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January 30, 2006
Growing up Stupid in America
The liberals will say you can fix anything with money, but is that really true? Over the past 20 years, adjusted for inflation, we've effectively doubled what we spend on public education and it's done absolutely nothing for the students academically. Test scores have flatlined and in some regions of the country we've regressed.
California spends among the top of all states, a bit over $10,000 per student, but we rank near the bottom of our peers. Meanwhile private schools have proven you can take students from the same area where we have failing public schools and teach them for about 50% less and achieve better results! Something is very wrong with the system folks and we better do something to fix it, before we are in a crisis. Some would say we already are in that crisis, we just haven't felt the full effect yet.
On the world stage, its the same story, the United States is peforming poorly compared to other advanced nations Our kids are no where near as well educated as their counterparts in Europe and Japan. You have to go to third world countries before we start being somewhat competitive!
"In what could be an ominous sign for the U.S. tech industry, American universities slipped lower in an international programming contest."
"SPRINGFIELD, Missouri--January 10, 2004--The Standards In Economics Survey conducted for the National Council on Economic Education found that on average, American adults get a grade of 57% for their knowledge of basic economics while high school students' average score was 48%." sife.org
We must start asking the hard questions. Why are we failing to teach our students? Is it the system, have we lowered the bar too low? Is this in part due to illegal immigration - too many non-english speaking students with low aptitude flooding the system? Is it a result of too many poor teachers kept on through tenure? Should we be diverting some students toward trade schools? Has the Teacher's Union got in the way of education? There are so many question we need to ask and ask now!
Go to the net, seach key words like "failing, students, USA" or "USA schools rank poorly" and you get things like this, "The gap between America's best readers and its worst is wider than in any other country, according to results released last week from the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment, which assessed 15-year-olds' reading skills, mathematical abilities, and scientific knowledge. While that gap between high and low scorers is not as pronounced in math and science, it is still greater for the United States than for most of the nations in the study." Readingrockets.org
The United States now ranks a mere 23rd among the worlds most developed democracies and we're not improving, but they are! Where will this lead us in another 20 or 30 years?
A documentary you ought to see: Jan. 13, 2006 — "Stupid in America" is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it.
Kids at New York's Abraham Lincoln High School told me their teachers are so dull students fall asleep in class. One student said, "You see kids all the time walking in the school smoking weed, you know. It's a normal thing here." John Stossel presents a compelling view of public education in America that every concerned parent or taxpayer ought to see.
If anyone would like a copy of the ABC News story, Stupid in America, I only have 3 available, so its a case of first come first served.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20060109-094755-8977r.htm
Posted by Post Scripts at January 30, 2006 09:18 PM