Liberals don't care about equal opportunities. They want equal outcomes. That's why they want to take money from the "makers" to give to the "takers." And it's why our school system is so horrible today compared to other countries and compared to our own schools in the past. Golly, gee whiz, it might hurt Johnny's feelings if he's not picked for a team, so we'll just stop playing games on the playground. And some kids might have their feelings hurt if they don't get a trophy, so all kids will get a trophy for participating. And grades? Well, we don't want anyone to feel badly about him/herself, so we probably shouldn't flunk anyone, should we?
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Last week, I posted about how college freshmen are getting to college thinking they're pretty hot stuff. After all, there are more of them entering college than ever before with straight A's. Have they gotten smarter? Nope. Grading has changed. So has the scoring process for the SAT and ACT. But if the kids of today were smarter, would there have to be so many of them having to take remedial math and English classes in college? I'm not even sure they had remedial classes when I went to college. You either qualified or you didn't. And if you didn't you could go to the community college to try to prove yourself, and the 4-year colleges would look less at the SAT scores and more at the grades you got in the 2-year college.
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Anyway....the article I read today doesn't surprise me at all. For the news cameras, teachers will swear that they're not "teaching the test", but ask high school kids throughout the land if that's correct. Many will tell you that they spend 6-8 weeks studying for the "test" that will show their competency and decide how much money the school will get. Of course they're teaching the test!!! They also give students who will bring down the school average time off so they don't take the tests.
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Fraud Compromises Our Education SystemIn L. Frank Baum’s "The Wizard of Oz," the Wizard tells his constituents that he wants an educated populace, “so by the power vested in me I will grant everyone diplomas.†Welcome to the education system of 2011. Much of what we now observe comes right out of the Baum novel.
When Charles Eliot was president of Harvard, he was asked why there is so much intelligence at this college, He replied, “because the freshmen bring so much in and the seniors take so little out.â€
My guess is if a university president were completely honest today, he might say the freshmen bring almost nothing in and leave by taking nothing out.
The question is if the society spends billions on primary, secondary, and higher education, why is it that so little is accomplished? There are, of course, many answers to this question, but I would argue the overarching reason is fraud; fraud at every level in order to satisfy political demands.
At the elementary school level it is simply embarrassing to have a large number of students leave who are illiterate or semi-literate. As a consequence, students pretend to read and teachers pretend to assert their competence. Test scores are altered to satisfy political concerns.
In a society suffering from the Lake Woebegone effect in which everyone is above average, you can’t tell Mom that Johnny and Mary cannot read at grade level. Rather than declare inadequacy, you change the grade. The disparity between NAEP scores — the gold standard of evaluation — and state-sponsored tests is startling with NAEP scores 20 to 30 percent lower on average.
Obviously some manipulation is at work.
When scores are low, mayors and governors are held accountable. Since most are vulnerable to the political heat, the incentive to cheat is overwhelming. In fact, across the country there is a euphemism for this cheating: scrubbing. This practice suggests that teachers should “search†for clues in the test that would allow for an alteration in scores.
At the high school level, graduation rates are invariably employed as a standard of evaluation. Yet here too most scores are bogus. If a student is pushed through the system through social promotion, his cognitive skill may be near zero, but he is added to the percentage of graduates nonetheless.
Rigor rarely exists as a demand or a practice, a condition that explains in large part why American students compare unfavorably to foreign students on international tests in language skills, math, and science.
Once holding a diploma in their hands, however questionable their skill level, these high school graduates are now deemed college ready. Since America has a college for everyone and the society is committed to mass education, students who can read at only a marginal level or who cannot solve quadratic equations are seated in institutions of higher learning.
Surely something has to give. Invariably remediation must take place, but that is insufficient to deal with widespread incompetence. Obviously course content and requirements are modified. A physics instructor at the City University in New York told me recently it is impossible to teach real physics when your students are incapable of engaging 8th-grade math.
Of course there are exceptions to the lugubrious picture I’ve painted. Yet in far too many cases fraud from one level to another is passed on like a virus that cannot be controlled or cured.
In fact, most teachers and professors who know the truth become complicit in this institutionalized fraud in order to retain their jobs. They simply cannot say college isn’t for everyone and most students are not prepared to engage in college work or that rigorous exit requirements at any level do not exist. Hence, there is the clarion call for more money; there is the deceptive claims about the success of our educational systems and there is the belief this investment is worthwhile.
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In one school district near ours, a 7th grade boy received mostly D's and 3 F's on his report card, but he was sent on to the 8th grade. What? His mother was livid. She said, "Now he thinks that he can do anything...or nothing...and he'll be passed on to the next grade. How is that preparing him for life?"
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It's not. But that's happening in other places as well.
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Comments: 14
Although, I think the very people that need to "get it," still won't.
You just make stuff up
>That's why they want to take money from the "makers" to give to the "takers."
Ayn Rand is a conservative comic book. Put it down. The real world doesn't work that way.
If you're taxing the people who are the job creators to give money to people who sit on their duffs whining and complaining....gosh you're Obama in the US of A.
(sarcasm)