Nationalizing the Education System

cpwill said:

Welcome to the pro-marriage movement.

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I'm pro marriage. I fully support any consenting adult to marry another consenting adult.

RabidAlpaca said:

I never suggested getting rid of the public schools. Just that parents who are disappointed with their local public school could use their tax money for their kid's education at another accredited school instead of having to pay for it out of pocket on top of the taxes.

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That's an impossibility. Logistically speaking, your concept is impossible.

As it stands now the public schools have zero competition, and have zero reason to apply themselves.

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Nonsense. We apply ourselves because we care about education. We care about children. We have far more reason to apply ourselves than to advocate for school advertising.

DVSentinel said:

You say properly funding education will yield better results. Interesting, then perhaps you can explain, if you really believe more funding is required, why we already spend more per student at the funding level but are not at the top for money spent on a student at the student level?

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Because money doesn't change socio-economic status of the students.

If we were to remove money from schools, do you think education would improve? If not, then you can definitely see more money = better resources. There are other factors besides money that public education funding cannot solve. However, more money can help minimize those other factors by providing better resources with which to educate.

A public school system that denies the possibility of the existence of God is no less biased, ridiculous or more useful than schools that might actually fall under your scathing biased ridicule.

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Public schools do not deny the possibility of God, they just do not teach about God. There's a difference.

As a socialist, you of course pursue the idea of a classless society, but a good and useful education system cannot exist if all students are treated the same and given the same education. You cannot educate someone with a 150 IQ the same way that you educate someone with an 85 IQ and when you add in the students with a 65 IQ, all you end up with is a completely useless, costly education system that meets the needs of no one. Oh, wait, that is what we have now. Could it be because decision makers have chosen, at least in part, to pursue the socialist ideal of classlessness and tries to deny differences and treat everyone the same?

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First of all, you are inappropriately blaming an economic system for what is otherwise a valid point. We should not be educating 150 IQ students the same as 65 IQ students (which, by the way, a 150 IQ student is extremely rare). This is all the better reason to advocate against a more nationalized educational system.

haymarket said:

We have had 100% decentralized local control education for well over a century now.

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Completely false. States have been dictating standards to schools for decades, and the greatest "reform" in educational history was No Child Left Behind, which established national standards. We're now moving to Common Core standards.

Slyfox696 said:

If we were to remove money from schools, do you think education would improve? If not, then you can definitely see more money = better resources. There are other factors besides money that public education funding cannot solve. However, more money can help minimize those other factors by providing better resources with which to educate.

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I only partly agree. The answer is not more money, but ending the current bleeding off of the available money. More money does not equate to more or better resources, it equates more money in the pockets of the leaches that are already bleeding the system dry.

Here in Texas, we have independent school systems. The state provides funding, but doesn't really control how that money is spent. As a result, we ended up with more school administrators than California although we actually have less schools. When economics caused the cutting of budgets, it was not a reduction in Administrators that we saw nor a reduction of the available resources they used up.

As a nation, we already poor more into education than should be necessary for the absolute best system in the world, the fact that we don't get that result clearly indicates we need to correct problems and more money is not, in anyway, going to fix any problems. The very fact that so many places have independent school districts that spend funds how they want, thus costing us more, would lead me to believe greater centralization and control is necessary.

Slyfox696 said:

Public schools do not deny the possibility of God, they just do not teach about God. There's a difference.

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I disagree. However, that comment was in answer to someone who suggested that charter schools were inferior because they might teach religious beliefs and was not a comment on what schools really do.

Slyfox696 said:

First of all, you are inappropriately blaming an economic system for what is otherwise a valid point. We should not be educating 150 IQ students the same as 65 IQ students (which, by the way, a 150 IQ student is extremely rare). This is all the better reason to advocate against a more nationalized educational system.

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Socialism is a socio-economic system, not just an economic one, that theorizes a society without social or economic classes. The reason to blame it is that to remove class (social, economic or anyother), everyone must be the same and receive the same, so under his socialist philosophy, what I described would have to happen. Further, the adoption of socialistic policies in the US has caused, to some extent, just such situations to occur in our classrooms today. The assembly line type education system that others are referring to is the direct result of mandates to provide equal access and equal education to all, regardless of performance or other factors, and thus, the system has equalized in focusing towards all students eventually going on to college.

Jetboogieman said:

Doesn't seem to be working in American healthcare that's for sure.

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Our abomination of a healthcare system is hardly a free market. Surely, you know better then to claim such things.

DVSentinel said:

Did we really have that? Would you call it that under "busing"? Was our education system a failure for that entire century, or did it start failing somewhere along the way? What was the cause of the failures? From my point of view, we had a very good education system, for some but not all, and somewhere, somehow, we changed it to a poor system for all. What factors really caused that?

Don't get me wrong, I actually support a national education program, but perhaps for different reasons and in a different manor than you do.

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Your post ignores the reality that many school districts are doing very well for most students. It is not a poor system for all.

My system had bussing in the late 70's. It was ordered by a local judge and only impacted our system. In that regard it was extremely local .

You indicate you could support a national education program .... could you provide some details?

Geoist said:

As stated before, I believe much of the problem lies in poverty which results in many negative consequences, including bad schools and a push for an 'assembly line system.'



The federal government has a lot of influence over the education system. But I never said the federal govt operates schools/districts.




Funny you mention the military. We spend more on military than the next ten top military spenders combined and we still find a way to screw everything up. I don't see it as any different with education. You want to deal with a symptom and throw money at it. I want to deal with the root of the problem (that is, poverty), and still allow parents, teachers, and communities to control their own education.

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What great influence does the federal government have over local education?

There is a big difference between military spending and education spending. Let me know when the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a new fighter jet. Let me know when the Navy has to have a charity dance to fun a new battleship.

We will rise or fall as one people in one nation. We cannot afford the luxury of a 19th century system in a 21st century world any longer.

Slyfox696 said:

Completely false. States have been dictating standards to schools for decades, and the greatest "reform" in educational history was No Child Left Behind, which established national standards. We're now moving to Common Core standards.

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States are part of local control. That is the way many states are set up in their state constitutions. For example, in my state of Michigan, education is a state responsibility but it is administered and run by local school districts of which there are over 500 of them. What they 'dictate' is precious little. When I retired from teaching in 2006 or so the only class that every school in Michigan was mandated to teach and all graduates mandated to pass was Government.

No child left behind has been and is now a failure. Lots of kids have been left behind and it was never structured to do anything else. It did not establish any real curriculum standards or effect any change in the basic factory assembly line system nor did it impose any sort of national curriculum.

from the wikipedia entry

The Act does not assert a national achievement standard; standards are set by each individual state.

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As it has only been in effect for ten years and is already being rolled back, it barely has touched the previous century of entrenched practices.



Common Core is a step but it is not the solution and is more of a bandaid on cancer. Its better than nothing but hardly the cure.

from the wikipedia entry

Standards were released for mathematics and English language arts on June 2, 2010, with a majority of states adopting the standards in the subsequent months. (See below for current status.) States were given an incentive to adopt the Common Core Standards through the possibility of competitive federal Race to the Top grants. President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the Race to the Top competitive grants on July 24, 2009, as a motivator for education reform.[10] To be eligible, states had to adopt "internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the work place."[11] This meant that in order for a state to be eligible for these grants, the states had to adopt the Common Core State Standards or a similar career and college readiness curriculum. The competition for these grants provided a major push for states to adopt the standards.[12] The adoption dates for those states that chose to adopt the Common Core State Standards Initiative are all within the two years following this announcement.[13] The common standards are funded by the governors and state schools chiefs, with additional support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and others.[14] States are planning to implement this initiative by 2015[15] by basing at least 85% of their state curricula on the Standards.
Standards [edit]

In 2010, Standards were released for English language arts and mathematics. Standards have not yet been developed for science or social studies.

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This is in its infancy and - like many other initiatives - could well see many changes until it goes by the wayside as it is now being done with much of Left Behind goals and programs. We will see how this pans out over time.

haymarket said:

Your post ignores the reality that many school districts are doing very well for most students. It is not a poor system for all.

My system had bussing in the late 70's. It was ordered by a local judge and only impacted our system. In that regard it was extremely local .

You indicate you could support a national education program .... could you provide some details?

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Sure. I would model it after the Japanese school system. Complete with uniforms and all, including restricting the number of manufactures of uniforms and accessories, thus limiting the ability of one student to display financial superiority over another.

Functional discipline would be pursued in all schools, including but not limited to corporal punishment.

IQ testing would be done at the earliest possible age and education tracks would be determined by IQ and performance. Ideally, this should be accomplished before social breakdowns adversely affects students, preventing things like bulling etc, especially of the highly gifted students.

Schools would be divided by intellectual groupings and for small population areas, students in need of one type or school or the other could not only cross district or county lines but state lines if needed to attend the nearest school for their intellectual group. This would allow students that have a particular need to seek it out even if the local school system cannot meet their needs. The goal being to meet the needs of the students and not restrict them because of financial or other factors of school districts.

Sub-normal would be taught life skills necessary for them to achieve the highest level of function possible.

Normal groups would be focused towards basic common skills and high-school level would be career/vocational training including the availability of class rooms/skills rooms and allow those seeking apprenticeship in a skill that has such a program to serve at least part of their apprenticeship during high school. Lower skill job training that currently requires an associates/junior college level of education but achievable by normal level intelligence would be available at the high school level. This should help these students to become employable immediately after high school without the need for placing extra financial burdens upon them. The will still need the individual discipline and motivations need to complete a particular training, but would remove only the financial hurdle.

Normal-Genius levels would have greater training/education in fields of interest and achievable to this groups intellect. This would be the first level of "going on to college" as what now is associates level at colleges and the basics for college would be handled at the high school level. These students would, starting at the Junior High level receive much harder work and advanced intellectual development programs that would be wasted on less intelligent groupings.

Genius level would be focused towards these individuals progressing to the hardest, most intellectually demanding fields. Physics, Mathematics, etc.

Since all but the normal level educational programs may have a limited number of participants and could not/may not be supported by the current system layout, it is necessary to allow them to be able cross traditional educational districting as it exist today. Thus, this type of system would have to exist above the state level to allow students to move across state boundaries when necessary. While any student may choose to attend, for career of choice purposes, any lower level school, exempting sub-normal, they should not be forced to just because the existing district is unable to meet their needs. Further, by implementing it at a National level, many redundant and unnecessary levels may be cut out, thus allowing more funding to actually get to the student/teacher level.

From personal experience, I can tell you that being at near genius or even genius level but stuck in a po-dunk school full of redneck children who mostly would never graduate, much less amount to much more than drunken rednecks themselves, really, really sucks.

cpwill said:

The idea of a single educational product which will meet the needs of each of our citizens is ludicrous. There is a reason why each year our cell phones get better yet cheaper, while our education system gets' more expensive yet at best limps along at "below average". That is because in the first market, resources are directed by consumers, but in the second they are directed by politicians.

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A good public system IS directed by "consumers", the parents. In a poor system the "consumers" don't care about the product, so they get almost nothing. Privatization isn't going to change that.

Peter Grimm said:

Also, kids don't have any money.

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You think they all carry sack lunches? Or maybe you believe they all get free lunch? :lol:

MoSurveyor said:

You think they all carry sack lunches? Or maybe you believe they all get free lunch? :lol:

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If the "evil corporations" are really out to take advantage of kids for their own profit, I just want to know what money they are supposedly going after.

Peter Grimm said:

If the "evil corporations" are really out to take advantage of kids for their own profit, I just want to know what money they are supposedly going after.

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Whatever money they can get their hands on. That's their reason for existence.


You seem to have an odd sense of environment, though, I don't call a leopard or a wolf "evil" - but to each their own, I guess. :shrug:

I dont' think the federal government should be responsible for education, I think it should be up to the states, and even more decentralized, up to communities, I think they should be public, of caorse, not for profit, they should be public institutions, but the ones who make the decision should be the people in the community who's children go to the school.

DVSentinel said:

Sure. I would model it after the Japanese school system.

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The genius of the Japanese is their ability to borrow and take from other cultures, change it to fit their own culture, modify it to suit their own needs, and make it work for them. There is no reason why we cannot do the same thing by taking the good, rejecting the negative, and adapting it and modifying it for our own culture.

haymarket said:

People are encouraged to have independent thoughts. Do you have any to offer? So far, I have seen nothing in the way of anything that approaches an independent thought.

You say I hated your idea. What "idea" did you have on the topic?

I am not teaching here. There is not necessarily any relationship or similarity between how I taught young people in the classroom and how I deal with you here. Of course, it causes one to wonder why you would equate the two in the first place?

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I will not support your passive-aggression, you can disregard the points I make but they have been made. You casually want to throw off the paradigms of others while desperately clinging to your own. You can choose to ignore what they are, but I know you are smarter than that.

To help us understand what kind of teacher you were for 33 years. Give your teaching career a letter grade.

MoSurveyor said:

A good public system IS directed by "consumers", the parents. In a poor system the "consumers" don't care about the product, so they get almost nothing. Privatization isn't going to change that.

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On the contrary, there are four ways to spend money:

1. Spend your money on yourself (In this case you have an incentive to seek both quality and cost effectiveness)
2. Spend your money on someone else (In this case you have an incentive to seek cost effectiveness)
3. Spend someone else's money on yourself (In this case you have an incentive to seek quality irrespective of cost effectiveness)
4. Spend someone else's money on someone else. (In this case you have no incentive ti seek either quality or cost effectiveness)

To shift from a government monopoly model to a more privatized model is to shift from a system dominated by option #4 to a system dominated by options #3 an 1; which is to say, we should see rapid increases in quality along with moderate to low increases in cost effectiveness.

Paschendale said:

See, that's the exact opposite of what I said. Poor neighborhoods with lousy schools should not just sit there and fester. They should be brought up so that they can function. Private schools for a basic education should not be necessary. The public schools should be funded so that they can provide the necessary education, because education is too important to leave to markets to decide how much education is the best for the school's profits.

Private schools and vouchers are a short term solution to a long term problem.

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actually, as your own home town demonstrates, funding has little to do with quality.

haymarket said:

How does you taking a cheap shot at me when you have no knowledge or experience with my teaching counter what I have said?

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It doesn't. You confessed your own ignorance to a portion of American political history, and I simply pointed out that you had admitted both your ignorance an the fact that you nonetheless used to teach this material. If a math teacher had professed to not understand Geometry, I might have made the same point.

haymarket said:

States are part of local control. That is the way many states are set up in their state constitutions. For example, in my state of Michigan, education is a state responsibility but it is administered and run by local school districts of which there are over 500 of them. What they 'dictate' is precious little. When I retired from teaching in 2006 or so the only class that every school in Michigan was mandated to teach and all graduates mandated to pass was Government.

No child left behind has been and is now a failure. Lots of kids have been left behind and it was never structured to do anything else. It did not establish any real curriculum standards or effect any change in the basic factory assembly line system nor did it impose any sort of national curriculum.

from the wikipedia entry



As it has only been in effect for ten years and is already being rolled back, it barely has touched the previous century of entrenched practices.



Common Core is a step but it is not the solution and is more of a bandaid on cancer. Its better than nothing but hardly the cure.

from the wikipedia entry



This is in its infancy and - like many other initiatives - could well see many changes until it goes by the wayside as it is now being done with much of Left Behind goals and programs. We will see how this pans out over time.

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Nothing you said here either changes the fact we do not have local control of education and some of what you say is not true. States dictate plenty to schools. No Child Left Behind set standards, thereby dictating what needs to be taught.

We do not have local control over education. Now this disagreement between us is fairly irrelevant to the argument you're having about assembly line education, but the fact is you are not correct about who controls education. The states control education. They set standards, they are requiring documentation about teaching materials, they create the content for the standardized test, etc. The state standards are set to align with the national standards, whether it is the quickly falling by the wayside NCLB or the new Common Core standards, whose adoption was a requirement for the NCLB waiver.

Local districts do not have the control over education.

cpwill said:

On the contrary, there are four ways to spend money:

1. Spend your money on yourself (In this case you have an incentive to seek both quality and cost effectiveness)
2. Spend your money on someone else (In this case you have an incentive to seek cost effectiveness)
3. Spend someone else's money on yourself (In this case you have an incentive to seek quality irrespective of cost effectiveness)
4. Spend someone else's money on someone else. (In this case you have no incentive ti seek either quality or cost effectiveness)

To shift from a government monopoly model to a more privatized model is to shift from a system dominated by option #4 to a system dominated by options #3 an 1; which is to say, we should see rapid increases in quality along with moderate to low increases in cost effectiveness.

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Your initial assumption is incorrect and your scenario is incomplete. The money for schools comes from local real estate tax (here) and any change to those taxes must pass a popular vote - it is not and never has been dictated by our elected representatives. School money is then spent to educate children within the district and the parents of those children monitor the school's quality. In my district the parents care about their children's education so you can't get a much better QC system than that, which is true for most districts in the country. Nor do I expect the parents to pay for the benefits we all get from their child having a good education.

It's the districts where a large number of parents don't monitor quality that you have issues. Now, if you'd like to petition to open up inner-city schools that are failing due to lack of parental oversight, then I'm good with that. The problem is, of course, that businesses don't want to serve those problem areas because there's little to no profit in it. Big surprise.

AliHajiSheik said:

I will not support your passive-aggression, you can disregard the points I make but they have been made. You casually want to throw off the paradigms of others while desperately clinging to your own. You can choose to ignore what they are, but I know you are smarter than that.

To help us understand what kind of teacher you were for 33 years. Give your teaching career a letter grade.

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Since you brought it up - I will provide the information.

I will let Newsweek magazine give me the grade as I was a finalist in their national search for Teacher of the Year after being nominated by my school and district administration. I was selected by the State Board of Education to visit Japan and study their system and then come back and educate the educators and legislators of my state. I was rated as a Master Teacher - one of but 20% that can be named as such in my school and trained over a dozen student teachers with that responsibility. I was a chosen delegate and representative to countless educations conferences at a state and national level.

So the grade has been given.

If you have a paradigm to offer, please do so. So far I have seen nothing in the way of any suggestions for serious changes in education.

I advocate the complete abolishment of the grade by grade system based on age of a student. I would replace it with a simple rule - we teach the kids what one plus one is and then give them a test. Those that pass move on - those who do not master the skill keep learning it until they do with other instructors and other methods if need be. Then do that with every single lesson taught in every single subject at every level. Some kids will finish the curriculum in eight or nine years..... some in eleven or twelve..... some may even take fifteen years of more. But so what? In the end we will have a far better educated population.

Now that is revolutionary change that is built around student achievement.

cpwill said:

It doesn't. You confessed your own ignorance to a portion of American political history, and I simply pointed out that you had admitted both your ignorance an the fact that you nonetheless used to teach this material. If a math teacher had professed to not understand Geometry, I might have made the same point.

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I have no idea what you are talking about. Apparently neither do you as you have provided no evidence of your allegation.

by the way- geometry in an entire branch of mathematics while some isolated fact in history is... well ... it is but one isolated fact in history. I would say that even the great historians such as Arthur Schlesinger did not know every single fact about every single fact in this nations 200 plus year history.... especially if some zealot or ideologue described it to him using intentionally skewed language so that the event bore little relationship to reality or what he actually knew in the first place.

Slyfox696 said:

Nothing you said here either changes the fact we do not have local control of education and some of what you say is not true. States dictate plenty to schools. No Child Left Behind set standards, thereby dictating what needs to be taught.

We do not have local control over education. Now this disagreement between us is fairly irrelevant to the argument you're having about assembly line education, but the fact is you are not correct about who controls education. The states control education. They set standards, they are requiring documentation about teaching materials, they create the content for the standardized test, etc. The state standards are set to align with the national standards, whether it is the quickly falling by the wayside NCLB or the new Common Core standards, whose adoption was a requirement for the NCLB waiver.

Local districts do not have the control over education.

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Baloney. My state of Michigan holds education to be a State responsibility but that is then handed off to every one of the over 500 local districts in the State. The State imposes a few broad regulations and controls but the schools are run locally by local people.

haymarket said:

Baloney. My state of Michigan holds education to be a State responsibility but that is then handed off to every one of the over 500 local districts in the State. The State imposes a few broad regulations and controls but the schools are run locally by local people.

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How about you take a gander at this?

Grade and Course-Level Expectations (GLE/CLE)


And then you can try to explain this:

http://michigan.gov/documents/mde/SSGLCE_218368_7.pdf

and this:

MDE - Extended Grade Level Content Expectations (EGLCEs)


You are wrong. Content standards are being dictated from the state, who receive their marching orders from the feds. Local districts do not have control.

Slyfox696 said:

How about you take a gander at this?

Grade and Course-Level Expectations (GLE/CLE)


And then you can try to explain this:

http://michigan.gov/documents/mde/SSGLCE_218368_7.pdf

and this:

MDE - Extended Grade Level Content Expectations (EGLCEs)


You are wrong. Content standards are being dictated from the state, who receive their marching orders from the feds. Local districts do not have control.

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Where does it say that every school district in Michigan must implement all of that ?

State input is part of local control - local being the people of the state of Michigan and not the federal government.

haymarket said:

Since you brought it up - I will provide the information.

I will let Newsweek magazine give me the grade as I was a finalist in their national search for Teacher of the Year after being nominated by my school and district administration. I was selected by the State Board of Education to visit Japan and study their system and then come back and educate the educators and legislators of my state. I was rated as a Master Teacher - one of but 20% that can be named as such in my school and trained over a dozen student teachers with that responsibility. I was a chosen delegate and representative to countless educations conferences at a state and national level.

So the grade has been given.

If you have a paradigm to offer, please do so. So far I have seen nothing in the way of any suggestions for serious changes in education.

I advocate the complete abolishment of the grade by grade system based on age of a student. I would replace it with a simple rule - we teach the kids what one plus one is and then give them a test. Those that pass move on - those who do not master the skill keep learning it until they do with other instructors and other methods if need be. Then do that with every single lesson taught in every single subject at every level. Some kids will finish the curriculum in eight or nine years..... some in eleven or twelve..... some may even take fifteen years of more. But so what? In the end we will have a far better educated population.

Now that is revolutionary change that is built around student achievement.

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Fine speech, but you get a 0 for following directions. I just asked for a letter grade.

The paradigm is that with technology we don't need as many teachers. Most students that go through schools that gear their curriculum to the "average" where the lower end of the students need more attention and all the higher end students need is general direction and some oversight. Is there anything in that model you could agree with that would cut the overall number of teachers or are you wedded to your paradigm that more money=better results?

I believe that the teaching profession(union) polices themselves with the same deference as lawyers and physicians. As long as we perpetuate the myth that only someone in the profession can police the profession, none of it will get better. And by better, the bad actors are removed and the excellent are rewarded.