning. So, Apophis, what’s your personal limitation? A half-century ago almost no government schoolteachers considered Chinese-American kids to be great candidates for future scientists, engineers or doctors. Who in American government schools thought that Indians would rise to prominence in technology in a half-century, or that Indian-Americans would be some of the best math and science students in this nation at the turn of the century?
Our educational system is built upon PREJUDICE.
Here is problem #1. John Taylor Gatto found completely perplexed, because he saw, as a Cornell-educated English major who decided to teach, OBVIOUS major improvement measures that were readily implementable in NYC schools. Being trained in library research as a Cornell student, and having also studied at Columbia, whose affiliate Teachers College had a trove of public-education’s original documents. he dug into the history of American public education. He discovered the problems he perceived were not “glitches”, they were deliberately devised “dumbing-down” components of public education. The system was intentionally devised to ensure that 80% of students would be semi-literate, so they would be FORCED to do manual-labor jobs, in service to industrial titans.
The titans, including industrialist/capitalists like Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan, who spearheaded forced nationwide schooling for the masses, including providing most of its start-up funding, never sent their own children to the schools they created for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
Now, can any sensible reader here think of a worse scenario than a coterie of aristocrats deciding what YOUR children, but not THEIR children, need for “education”? Do you think they set up public education TO HELP the working class? Or exploit them, and hold them back?
We can see Apophis’s diatribes and slurs. I know math and science. I know people who know math and science. They are rational, thoughtful people who debate intelligently. Apophis’s rantings show that he doesn’t have a mathematical or scientific mind. Not even close.
He was selected to be public schools teacher-training program because DIDN’T HAVE strong mathematical or science talent, but what he had was a modestly better than average math and science skills as a high school graduate of a system that didn’t teach math or science.
If you examine the secondary teacher certificate program curricula at KU, KSU, ESU, FHSU, PSU, and WSU, that is the classes future secondary teachers must complete, the academic courses they take which are also taken by College of Liberal Arts and Science majors, end with late-sophomore, early junior level survey courses. What does this mean? In academic subjects, future high school teachers have nowhere near the level of education of the CLAS students. They have a slight bit more academic-subject education than the nation’s better university-feeder COMMUNITY COLLEGES offer.
In math, the highest-level course required is introductory modern algebra, a first-semester-junior-year course. For CLAS math majors, modern algebra is a springboard course for advanced upper division courses. In chemistry, biology and physics all the honors CLAS students do undergraduate lab research projects. They GET TO DO SCIENCE. SCIENCE IS RESEARCH. This isn’t learning how to do hands-on science demos of things that are well-known. It is exploring things that ARE NOT KNOWN. Science is less about establishing facts than generating new questions.
But the ed-school students don’t get to do this cool stuff. They get a second-class-citizen math and science education (same for all fields, actually). No, in four years, they must learn how to teach, so learning the subjects they are to teach is curtailed. Never mind that, in this diversion process, they don’t get to understand the subjects deeply that they are going to teach.
The ed schools are run by social-scientist types. They devise what they deem appropriate, the course regimens for future math and science teachers. I am sorry, but that’s a recipe for mathematics and science teaching failure in schools. You can’t put future math and science teachers under the thumbs of people who DIDN’T DO WELL IN MATH AND SCIENCE WHEN THEY WERE IN SCHOOL. People who are talented in math and science refuse to submit themselves to this lunatic proposition. Fundamentally, they THINK DIFFERENTLY from the soshy types.
I have, 9)+% of the time here, made sound proposals. Such as putting math and science teachers through a 6 year CLAS/SOE dual-bachelor’s program. Or a 6 year CLAS B.S. /SOE M.A.T. regimen. You’re going to have to pay mathematically and scientifically able teachers more than social studies and language arts teachers. If you don’t do this, you get “math” and “science” teachers who don’t know their subjects. It’s not me pontificating here–it is factually recorded in the ed schools’ and state’s secondary-teacher abominably weak coursework standards.
Use your brains, readers: what kind of talented science-passionate student doesn’t dream of doing a senior year SCIENCE PROJECT UNDER A RESEARCH SCIENTIST? There is no such student.
I mentioned studying the Poisson distribution on my own in college. Why did I do this? Because I was working with attomoles (10 to the -18 power) of radioisotope-tagged RNA, for my junior-senior BIOLOGY project. I wanted to figure out what the statistical range of background radiation was, to determine whether some of my experimental results were statistically significant, or not.
The ed schools don’t think future biology teachers have to know much math or physics, or even very much chemistry. They don’t think future biology teachers need to do bio research in order to go into high schools and teach biology. Their prejudice and ignorance are blatantly obvious.
So, you all have to decide what you want.
So heartlander, since you do not think I do not have a “rational” mind, how are you going to get rid of me? Answer: You aren’t.
Outlander…………… you don’t like the NEA, too bad. The NEA is the largest union in the nation now. Deal with it. Our goal is a quality public education for every child.
Apophis: I didn’t criticize the NEA. I asked what role the NEA had in education policy and whether a role in determining policy was an inherent conflict of interest for a union. Can you provide an answer?
Apoph, you ask a telling question. I’m not unilaterally asserting that you don’t have a rational mind. You’ve proved it son. You’ve demonstrated through your puerile ad hominems, and your failure to answer reasonable questions, “It’s none of your business how I use your money or what I do to your kids,” that you don’t have a mature adult mind. You can’t hold two incompatable ideas in your mind at one time, and explore each. You were selected to “teach” because of this characteristic, which is to say, you were selected to ruin a lot of children’s potentials, to make them “fit into” an evaporating industrialist designed scheme, that the industrialists have successfully transplanted to China, so they don’t need the American product anymore. What do you think vast offshoring of our manufacturing jobs means? You don’t know what it means, because you’re not that smart, or it’s not your problem. If you were living in the antebellum South, you’d be a house slave, relishing the fact you weren’t an outside slave picking cotton.
You are totally clueless that you, and people like you, are destroying public education because they are making it increasingly poisonous and debilitating to the vast majority of children who are forced to imbibe it.
I don’t have to get rid of you. Actually, I’m ready to retire from this forum, if I can. I have just need ed to prompt you to reveal to readers how selfish and anti-public-progress you are. I’ve done that, and you have done that.
I guess I knew you were really deranged when you repeated and championed my earlier statements, and then said I was misguided. In a debate, you can’t adopt somebody’s statements, and then condemn the prior speaker. I resented your conniving nefarious attempt to try to create an appearance that my position was the exact opposite of what I had argued.
I chose the moniker Heartlander because my progenitors were farmers who grew up in Iowa and Illinois. You chose the moniker Apophis because you thought the villain in StarGate who enslaved and mercilessly killed little working-class people was a really cool guy. You’ve shown people the difference between you and me. And many readers here have been enlightened as to the difference.
JB, I would certainly disregard any career advice that you might receive from Apophis.
Apophis might want to consider protecting his/her remarks by copyright. Otherwise they might be used as advertisements for private schools.
If parents could meet other education bureaucrats and teachers with the same attitude as Apophis, they would start to understand why American public schools are continuing their long downhill slide.
Keep up your good attitude, JB. Let’s hope you never meet the likes of Apophis during your career.
Outliar–
Having decent pay, basic job protections, good work environment is good for teachers and good for public education.
There’s no “conflict of interest” unless you think that what’s bad for teachers is somehow good for students.
SD, you remain wholly irrelevent as always . . .
“I took an extended leave from medical practice to home school, and we were fortunate to have a two-doctor household, so one income could be sacrificed.”
And considering that “one income” for a medical doctor is about 8 to 10 times the national average, that must have been a real sacrifice for you, Heartlander.
Shit, I’m glad homeschooling worked out for your two MD household.
It doesn’t really show what the great unwashed masses can do though, now does it?
I dunno Cap’n, is it? I can sure envision conflicts of interest. If you can’t, well, I’m not surprised. I have family that are teachers but not NEA members, because of their politics.
Thankfully, they are nothing like Apophis. They are dedicated, contemplative professionals. I would shudder to think of him teaching my child.
We need community leaders to support public education, not try to destroy it.
It’s ironic to hear someone like Heartlander disparage public education since he benifited from it more than just about anybody.
The tuition at a medical school doesn’t begin to cover its costs. Working stiffs pay taxes so that Heartlander can go to med school and live the high-life.
Meanwhile, he graduates and runs down the system that he is so richly rewarded for exploiting.
Real nice.
heh, yup, Outlandish.
Thom Frank wrote a book about your relatives called “What’s the matter with Kansas.”
They’re living in mobile home and they don’t have health care, but by golly, they got their guns and their ‘merican flags stickers!
And if they DO have health care, it’s only because the dues paying NEA members got it for them.
Cap’n': That is the problem with liberals like you. You don’t think that people can do anything for themselves. It does take willpower.Unfortunately, we have a lot of people who want the nanny government or unions to take care of them so that they can hide their own individual incompetency.
What Frank (and you I suppose) can’t understand is people who put principle above a few bucks… Damn, why can’t we buy these Kansas people?
Apophis:
I’ve been following your comments. I taught several years for #259 and had interactions with both union groups. Would you mind telling me how long you’ve taught?
Apophis:
I’ve been following your comments. I taught several years for #259 and had interactions with both union groups. Would you mind telling me how long you’ve taught?
sorry for double entry
CapnAmerica, how am I irrelevant?
That (almost) hurts my feelings.
If it didn’t come from a leftist who parrots whatever Al Gore or Al Franken is currently huckstering, I might be offended!
Tough but fair.
Outlander? Am I wrong or are you a member of the investor class? I do think I remember you posting as to that. Can you clear that up?Do you/have you worked for a living? It is true that an independently wealthy person would need little help from labor unions or the protection of their working conditions by government. Is your economic status an explanation for your posts here?
And the thread…..
Apophis and heartlander.
As an innnocent bystander, I have issues with both of you.
Apophis you are defensive and that is good. But my take is you take it too far. You cross over into strident and even militant defensiveness. Too, you resort to rather unimaginative vugarity. I more than anyone want to protect unions AND the public schools. But you don’t seem able to separate the two. That is just reactionary and not the sign of a deeply thinking or inquisitive person. Moderate a bit huh? Heartlander has good ideas. He has not called for an end to public schools. Neither did my friend JM who you also treated badly. If you only look for enemies, that is all you will likely see.
Heartlander you are at fault as well. I AM sorry truly that the experiences you have been allowed to share with your kids are not realistically available for all. But they just are not. A “two Dr. household” or even a 2 professional household is not resembling of reality in AMerica. REALITY for MOST parents is hoping they have enough time between work and sleep to even TALK to their kids, much less go on learning adventures with or homeschool them. And to make the schools even resemble such an environment would require HUGE amounts of money that the public just will not fund. Look no further than SD. He isn’t interested in the education of my kid. He wants him to grow up and compete with illegal immigrants to clean his pool or mow his lawn. In this he is the extreme of the typical. He is just more militant about it. MOST people don’t really care about the world or society or the future beyond their own selfish ends and needs.
Any of you got “a dog in this fight”? I do.
Apophis? The future of my son is in your hands. I have defended you here. Don’t make me sorry I did. Listen to heart. And heart you try to see the world through the eyes of an unemployed single dad with not a lot of faith in the future. SD? I invite you to shut up.—–
“JB………… with your attitude, I hope you never get into a bind during your teaching career and need some assistance from the association. Maybe when you actually join the ranks of public education you might begin to see reason.”- Apophis
I would be offended if you weren’t so humorous. Did you actually read my posts or did you just assume I was attacking public education? I have repeaditly defended it, time and time again.
All I said was that we should all be open to change in learning- isn’t that what education is all about?
For you, apophis, it obviously isn’t. You are all about staying with the status quo, even when an aspect isn’t working. You probably call yourself a liberal democrat, but in reality, you are closed minded, and conservitive in the fact that you are unwilling to accept new ideas.
JR–Capn America asked if I worked and home-schooled concurrrently. I was honest, and explained my circumstances. I realized in advance that some people would say,”Well you’re a rich doctor and can do things most families can’t,” so I could have easily “ignored” the question, following Apophis’s demagoguing strategem. I considered the criticism before I decided to answer the question. But I’m not Apophis. I’m willing to discourse and debate. He just wants to harangue.
My major sacrifice in home schooling wasn’t financial, it was giving up my professional life, my doctor persona, something I had spent years to create. But my kids needed help. They didn’t fit into factory education. It would have been more comfortable for all of us if they did, but they didn’t, and I had to take responsibility for ensuring they were not processed and labeled “damaged goods”. Just because they were DIFFERENT did not mean they were inferior students. They just needed a different kind of learning regimen. Education, not schooling. These are two very different things. I wanted my children to become givers, and to do this, they needed to be given to. I expected them to become proactive contributors to their fellow human beings. So far, it looks like they have this great attitude. Only time will tell what eventually turns out.
But, in any case, don’t forget, most home-school families are middle-class. Reportedly, most home-schooling mothers (who comprise the vast majority of at-home teachers) do not have 4-year college degrees, and a large number of them only have high-school degrees. They have enormous courage.
BTW, there are also small, but significant numbers of former schoolteachers who home-school, something Apophis might call them traitors for, but it happens. Or he might say, “Well it’s okay for them to do it because they are qualified.” But the salient fact is, they have decided that they believe THEIR OWN CHILDREN MERIT ONE-ON-ONE teaching. And they are willing to SACRIFICE lifetime-secure employment, and great healthcare and pension benefits.
I was often been asked by people, “What do you do for a living?” I responded, “I’m a home-schooling dad.” Some people responded indifferently or negatively, but most thought that was neat, and asked me great questions. In the vast majority of instances, I didn’t mention I was a doctor, unless they asked me, “What did you do before you decided to home-school?”
I’ve had several enjoyable conversations with a former public teacher who worked with kids who had gotten on the wrong end of the juvenile justice system. She was white, her students were black and brown. But they connected. In Atlanta, she went into ghetto neighborhoods whose entry-streets were barricaded at night, driving to see kids and parents in their homes. She was accepted, and protected by the residents. Nobody stole her hubcaps, broke into her car or tried to rape her. She also taught sailing in Florida to teenagers with criminal records. I told her to write a book–her stories are absolutely riveting.
I want to talk about thinking “different” in public education. Winona State University in Minnesota was the first state-chartered normal school west of the Mississippi (1858), then it became a teachers college in 1921, then a regional university in 1975. Today, Winona is structured into five colleges: business, education, liberal arts, nursing and health sciences, and science and engineering.
In essence Winona State long followed the standard evolutionary pathway of what are today regional public universities that draw most, but not all, of their students from quasi-circumscribed geographic sectors within states, enabling most students to stay relatively close to their family homes.
Let’s look at the last five Winona State presidents’ credentials:
1967-77 Robert A. DufresneBachelor’s St. Cloud State (founded as a normal school)Master’s U ColoradoDoctorate U North DakotaHead of education and psychology divisions at Kearny State College, Nebraska (founded as a normal school)
1977-83 Robert A. HansonNo education data givenWas a “classroom teacher” at the West Central School in MinneapolisBecame Director of Admissions at Moorhead State (founded as a normal school), rising to Academic Vice President
1983-88 Thomas F. StarkBachelor’s U Minnesota-Duluth (founded as a normal school)Ph.D. Michigan State UTaught in public schools in Grand RapidsBecame an associate professor of education administration at U Minnesotathen served as Mankato’s superintendent of public schools
1989-2005 Darrell KruegerB.A. Poli Sci & history, Southern Utah State UPh.D. U ArizonaWas vice president for academic affairs and dean of instruction at Truman State University (originally the First Missouri Normal School)
Up to this point we see Winona State following the standard traditional pattern of hiring regional public university presidents: they were all educated in institutions that were founded as normal schools. Two were K-12 teachers, while two were not, but were faculty at universities that were originally normal schools.
Here are the new president’s credentials:
2005-Present Judith A. RamaleyB.A. biology, Swarthmore CollegePh.D. biological sciences, UCLAPostdoctoral fellowship, Indiana UniversityProfessor of Biology, U VermontPresident, U VermontPresidential professorship in biological sciences, U MaineVisiting Senior Scientist, National Academy of SciencesExecutive Vice-Chancellor University of KansasAssociate Director for Research and Development, U Nebraska Medical CenterAssistant Director, Education and Human Resources, National Science Foundation
Does anyone notice a distinction between the former Winona presidents, and the last?Minnesota’s leaders are realizing that, to be a true comprehensive university, Winona State must have commensurate leadership. Swarthmore is one of the “Little Ivies”, a premier private liberal arts college. Four of its alumni have won Nobel Prizes. UCLA is a world-renowned institution in biomedical sciences. DNA-double-helix co-discoverer James Watson earned his Ph.D. at IU. (Biology is a really important field in the 21st century American economy.)
The prior president-selection pattern is black-and-white clear. Winona State was created as a teacher-training institution. For decades, it was glibly assumed that to honor its origins, institutional leaders should have K-12 roots, either as former K-12 teachers, or as teachers of K-12 teachers.
But the modern reality is, the great majority of today’s regional public universities’ STUDENTS and FACULTY are NOT in the College of Education. So their educations should not be shaped by College of Education people. The decisions made several decades ago to convert teachers colleges into comprehensive broad-based universities ensured that teacher-trainees would eventually become a small minority in the revamped institutions’ student bodies. Actually in almost all cases, education-major enrollment per se has either fallen to 2nd place after business administration, or 3rd place after nursing/healthcare. In essence, given this circumstance, it makes no sense to have K-12-education experts running modern broad-based regional public universities. Winona State’s new president’s selection represents acknowledgement of this reality.
Some could say, and some have, resentfully said, “These interlopers are stealing our school from us. They’re lowering us from the top of OUR OWN totem pole.” But the reality is, this change is beneficial, because universities like Winona State are working to integrate K-12 teaching with a modern economy by having future teachers study with, and under non-K-12-education people.
So, we can have hope that tomorrow’s teachers are a lot more connected to the outer world than past-educated teachers. Unfortunately, the obsolete Industrial Age, factory-school faculty seniority system will make it hard for the new generation to use its knowledge and skills fully. It would be like if the UAW inserted itself into Microsoft, Apple or Google and said, “We’re making these rules that you must follow.” Hopefully, young people will exercise their youthful energy and passion, and effect change. It is going to happen elsewhere. If it doesn’t happen in Wichita, the community will go down the tubes, a victim of progress that it declined to keep up with.
“You don’t think that people can do anything for themselves. . . of people who want the nanny government or unions to take care of them so that they can hide their own individual incompetency.”
When your house is on fire, can you put it out yourself with a garden hose, Outlandish?
Can you build a highway from Wichita to Kansas City?
Can you start a new department at your local university?
What’s the matter, Outlander, NOT COMPTENT ENOUGH?
Blinded by ideology . . . sad, just sad.
And dangerous to the rest of us.
Dr. Heart–
Please limit your posts to a managable length.
Otherwise people will stop reading them.
Oops . . . too late.
“Outlander? Am I wrong or are you a member of the investor class?”
JR: Yup, you’re wrong. I own a small business and work for a living. Maybe you were thinking of Cap’n America.
I really have nothing against unions. They serve a useful purpose in situations where workers are being treated unfairly. They also can get out of control in their demands and damage the businesses that provide their livelihood.
I am still curious about the NEA’s potentially conflicting roles in representing the financial interests of teachers and also being actively involved in educational policy decisions.
CapnAmerica, Are you literate or not? Can you only digest short sounbites? I don’t think so. You’re a very smart, mostly thoughtful, person. Public teachers colleges are changing. The leading ones are evolving to recruit non-K-12-teacher personnel. Which isn’t anti-K-12-teacher, it’s pro-teacher. Because to be an effective K-12 teacher in this century, you must learn from outside voices. Forget me. It is new people who are coming into teacher-training.
What do I personally want? I want to see future teachers be at the top of their class, amidst non-K-12-teaching-career students. I want to see music teachers who have composed their own music, English teachers who have written stories and essays that non-teachers want to read, math and science teachers who have engaged in math and science research, social studies teachers who have done primary-literature library and internet research, and realize, they can teach young people really interesting facts and ideas.
JR, if you are unemployed, take your own kids under your wing. Do something amazing, as my permantly-disabled cousin did. If the outside corporate-dominated world calls you a failure, your children will think the opposite. And they will be right.
Well, I am done with this thread. This thread started out on the premise that public schools are as good as their counterparts. I have seen continuous bash after bash on public schools. When I defend our public schools, I am bashed. True, sometimes my responses are to the point (It doesn’t ever bother me to tell someone to kiss my ass).
I have a few closing comments to make to a few individuals.
1. CB – it has obviously been a few years since you have had anything to do with ” both union groups”. United Teachers of Wichita has been a merged union for nearly 10 years now. For the record, I have 18 years of classroom experience. It would have been 25 years had I not spent some time outside the profession working in industry.
2. JB – I hope you succeed in education. The Fine Arts are an important component to a world class education. I hope however that you come into the profession understanding that your professional organizations are actually working to make public education better for ALL students. Someone has to the “bulldog” guarding the profession, people like me.
3. JR – thanks for defending me against the anti-public education attacks. I’d listen to what heartlander says if there were anything of value that he says. heartlander attempts to impress all with his lengthy tomes and alleged superior intellect. I find him irrelevant because of this. JR, be sure of one thing; if your child ever has the fortune of having me as one of his teachers he/she will have the best science education that is available for that one year. Contrary to what might be written here, I am good at what I do.
4. Cap’n America – Probably the best post you have made on this thread was:”Having decent pay, basic job protections, good work environment is good for teachers and good for public education.
There’s no “conflict of interest” unless you think that what’s bad for teachers is somehow good for students.”
What is good for teachers IS good for the students. This is what I want, this is what the NEA wants.
I’d say you are a good friend of education.
5. heartlander – The bottom line is that you need to get over yourself. You brag way too much about things you can in no way prove. If you know so much about education, how come Bob Corkins was appointed the Commissioner of Education and not YOU? I see you both have about the same credentials for the position.I’m sure some posters think your ideas sound “great”, but we professional educators have seen your type before and know your ulterior motives. I have no further need to converse with you.
6. The assorted anti-public education riff-raff: I owe you nothing. You want to blame your failures in life on public education. KMA!
Apophis, you and Bob Corkins are twins. Both of you glommed onto political processes to increaae your personal powwer. You’re both winners. Congratulations. Slap each other on the back. Too bad children under your schemes are losers. Both of you are working to destroy public education. Corkin wanted vouchers without trying to transform our public-funded regular schools. You want obsolete corporate serving taxpayer-funded forcred-attendance government schools. You’re both really stupid toadies.
Apophis,
I would like to thank you for your “contributions” to this thread. I have conveyed your comments to many homeschoolers and would be homeschoolers. Hopefully you can do for homeschooling what oj simpson did for miscegenation!:)
V.L.R.B!!
Obsolete ……………..that is too funny. At least I make a difference heartlander.
Ian …………………… convey whatever you want to you fools who home school. I could really care less. Home schooling poises little threat to public education. Generally, the public schools have to clean up the mess you home-schoolers make with you kids in your efforts to “shelter” them..
One parting observation Ian, YOU are the most racially intolerant person I have seen posting on this blog. Of course, these comments will come back to haunt you.
CapnAmerica is absolutely right about my education. In today’s dollars, the federal government paid close to $250,000 for my four-year medical-degree education. Teachers deserve something similar in terms of their education funding. They should receive a resource-intensive education. Of course to receive it, they must show exceptional diligence and dedication to their studies, as premeds must do to qualify for expensive post-baccalaureat invesment. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been required.
Apophis denigrates home-schooling. But the university he attended welcomes home-schooled students. All public universities today do. Apophis has proved he’s against vouchers, charter schools and home-schooling. He has proved he is against 21st-century public education transformation. He’s a dinosaur. Too bad if your children are within reach of his maw.
WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh heartlander. You just can’t deal with the fact that I represent the majority of public educators and you can’t do a damned thing about it.
WHO are YOU to decide how education needs to be “transformed” in the 21st century? Obviously you care so little that you refuse to be part of the democratic process that elects community members to help make those decisions. All YOU can do is write lengthy diatribes on a blog. Too bad heartlander is opposed to the American way of making decisions.
Apophis,just for the record, I haven’t attacked any of the professional organizations. I don’t know enough about them to do so. I won’t pretend to be knowledgeable in that subject. I said mainly that we can all benefit from reexamining teaching methods, and always looking to become better teachers. You said that you are an excellent science teacher, and I have no reason not to take your word for it.
My motive isn’t to pick fights with people on this blog even though I tend to get worked up. I think that we all have a common ground, and that is we wish the best possible education for children. Discussing this, and listen to other peoples ideas on the subject in a civil manner can only strengthen education.
Truce accepted JB.
If you actually met me you would realize quickly that I am an advocate for all students and active in the education reform process.
Reform doesn’t mean scrap the entire system just because one method works for a small handful of students as has been proposed on this thread.
D’OH, I of course meant ot say that I hope that Apophis does to public idoctrination what oj did for miscegenation.
BTW, homeschooling is a threat to the statist\collectivists. Just look at the leftist EY where they are trying to ban homescholling all over Europe. Look at the vile and vitriol of satist scum like hillary and reno when they speak of homeschoolers. Homeschooled kinder can THINK, logically and freely and that is a threat to the evil statists and their jew world order.
viva La Revolucion Blanco!@!
I may be a late entry into the “game”, but I’ve been reading the entries for some time, with great interest. I have worked as a professional in Wichita’s public schools (at both ends of the economic spectrum), a private religious school in Wichita and at W.S.U. In addition, I have provided professional services to three home-schooled students from two different families. As a result, I think I have a working knowledge and exposure to a wide variety of educational formats. Without question, I can say that as a professional who has spent almost twenty years teaching and helping children in our community, and as a mom of a middle schooler, I find Apophis’ attitude to be frightening.
Such a closed-minded, defensive, attitude has no place in the classroom. I hope that his/her philosophy goes no further than this blog…although it’s somewhat doubtful. I believe in the value of public education…..it’s fundamental to our society, both now and in the future. I vote, when given the chance, for every measure to increase funding for public education. That does not mean, for a moment, that I believe,unequivocably, that public education is all that it can be.
To acknowledge public education’s(or any business’ or institution’s) shortcomings is the first step towards improvement and producing a quality product. What worked 50-75 years ago, may not be the best model for our country today. To be complacent, closed-minded, and unwilling to explore and implement new ideas, is dangerous for our country, our children and our children’s children.
Apophis, I’d like to call a truce with you too. As a doctor, I just hate seeing your self-shots-to-your foot wounds, and your other empty-all-cylinders wild antics hitting kids in the kneecaps. I undestand you’re a Wild Kansas West yahoo, but really, you need to put those six-shooters down, because you don’t know how to handle them.
Apophis, I agree with what you said in your last post very much. I got the feeling from your other posts (as have others) that you were closed to any reform. What you said above is the point that I have been making much of the time- that we don’t need to scrap the system.
I’ll just say this- be glad that you never got me in your science class. Let’s just say that my strengths lie in music. :)
carolb …………………I hope you DO find my attitude frightening. It is about time that the profession be led by people who actually have the cajones to step up and say what needs to be said. I apologize for nothing. Educators have long been economically abused because of our dedication to the children of this country.
At no time have I advocated no change in the educational system. Reflection and reform are a constant in education. What I will not do is give any credence to ideas that divert public tax dollars out of the public sector. Many schemes have been formulated but none have produced tangible results. Home Schooling is a choice, one I do not agree with, but a choice however. The same can be said about private and parochial schools. The vast majority of families and their children have little choice other than public schools. This is why public schools are my sole focus. What is good for public schools is good for the vast majority of America.
Carolb, which middle school is your children attending? Wouldn’t it be great if I actually have your child in class? Without a doubt, if I did have your child I would possibly be one of their favorite teachers or at least the teacher they will learn most from. I know my job and I do it well. The bottom line is that I really do not care what you think. I don’t care what most of the bloggers think because their opinions have no relevance to me. I teach the prescribed standards for my content area. I am well respected in my profession and I produce results with my students.
Why should I care what you people think?
JB …………………you would have come out of my class lving science. As for being anti-reform, challenging heartlander’s unrealistic ideas might make me look that way. You have to see those ideas for what they are.
heartlander……….. understand this: there will never be a truce with you. You last post was intentionally degrading. You still think you are better than I am, you are not. You still think you are a professional educator, you are not.
I wonder if Apophis is really the marketing director for a private school.
His/her posts couldn’t be any more effective in steering parents away from the public schools!
I don’t know, Apophis. You said “you would have come out of my class lving science”. Heartlander said “Mathematics isn’t the four arithmetic functions. It’s a visual art. It is a language art. It is an esthetic subject. This is why mathematicians say things like, “This is a beautiful proof.” “This is really elegant.”"
You both are passionate about your subjects and view them as essential to education. You both seem to regard them as more than just numbers and words in a text book, and want your students to understand this also.
There is always common ground to be found somewhere.
JB …………..heartlander is not a mathematician. He may know mathematics, but he is no mathematician.
I would agree however that many of the disciplines are more than just content areas. To truly understand science, one must see the world from that viewpoint. Unfortunately, few adolescents will actually take the time to see things that way in today’s world.
What I want is to have the ability to bring that way of thinking to all students, not just the students who have parents rich enough to provide real life learning opportunities. There can be no common ground with those with elitist attitudes toward education.
“heartlander is not a mathematician. He may know mathematics, but he is no mathematician.”I will say only that it doesn’t take a degree in music to be a musician.
“What I want is to have the ability to bring that way of thinking to all students, not just the students who have parents rich enough to provide real life learning opportunities.”
I agree with that completely. That is why I want to work in public schools. I have always had a special place in my heart for those who cannot afford instruments, lessons, ect, and I really want to work with those students more in the future.
I confess that I haven’t read every single post since the begginning of the thread, but most of the posts have been about improving education (there have been some exceptions.) If we abandoned public education there would be those who could not afford education. That is why I think it is so important.
apophis –
You say that Heartlander is “no mathematician”. I’m interested in that statement. What does it mean? What evidence do you have to support this notion? Just curious.
If I was to say, “Apophis is no scientist. Instead, he’s a science teacher,” would you agree or would you disagree and provide evidence to support your position?
Here’s the ironic part, Apophis –You posed the question, “Why should I care what you people think?”
You should care because (I’m making an assumption here) you are not an expert on evidence-based best practices for public education — nor am I, nor is Heartlander. I care what YOU think because I’m a taxpayer, a colleague and a consumer. In reading your entries, however, I have a difficult time interpreting your comments, other than the fact that you’re pro public education, pro teachers’ unions and anti-educational alternatives.
Your salary (although completely inadequate for the obstacles you must face) and your professional budget are dependent on state and local funding: dependent on the support of the taxpayers who read your statements and experience your attitude.
The majority of people want a strong public education system (although they tend to want “something for nothing”). Even if they choose to educate their children alternatively, they understand that a strong public educational system is fundamental to a strong nation and society.
Instead of throwing out insults and making vague accusations, tell them what forward-thinking concepts are being implemented. Tell them specifically what teachers are doing personally and individually to advance their own knowledge of their content area to teach America’s “best and brightest” in science or math. It seems to me that your energies would be better spent educating, not alienating the public.
Oh, very high-minded of you, Carol.
It’s Apophis’s job to be a PR spokesman for the public schools and as just he has to just take all the crap anyone wants to throw at him? Is that it?
I think the only person he has to answer to is his immediate supervisor, probably the administration of his school.
If you have a problem with that, move to Russia . . .
If Apophis is a teachers association representative, elected by his peers, then it arguably IS his job to be a public spokesperson, which he indicated he was a few weeks ago, when he indicated that he planned to go to Topeka to lobby for more funding for Wichita schools.
If communication boils down to reporting to his supervisor, holding closed-to-the-press union meetings, and having closed-to-the-press meetings with legislators, I would infer that the public is being excluded from the “public” education communication loop. In sum, those who PAY for public education don’t have a “need to know”, in the eyes of the “public” educators.
That’s a bit high-minded. It hardly seems to reflect DEMOCRATIC principles, because a democracy, or democratic republic if you prefer, cannot function without an informed citizenry. It is arguably ANTI-EDUCATIONAL to keep taxpayers in the dark, instead of educating them as to the processes that are transpiring within the “public” education system.
Several years ago “sunshine” legislation was enacted to enable Kansas citizens to understand government processes, modeled after the 1970’s federal Freedom of Information Act.
Many public officials have reportedly evaded light-shedding, when given the opportunity, either real or contrived. This may be due to some officials’ and their backers’ quests to acquire and maintain power. It’s a lot easier to do things in secret, without the messiness and obstructive potential of public examination and debate. The Bush administration understands this principle very well. This is why record numbers of federal documents have been categorized as “classified” even though senior government staff who have access to them say that most of the documents do not require classification, and should be made publicly-inspectable.
The Pentagon has legitimate reasons for opacity, as a matter of protecting national security. I don’t think this argument can be mustered for our local public schools.
Does carolb need to move to Russia? Why, if she already lives in a very close facsimile?
If Apophis wants to teach science well, and I’d sincerely like to seem him do it, I would urge him to lead a task force to create a new magnet-school program giving math-and-science passionate 4th through 6th grade students 10 hours of weekly instruction in integrated mathematics and science coursework, and 8th through 12th graders 15+ hours.
I suspect that you could find 150-200 children in each grade level (ca. 3-4% of the school population) who would love to take this pathway, if it were offered to them. On Sunday nights they’d be dreaming of Monday, in eager anticipation of discovering new wonders.
Apophis along with some of his colleagues might even want to loop with these kids: the teachers would get to deeply know these students and their parents over 3 to 4 year periods, and relish making a lasting impact on these children’s lives as mentors.
This kind of program would draw many erstwhile private school students to public schools. Hence, in prospectively budgeting it, a sound analysis would not simplisticly assume a fixed revenue pie out of which a new cost-piece has to be carved, but rather it would predict an ENLARGING REVENUE PIE. This is what happens when you devise excellent public enterprises.
It would send a compelling message to the outside world that Wichita isn’t a declining old industrial city, it’s a progressive city eager to take on 21st century challenges, and grow.
Is it feasible to create this new education pathway? It all depends on how much passion, energy, and conviction people possess.
Heartlander,
What you propose is very facinating.That would certainly be an interesting departure from our current liberal arts focused education.
Several questions,
What happens if a student decides that he or she dislikes this path of study? It certainly happens enough in college, so I would estimate that it would happen alot with younger students. In college if you change majors you can lose several years of educational progress, but that just the way it is. Would it be this way in your proposed program or would their be some sort of reintegration method to make up for lost credits in other subjects?
Although I recognize that the initial move would be experemental and on a small scale basis, would it eventually be spread on a large scale basis? Would there be ‘arts schools’, ’social studies schools’, so on?
At what point would a student have to decide upon which path to follow. Or would it be based on some sort of competancy test or another method. Would you be forced to reject students from the school who wanted to go, similar to elite college admissions?
How would it, if at all, affect those student’s college admissions? Although I would assume that a college would be eager to accept a student with a lot of skill in his field of study, would the college or institution look down on the student because of their lack of basis in general education?
Those are just the initial questions that came to mind. I confess my self very intrigued by the idea at least.
Apophis- heartlander has presented an idea that doesn’t consist of destroying public education. I’m eager to hear insights, disagreements/ agreements from your perspective. Surely no harm can come from open discussion…
JB–Good questions!
That’s the thing about experiments. In opening new doors of inquiry and study, they create new questions.
As I ponder yours, some things come to mind. If you teach young people to study anything deeply, the study skills are transferable. Moreover, two to three hours studying math and science doesn’t preculude all other subjects. It just creates a primary concentration.
I think that disciplines other than math and science can follow suit in this primary concentration model. This is a natural corollary.
In terms of enrollment caps and entry competition, if enough people want something, programs can be expanded to satisfy demand.
JB –
I, too, look forward to reading Apophis’ feedback on the idea of math/science intensive schools for middle schoolers. Since middle schoolers typically do not accumulate credits, in the same way that high school students do, the issue of credits required for college admittance shouldn’t be an issue.
Certainly, language arts/writing can be incorporated into a science curriculum quite easily, although I don’t think that literature-based instruction should be completely abandoned. And just think of the electives … rocketry, robotics, physics, chem lab, etc. taught by people who love and know science! It sure would beat some of one local school’s offerings: walking, gym games, day spa (I kid you not!)
Why have the discussion carolb? All those things you and heartlander blather on about aren’t going to happen. Why should I waste my time specualting?
Forgot to spell check the last post ……….. it should be “speculating”.
Please speculate Apophis, as I am writing an article about the decline of public schools in America, and I would like some more material. You are the best evidence as to how far public education has declined.
Tell me again, how is it that professionals need to be protected by a labor union?
Unions are designed to aid society’s lower-caste workers who are subject to abuse and oppression in the absence of mass-solidarity.
For example, industrial executives aren’t unionized, but factory-floor workers are.
Hotel managers aren’t unionized, but maids are.
Doctors aren’t unionized, but nurses are.
School superintendants aren’t unionized (they individually negotiate their contract terms with BOE’s), but teachers are.
University professors and administrators aren’t unionized, but grad student research assistants are, at least in public research universities. (The Supreme Court shot down private university unionization.)
I presented a proposal that people who understand the central role that science and technology play in our society would support, extended math and science classes for interested students. Apophis says they “aren’t gonna happen”.
So what he is saying is, as a knowledgeable veteran of Wichita public schools, Wichita will not support a progressive, WISE educational idea.
Some of you might say I don’t know what I’m talking about. Three months ago, and actually last year, in private correspondence, I said that the expenditure of $200 million for an arena was an opportunity-costing unwise use of limited tax resources, and that instead, the money should be used to build 21st-century bio/nano/info-tech research and education facilities at WSU. Research universities are extremely powerful economic engines, promulgating new-product ideas, encouraging locally owned startups, and attracting outside corporations looking for places where there are well-educated talent pools to hire. These raise community revenues, including tax revenues for things like public education.
Fast Forward: This week, the Eagle reported that nearly 60 community leaders, including Connie Dietz and Winston Brooks, visited Richmond, Virginia, as part of the Visioneering effort. They were told that Virginia Commonwealth University (public, primarily commuter college like WSU) is an anchor of Richmond’s campaign to reinvent itself into a prosperous 21st century city, as well as force for reinvigorating downtown.
Why did I propose precisely what Wichita’s leaders have now gone to Virginia to discover? Because strategic development of a university as a primary economic engine isn’t rocket science. It has been done so many times and in so many places, with superb results, it is OBVIOUS, unless you’ve never lived outside the cloistered confines of Wichita or its rural surrounds that this is key to economic invigoration. Oklahomans “got this” more than a decade ago. Coloradans, Texans, and North Carolinans, four decades ago. Massachusetts, New York, California and Illinois, more than a century ago.
But, if you are going to develop a high-powered research and tertiary-education inititative, you can’t do it without K-12 production of capable students–unless you go to 100% importation of students, while the natives are funneled into lower-paying sectors of a high-tech economy.
It will be extremely interesting to see if Wichita’s leaders bring a take-home lesson with them. Like builders saying, “Gee we can make just as much money constructing research labs as doing an arena. But the former will bring many more new people into town, and give many more jobs to Wichitans, who will want houses and new shopping centers, and we’ll make money on those too.”
It will be interesting to see whether Ms. Dietz and Mr. Brooks “get it”. Perhaps if they do, a mandate will be passed to build the math-and-science program I have proposed, and marching orders be handed to Apophis, and then he can say, “We K-12 public educators invented this idea.” A little fib, but it’s okay.
If the Richmond-visiting task force does NOT get the take-home lesson, then in 20 years, Richmond will be prospering, while Wichita will have slid into further hinterland decay and irrelevance.
Ford has just announced a 45,000 jobs cut. GM has slashed jobs in unionized factories. Chrysler sold out to Daimler-Benz, which led to the migration of auto production jobs to the ununionized South. Boeing sold its regional plants to Onex, of Canada, and over time, either wages and benefits are going to drop, or else the jobs are going to migrate to China. (Wage and benefit drops include cereative accounting subterfuges like property tax exemptions and tax-subsidized bonds that SOMEBODY has to pay for, like little people.)
I guess if you think that Wal-Mart, QuikTrip, Dillons and other $6-8/hr jobs are as good as disappearing $25/hr aircraft jobs, then that’s because you’ve received industrial age public-education math instruction. Provided by members of the underclass who want to think they are superior to their peers, like Apophis.
“Why should I waste my time specualting?” This is Apophis in a nutshell. To further his bb in a boxcar mentality, why think at all? Is that the type individual we want teaching our children? Someone who refuses to think?
Careful, dude, falling off the end of the earth is still within the realm of possibility in your world.
heartlander ……………… it’s just more of the same from you.Truthfully, I love to share your way-out-there ideas with my colleagues each morning. We get quite a kick out of your absurdity.
Now about the Visioneering trip to Richmond ……… it sounds great! In fact that nasty ole’ teachers union is an active Visioneering participant. Go figure!
I really love this one:”It will be interesting to see whether Ms. Dietz and Mr. Brooks “get it”. Perhaps if they do, a mandate will be passed to build the math-and-science program I have proposed, and marching orders be handed to Apophis, and then he can say, “We K-12 public educators invented this idea.” A little fib, but it’s okay.” How is your “mandate” going to be funded heartlander? Truthfully, I’d love to see a math-and-science initiative. The real world problems is finding the qualified educators. Contrary to what you believe, having a degree in the sciences or mathematics doesn’t make you a teacher. heartlander, the sooner you see that you are in over your head here the better off you will be. Or ……….. is it that you just enjoy having your ass handed to you every time you think you are bettering me?
This one:”I guess if you think that Wal-Mart, QuikTrip, Dillons and other $6-8/hr jobs are as good as disappearing $25/hr aircraft jobs, then that’s because you’ve received industrial age public-education math instruction. Provided by members of the underclass who want to think they are superior to their peers, like Apophis.”, isn’t even worth my effort.
You just keep falling farther and farther behind heartlander.
JM Walker …………..it matters NOT to me if you think I am teaching your children. The fact is this; I DO teach your children and I do it good. What about that bothers you?
I think I know what gets to you……….. I am an educator who will defend my profession against your kind. If you don’t like my attitude, well just kiss my ….
“I DO teach your children and I do it good.” (Apophis) It’s “well”, Apophis, not “good”.
I suppose we can all be thankful that Apophis doesn’t teach English or Composition. Oops, I forgot, scientific writing IS an important component of his class, or at least should be. Oh well…..
Oh for go’s sake carolb, can you NITPICK a little more ………. this is a f****** blog!
“god’s sake” carolb ………….. I wouldn’t want you to say I can’r spell.
next?
So ………..carolb………….what exactly is up your ass?
I just can’t understand a self-professed math teacher who would respond to a proposal to create extended integrated math and science classes, “aren’t gonna happen”.
There was an Eagle article a couple years ago, that described a local brou-ha over a then free website hotmath.org, now a subscription site, hotmath.com. This company shows kids how to solve odd-numbered math textbook exercises. It’s basic idea derives from college-level student solutions manuals, but with a computerized improvement: rather than just show whole multi-step solutions, it poses questions, to get kids to think. If a kid is completely stumped, one key press gives a bit of information. That may be enough to make him or her say, “Oh I think I can do this one from here.” If not, the student can open the next step of the solution. And so on.
It’s a nice program, co-created by a Berkeley computer science Ph.D. and an engineering professor at Santa Clara University.
Berkeley usually ties Stanford in computer science Ph.D. programs at #1: Intel was founded by two Berkeley Ph.D.’s, Apple’s Steve Wozniak went there after making his Apple fortune, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt earned his degree there. Unix was invented at Bell Labs, but Berkeley Unix became the most popular standard. Apache was invented by a Berkeley student. So, the Hotmath CEO has had a formidable education.
Berkeley also ranks among the world’s top half-dozen mathematics centers, winning one or more Fields Medals a decade (the “Nobel Prize” of mathematics). Many of the world’s top mathematicians visit Berkeley during the summer or do sabbaticals there. To earn a CS Ph.D. there you have be exceptionally good in math.
The Mathematical Association of America invited the Hotmath CEO to give a talk at its annual meeting in 2003, and it was well received. The leading math textbook publishers such as CPM, Glencoe-McGraw Hill, McDougell-Littell, Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, D.C. Heath and Key Curriculum Press have signed on.
Most of the solutions contributors are public math school teachers.
So what was the response voiced by math chairs in this hinterland state? “We don’t want students using it; it’s a crutch.” “We want kids to give their own answers, not somebody else’s.”
Which really translates into, “This freaks us out. It enables kids to learn math outside the classroom, and reduces our control.”
These are the same people who complain about kids not doing their homework. The kids attended math class at school. They can’t remember, that evening, what the teacher said, several hours earlier. Their textbooks OMIT CRITICAL INFORMATION that is given in TEACHER EDITION BOOKS and supplementary materials.
The teachers, if they attended college after 1990, have been beneficiaries of student solutions manuals. But, despite this, they can’t add 1+1: “If seeing detailed odd-exercise solutions helped me, how can this NOT HELP MY TOUNGER STUDENTS?”
The teacher who in the Eagle article said, “I want kids to create their own solutions,” mystifies me. Teachers learn OTHER PEOPLE’S problem-solution methods. They use textbooks, blackline masters and publisher-provided test-generation software. Every good math student learns standard mathematical concepts and procedures.
In the MATHCOUNTS contest, which presents unusual math problems not found in textbooks, Kansas scored in the bottom half of the nation last spring. Not one Kansas student scored in the nation’s top 50, even though Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri produced such a student. Within the state, the top five schools were in Overland Park (3) and Topeka (2). Wichita, “Kansas’s largest city” was left in the dust.
In prior years, Collegiate and Independent have been among Kansas’s top five schools in MATHCOUNTS. But MOST of the high-ranked schools in Kansas, and across America are PUBLIC schools. So what is USD 259’s peculiar problem? If teacher-leaders like Apophis don’t think there is a problem, THAT IS THE PROBLEM. They’re living in denial.
It has been mentioned that USD 259’s annual budget is close to $500 million. Apophis and co. could do a lot of great things with that kind of money, if they knew what they were doing. Alas, it strongly appears that they don’t.
Apophis has said I’m not a mathematician. Correctamundo. The #2, 3 and 4 students in my high school class majored in math, and two earned graduate degrees. They’re mathematicians. When I got to college, in a concentrated class of highly-able math students, I was no longer the best. But I was the best in biology, so I went with my strongest suit. I did original research in biomedicine. I don’t know if I could have done that in mathematics. But I can teach middle-school and high school mathematics well. There isn’t a prealgebra, algebra I, II, geometry, precalc or calc textbook problem I can’t solve–it may take me some time to do a difficult one, but I have never encountered one I couldn’t figure out if I persisted. And I know how to teach problem-attacking methods to serious students who are willing to STRUGGLE, e.g. “I don’t get it, I don’t get it, I don’t get it, Oh wait a minute. THIS IS OBVIOUS. I GET THIS. Why didn’t I see this before?”
Cuz that’s what learning math is really all about. It isn’t the social studies concept of learning new things that fit easily with what you already know, it’s tackling things that make utterly no sense, and persisting until, “Ah, this makes sense”. Kids’ unconscious minds have enormous power. Often the understanding comes after a good night’s sleep.
This is a critical reason why future math teachers should not be under the control of ed-school soshy types. These ed-school people don’t understand math, so they corrupt the process of training math teachers by their own math-phobic prejudices.
Anyway, for those of you who have kids in public schools here, give hotmath.com a try.
You just cannot handle that you have NO control heartlander. You can type and type and type ……….. It doesn’t get you anywhere. heartlander really thinks that HE is going to change the system…………LOL
PS. Apophis, do you support kids’ use of Hotmath? Also, did you coach a MATHCOUNTS team last year? I mean, I know you are really dedicated to teaching math, according to your own self-profession.
You are the consummate republican word smith ………….. posture a question so anyway I answer makes me look bad.
I have no opinion on “Hotmath”, I’ll leave that to the front line math teachers. No, I did not coach “mathcounts” team. I was, however, quite involved with Science Olympiad as well as the Toshiba Explorivision competition.
NEXT?
Robinson Middle School ranked #42nd last year on Science Olympiad national. Is that where you teach?
My errror, that was #40.
Sorry again. It was #42.
On my party, actually, I’d register Green, if that was available here. Apophis, you give strong evidence that you’re the republican lap dog.
Nah, my buddy C. Jenney coaches the team over at Robinson.
FYI …………. I never have, and never will vote for a repug.
So, Apophis, how did your school do on the Science Olympiad?
Apophis, would you like your school to score in the top 50 on the Science Olympiad? The top 25? The top 10? It’s DOABLE. You might need some help from people like me from aviation engineers and retired WSU science faculty. Are you willing to accept help? Like, there’s this accomplished science-knowledgable POOL here. Are you willing to tap into this knowledge pool? If not, what are your reasons?
heartlander ……….you’re missing out on the entire spirit of Science Olympiad and similar competitions. It is NOT about getting professionals involved, it IS about encouraging young men and women to strive to excel in the area of scientific inquiry. What a horse’s ass you are heartlander. Not everyone can be number 1 in a competition. The attempt by the students to strive for excellence is what really matters in the long run. Only someone as arrogant as you are heartlander would trivialize any student’s attempt to participate in a science competition just because they did not win the competition.
NEXT?
Apophis
Sigh…. There was an intellegent conversation going on here and I was hoping that you could take part in it.
I too had question for Heartlander’s proposals, so I asked them in an intellegent manner. You do not engage in a real debate, and that really confuses me. Perhaps your way of educating really is the best way. Explain why! Show us the problems with heartlander’s proposals. “All those things you and heartlander blather on about aren’t going to happen. Why should I waste my time specualting?” is not an answer it’s a copout.You said before that you were a leading proponent for reform earlier in a post. You have yet to show anyone that, you constantly attack anyone who has any other opinion.
Let’s open our minds, people, it’s the only way that we can learn!
PS: I’m not attacking the union, the teachers in our public schools, or anything else, so please don’t make those arguments against me. I’m only asking you to defend yourself.
JB …………. the defense I use is that these “ideas” do not deserve debate in this venue.
You, as the tax-paying public only have a say about the education issues through your DEMOCRATICALLY elected representatives. I believe that would be the Board of Education. They make the ultimate decisions, based on National and State curriculum standards. Those decisions are then carried out by the District Administration.
The point I’m making is that heartlander just wants to trash public education and is using his “ideas” as a way to make it look like public education is failing. Public education is not failing …… heartlander (and others) cannot accept that because it doesn’t fit into their narrow world view.
I throw out the insults for two main reasons: they are generally warranted and I want to. There is always that pesky first amendment that allows me that freedom of speech. If my language pisses someone off, well I’ve succeeded then. You may not like this kind of attitude for an education professional; well that’s the way I am. Many, many people respect me for this attitude. I am sorry if you do not.
Here’s the legacy of the public school system that Apophis defends, courtesy of the New York Times:
“Only about half of this year’s high school graduates have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, and even fewer are prepared for college-level science and math courses, according to a yearly report from ACT, which produces one of the nation’s leading college admissions tests.
“The report, based on scores of the 2005 high school graduates who took the exam, some 1.2 million students in all, also found that fewer than one in four met the college-readiness benchmarks in all four subjects tested: reading comprehension, English, math and science.
I suppose that someone who thinks that correctly selecting an adverb or adjective is important only under formal circumstances wouldn’t be ashamed to defend a system that produces results like these, and still insists on keeping its monopoly on the financing and production of public schooling.
Many of us, however, are troubled.
“the defense I use is that these “ideas” do not deserve debate in this venue.”
Note the ideas in quotes. This tells a lot about the writer. He seems unable to understand that ideas are what push people to progress. Progress is anethema to the Apophis’s of the world. As are ideas. It upsets the status quo that leads them to believe they are superior to their students, instead of actually teaching their students.
For Apophis to enter the twenty-first century would require him to exert enough mental energy to understand heartlanders suggestions, and reply in a thoughtful, intelligent manner. Apperently, in his case, that is not possible. His penchant for sticking things up posters anal cavity seems to get in his way.
You DON’T teach my children, and I would never allow you to. That you defend the indefensible may give you standing in your community, but that just tells me something about your community. You ARE cut from the same cloth as the connie Morrises, Phil Klines and their ilk. You are about as far from a democrat as you can get.
The Science Olympiad is a competition–indeed, notice it borrows on the name of the international athletic games. Unlike traditional science fairs, where geeky kids work for weeks or months (or even years) on esoteric science projects, the Olympiad’s mission is to promulgate a widespread understanding of standardized scientific principles and facts, and team-based problem-solving methods among the general student populace. Creativity is encouraged as well.
Olympiad-participating students’ knowledge and skills are developed in class, and then are tested in tournaments within buildings, between local schools and between schools statewide. The top state-tournaments schools then go to the national tournament.
The tournaments utilize pre-set project categories such as Tower Building, Road Scholar, Experimental Design, Remote Sensing, Robots, Fossils, Food Science, Chem. Lab, Disease Detective, Wright Stuff, Forensics and Balloon Launched Glider.
A bevy of resources are available to participating science teachers, including teaching guides, test packets, project-materials lists and example construction illustrations. Moreover Olympiad coaches attend regional and national workshops.
The Olympiad is, again, a competition. Students and schools vie for Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. Perhaps Apophis tells his students, “Don’t worry about the medals, we’re doing this to have fun. Do your best, that’s all that matters.” That sounds nice, warm and feel-good fuzzy, but the fact is, the kids KNOW it is a competition, and the medals designate WINNERS. There are thousands of kids, and COACHES (again notice the sports-metaphor here) who WANT TO WIN.
So what kind of not-so-subtle message do non-winners take home? “You’re not very good in science?” Perhaps in the first year or two of participation, a teacher can say, “Some of these schools have a head start, because they have been in the Olympiad for several years, but we’ll catch up in a couple years.” But what if a school doesn’t catch up?
The competition is being used to evaluate schools’ successes, or failures, in teaching applied, hands-on science. Because the projects require assembly of components, Wichita, as an aviation manufacturing center, whose majority students descend from mechanically adept farmers, should, by reasonable accounting, do very well in this competition. One Sedgwick County middle school in fact did well. But why only one? It doesn’t make sense, on its face.
Personally, I would rather see the kids do the projects, minus the tournaments. But if you’re going to support and participate in science as a sport, then you have to account for why your school doesn’t do very well in that competitive activity you have chosen to submit your students–and yourself– to.
One can blame the students, or their parents, or both, for underperformance, but at what point does society get to start evaluating the teachers? For example, when does society, whose children are graded by teachers, get to examine science teachers’ own high school and university science-courses, and their own science-class grades or rankings among other students who were in the same classes? Can society see teachers’ ACT-Science and Math scores? This wouldn’t have to invade anyone’s privacy. The districts could provide ACT score lists of all district science teachers without specific teachers’ names attached to individual scores.
I guess society will never get to evaluate this crucial information. It’s a funny thing. Teachers are empowered to evaluate children, and substantially determine their education pathways. But how do they explain having some mysterious “authority” to take kids who started out with the talent and curiosity to tackle AP calculus and physics by 12th grade, but instead channel these kids into a pathway that ends at Algebra II, which then has to be retaken in college? To wit, students who could have taken 2nd year mathematics as college freshman are instead taking high school math as a college freshman. Some of them aren’t even going to college. That’s a major loss for our society.
I want to conclude by mentioning markets. Wichitans have no choice but to participate in markets. Essentially they must sell their skills in order to purchase goods and services from the outside world, from gasoline to graham crackers.
Apophis opposes market-concepts in education. He’s misguided. Schools are a vital component of society. You can be opposed to a trade-based economy, on philosophical principles, but if you live in such an economy, your education systems must correspond to the general economy. Indeed public education was invented specifically to serve an industrial economy, and well-designed for this purpose.
The economy has changed. It’s still trade-based.But now there is now much more information available to the public than in the past. As a 22,000-car selling salesman recently said, “Customers know a lot more about cars than they used to. Old-fashioned high-pressure tactics don’t work anymore.” Savvy consumers can find out not only how various makes and models rate against each other, in metrics like gas mileage, resale value and mechanical reliability, they can even find out how much dealers pay for cars, including formerly-secret factory rebates. Ordinary people can track stock prices nearly real-time and read corporate SEC filings. Patients know a lot more about their diseases than a generation ago. They ask doctors an nurses A LOT of questions. Which is good.
We might thusly argue that schools need to prepare people to make knowledgeable transactions in this trade-based economy. Knowledge enables people to make sound decisions.
Schools, alas are still operating in an “old fashioned” mode. For example, peruse university websites’ department pages. Most of them show their faculties’ degrees and universities attended. Many private prep school websites do too. (Nearly all private prep schools list faculty credentials in their print brochures and parent handbooks.)
Now, try this with a public high school website. No info. The public teachers own higher-education credentials are apparently deemed to be irrelevant in public education. But are they actually irrelevant? For example, suppose at one high school 80% of the science teachers have majors and/or minors in the subjects they teach, and 25% have master’s degrees, while in another high school, only 30% of the science teachers have such majors and minors, and only 5% have master’s degrees.
Do you think there might be a quality-of-teaching difference? If parents knew about this, they’d have valuable evidence to make an informed decision to incite change–for their children’s benefit, and for that of our community’s future.
Some people don’t want you to evaluate this information. People such as many ardent unionists who don’t want outside agitation. The teaching cadre has enormous disparities in teacher qualification. But if under-qualified teachers were to be removed and replaced by well-qualified teachers, it would wreak havoc with “union solidarity”. It would represent a market-like development, in which consumers got to choose the teachers whom the consumers are paying to teach their children. Given that schools exist to serve society, and that includes children, and those who take responsibility for them as teachers, we have to some not small degree conflicting interests. Society must decide which interests must be promoted, and which interests must be demoted. Right now reasonable and fair balance, one that serves society’s greater interests, is not being achieved.
This is why private education is becoming a middle-class phenomenon. In our community alone, thousands of middle-class parents who attended public schools are taking their children out of them.
Let’s analyze this Apophicism:
“You, as the tax-paying public only have a say about the education issues through your DEMOCRATICALLY elected representatives. I believe that would be the Board of Education. They make the ultimate decisions, based on National and State curriculum standards. Those decisions are then carried out by the District Administration.”
First, I think the public has a say that goes beyond petitioning the BOE. Doesn’t it? In America? Like posting blogs, writing letters to the editor, marching in a protest at district headquarters (didn’t African-Americans do this 35 years ago when the BOE tried to ignore them?).
The taxpayers could, in theory, mount campaigns to seat new BOE members. But here, the union has a commanding advantage. It gets to deduct union dues automatically from teachers’ paychecks, and then a few leaders get to decide whom to give campaign contributions to. Grassroots organizers would have to solicit individual donations. That’s much harder than tapping into people’s paychecks whether or not they support the candidate you have chosen for them, and Apophis, politically savvy guy that he is, surely must know this.
This deviousness is one reason public education is tottering. It’s really an abuse of the political process: special interests are running a public institution that cannot survive unless it serves the greater public good. You can milk the system for quite some time. But the cow is going to die. Unfortunately, in the interregnum, children who should be receiving nourishment are starving.
BTW, Apophis’s vision expressed above is one of power-concentration. A half-dozen BOE members are vested with complete authority. Apophis has once again proved that he’s anti-democratic. He wants plutocracy.
I believe we should disband the BOE and go straight to a Secretary of Education. While it will not take the politics out of government education, it will at least professionalize it and that is much better than we have now.
Joe, somebody will say we have Bob Corkins. I don’t see a really good solution. We’re caught between a rock and a hard place. K-12 public education has been pirated by special interests. I’m not talking just about teachers, but PRIVATE interests, such as private businessmen who sell goods and services to schools. There’s a lot of money being taken from all private citizens, and concentrated, through state redistribution, into a smaller number of private citizens’ bank accounts. Not just here, but across America.
So it boils down to politically shrewd special interests getting what they want, i.e. our money, because we sheepishly let them do this. If we had more information, we might protest, but “public” education isn’t really public in any truly democratic or republican sense (small d and r). It’s very arcane and secretive. Which is why Apophis doesn’t provide answers to questions.
In a prior post I mentioned democratic tactics. I forgot to mention parents acting en masse, and keeping their kids home for a week, or a month, then contacting their Topeka representatives, including the governor, and saying, “I’m going to vote you out of office unless you lead education reform.” That would get action. Ultimately, the state has the authority to fix schools, which is why the National Governors Association is addressing the issue.
I want to say a few things about unions. Basically they represent a feudal concept. In the Middle Ages, you had rulers and subjects. All rulers enriched themselves via their subjects’ work output, from farming to fighting battles and winning territory from other people. The best rulers tried to treat their subjects decently, but they were rare. Most rulers tried to get as much from their subjects while providing their subjects as little sustenance as could be gotten away with.
The little people often picked spokesmen to talk with lower lords, or their advisors, to present protests to higher taxes, either monetary or commodity. The spokesmen were often bribed to go back and tell the little people that the lord had no choice, because the king was demanding higher fealty payments, or else bribed to go back and offer a compromise that was less than the little people wanted. In this condition, unlike Solomon’s day where individuals took their complaints to the king, representative agents of the larger mass of humanity were employed. Middlemen as it were.
This is what unions have represented. They didn’t originate in schools, they originated in mines, steel mills and meat-packing plants. They were organized to aid the imported peasants, who were willing to continue the Old World model of ruler-subject in their new home, with representative negotiators talking for them. The truth is, in timber, coal and steel-making regions, corporations actually owned whole towns. People lived in corporation-supplied housing, bought their necessities from the company store, had company-provided medical care, and basically owned nothing of substantial value.
Mass compulsory education was created in this era. It was never designed to serve children’s interests, or to give them unlimited futures. Quite the opposite. It was, at the outset, a special interest invention. And this model of special-interest service has persisted. The interests have changed, but not the model. Without question, in some communities public education is more transparent and dedicated to serving a public good than in other places. Essentially, communities that have large well-educated citizenries, tend to have greater public oversight in their schools. Evanston, Illinois schools, for example, are highly regarded. The Ivy League admission profile of Evanston Township High wallops most private prep schools. Similarly for Hunter High in New Rochelle, New York. In Palo Alto, the mass-dumbing-down program caused progressive deterioration of Palo Alto schools, until Stanford faculty mobilized, and reformed them, which proved that parental power can be generated.
Apophis’s world is one in which a few rule over the many. He does not know how to operate under any other rules of engagement. He’s rising as a result of his progressive understanding and mastery of using these rules to his advantage. But one of us fails to see something. It may be me. Maybe this part of Kansas can only operate under Old World rules. If this is true, then Wichita is in deep trouble. There were unique factors in the post-WWII period that enabled people who did relatively limited tasks, and followed orders, to rise to the middle class. Those factors no longer exist. Well-paying jobs require people to take initiative and THINK. Machines can do routine tasks here, and workers in Asia can do them, at far lower costs. And employers want to lower these costs. At the same time, they’re willing to pay people well whose talents add value to enterprises. They’re looking for smart, active people. But public schools, with a minority of exceptions are not designed to produce smart, active people. Indeed, kids who would rather not sit for 6 hours at their desks because they have active personalities, are punished. Smart kids who get the lesson early and want to move on to the next are held back. There is enormous human-potential wastage, because some people refuse to move beyond a deep-set feudal ideology.
Teacher strikes, where they’ve occurred (unions’ ultimate weapon) really don’t get much press beyond local outlets. A mass parent-and-student stay-at-home protest would attract every major media-journalism outlet in the country, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to CNN.
I’m not predicting this will happen. I’m just presenting the difference between real democratic action versus an illusion.
Throwing another temper tantrum heartlander?
I see a representative democracy doesn’t work for you. Those nasty, ELECTED BOE’s don’t do what heartlander wants ……….WAH!
I see you want to belittle the Science Olympiad competition, that figures. Where is your signature diatribe against the Toshiba Explorivision competition as well?
NEXT?
Apophis appears to have a logic-processing problem. Which is weird for someone who is a putative science teacher, in my opinion.
There are kids who want to compete, and do so successfully. If one wants to copy athletics as a paradigm for intellectual competition, I guess that’s not entirely bad, in that kids playing sports practice a lot, and learn teamwork, so applying these concepts to intellectual activity is fine.
There is also no question that science has always been competitive, and is even more so now, due to opportunities for scientists, including university faculty, to become millionaires through the privatization of research.
My concern is this: suppose somebody like Apophis is in a school whose students don’t do well in competition. Suppose that the kids were able to build all the cool machines prescribed by Science Olympiad, but maybe not as well as other schools’ kids. If they didn’t compete, would they learn and have fun? I believe they would. But then if they are required to compete, and place well-below most other competitors, does this increase their interest in science and self-esteem? I would be concerned it might DECREASE their interest in science and self-esteem. Without competition they can be productive, and feel good about their productivity. But in competition they receive a message: “Your productivity isn’t very good, kid.” In essence, for winners, and higher-ranking teams, the competition is fun. I’m not sure the competition per se is fun for those who are far out of the running.
Why do I say this? Because I’ve seen kids in math and science competitions who didn’t do well, after they were interested enough to sign up, and then they dropped out the next year, because no one wants to fail under a spotlight. The winners always come back for more.
But overall, if Apophis likes competition, then he should favor teachers’ jobs being based on competition, right?
Because if you are going to put kids into competition, and want them to compete well, they need teachers who have competitive personas. When you look at successful high school athletics programs, the schools that have winning records are ones that have recruited previously successful coaches who once played quite competitively themselves as students.
Isn’t our society funny? Public high schools can find ways to pay newly-hired coaches a lot more money than newly-hired regular teachers get.
Sometimes, at least historically, star coaches have gotten private “help”, including free-use cars, low-interest home loans or rent-free accomodations, local-retail discounts, and other cost-of-living-reduction perks.
Maybe this hasn’t happened in Wichita, but it has happened in some states where high school football “rules”. I once lived in a town where blue chip high school football players were “stolen” from other schools by ardent-fan businessmen’s giving the athletes’ fathers overpaid jobs. The businessmen also set up off-the-public-payroll high-income packages to lure top-grade coaches who delivered state championships.
Why aren’t these things done more for non-coaching star classroom teachers? I think public educators and community businessmen may have confused priorities.
I can’t really argue against Apophis. He has said that change will occur only driving by public educrats. But he has never said HOW THEY WILL MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN. Read his posts. He has NEVER said, “We are doing this, and we plan to do that.”
Basically Apophis paints the world in “us versus them”. His views are medieval. He’s a power-lusting, conflict-driven person. He favors archaic plutocracy, just like most Kansans who voted for Bush. Apohis can no more articulate a comprehensive plan for education transformation for the 21st century than his Great Leader. This is why he has failed to articulate a single one. He just wants to get a disproportinate share for himself of table scraps.
Back to personal attacks heartlander?
FYI heartlander, I have never in the past and will never in the future vote for a republican. Bush is the absolute WORST president in the history of the the US. NCLB came form his people.
heartlander …………. just because I do not post wild ass ideas like you doesn’t mean I do not actively work on educational reform.
Apophis you haven’t post ANY ideas on WEBlog.
Correction, in your first blog you did post a couple ideas two months ago, parroting what I said. Since then, you’ve been running on empty man. If you don’t believe this, read your posts.
Endorsements
Kansas Families United for Public Education is pleased to endorse thefollowing supporters of public education. Send this list to a friend
* Qualified endorsement, candidate supports teaching of creationism or Intelligent Design in the Science Classroom
** Qualified endorsement, candidate does not fully endorse equal education rights for all Kansas children, regardless of immigration status.Federal Office:Nancy Boyda (D), U.S. Congress (District #2), http://www.nancyforcongress.com/index.phpDennis Moore (D), U.S. Congress (District #3), http://www.mooreforcongress.com
Kansas Board of Education:Janet Waugh (D), State Board of Education (District #1), http://www.janetwaugh.comDon Weiss (D), State Board of Education (District #3), http://www.donweiss.orgSally Cauble (R), State Board of Education (District #5), http://www.caubleforcommonsense.comJack Wempe (D), State Board of Education (District #7), http://jackwempeforstateboard.com/Jana Shaver (R), State Board of Education (District #9), http://www.janashaver.com
State House of Representatives:Julie Menghini (D), District #003, http://www.juliemenghini.com* Shirley Palmer (D), District #004Ginny Rigney (D), District #006Richard Proehl (R), District #007* Jerry Williams (D), District #008** Tom Holland (D), District #010, http://www.tomhollandforkansas.orgNO ENDORSEMENT, District #011Jeff King (R), District #012Aunesty Janssen (D), District #014, http://www.aunestyjanssen.comHeather Cessna (D), District #015, http://www.cessnaforkansas.blogspot.comGene Rardin (D), District #016Ed Coleman (D), District #017, http://www.colemanforkansas.comStephanie Sharp (R), District #017, http://www.stephaniesharp.comCindy Neighbor (D), District #018, http://www.cindyneighbor.orgTim Owens (R), District #019Alex Holsinger (D), District #020, http://www.kansansforalex.comKay Wolf (R), District #021, http://www.kansansforkay.comSue Storm (D), District #022** Milak Talia (D), District #023, http://www.milack.comEd O’Malley (R), District #024, http://www.edomalley.orgAndy Sandler (D), District #024, http://www.andyforkansas.org/Terrie Huntington (R), District #025, http://www.terriehuntington.comMissy Taylor (D), District #025, http://taylorforkansas.orgNO ENDORSEMENT, District #026NO ENDORSEMENT, District #027Pat Colloton (R), District #028, http://www.patcolloton.comAmber Bachelor (D), District #029, http://www.bachelorforhouse.comCheryl Spaulding (R), District #029Ron Worley (R), District #030Louis Ruiz (D), District #032Tom Burroughs (D), District #033* Valdenia Winn (D), District #034Broderick Henderson (D), District #035Margaret Long (D), District #036Michael Peterson (D), District #037Diane Bryant (D), District #038Corey Mohn, District #039, http://www.votemohn.comCary Mohn (D), District #039* Lee Urban (D), District #043Barbara Ballard (D), District #044Tom Sloan (R), District #045Paul Davis (D), District #046, http://www.davisforlawrence.orgJames Farris (D), District #047, http://www.farisforkansas.comPam Ippel (D), District #048Bond Faulwell (D), District #049, http://www.bondfaulwell.comPENDING ENDORSEMENT, District #050NO ENDORSEMENT, District #051Ann Mah (D), District #053, http://www.annmah.orgTanya Dorf (D), District #054Annie Kuether (D), District #055Annie Tietze (D), District #056, http://www.annietietze.usVaughn Flora (D), District #057Harold Lane (D), District #058PENDING ENDORSEMENT, District #059Sydney Carlin (D), District #066, http://www.sydneycarlin.comTom Hawk (D), District #067, http://www.tomhawk.com/Tom Thull (D), District #072, http://www.thullforkansas.orgSarah Johnston (D), District #075Debbie Logsdon (D), District #077, http://www.debbielogsdon.comEd Trimmer (D), District #078Vincent Wetta (D), District #080Judy Armstrong (D), District #081Jo Ann Pottorff (R), District #083Oletha-Faust Goude (D), District #084Guy McDonald (D), District #085Judith Loganbill (D), District #086Raj Goyle (D), District #087, http://www.rajforkansas.comJim Ward (D), District #088Melody McCray-Miller (D), District #089H.W. Collier (D), District #090** Walt Chappel (D), District #091, http://www.chappell4ksrep.comNile Dillmore (D), District #092Marcey Gregory (D), District #093, http://www.gregory4rep.comTom Sawyer (D), District #095Terry McLachlan (D), District #096, http://www.TerryMc96.comDale Swenson (R), District #097Geraldine Flaharty (D), District #098Charlie Mahoney, District #099, http://www.charliemahoney.comMark Treaster (D), District #101, http://marktreaster.orgJanice Pauls (D), District #102Delia Garcia (D), District #103, http://www.deliagarcia.com* ** Jane Byrnes, District #105Josh Svaty (D), District #108Dennis McKinney (D), District #116
Statewide Office:Paul Morrison (D), Attorney General, http://www.morrisonforag.comKathleen Sebelius/Mark Parkinson (D), Governor/Lt. Governor, http://www.ksgovernor.com