Liberals did not destroy the American school system.

[a completely inoffensive name]

This is a topic that I feel needs to be addressed, because for the most part the vast majority of people imo, have huge misconceptions of what and where to place the blame in the American school system. Also, I just like talking about the education system. So whatever, I want to spend my time writing this. Now, since every state has their own school system going on, there will be differences between say California and New Jersey, however, there are common problems that cross state lines and seems to to have infected school systems across the country. What sparked me making this thread was a post by Centurion in my gay marriage thread, who I respect because I know he has first hand experience with the school system, seeing how his mother is a teacher.

I would blame the school problem on the overarching leftist educational goal of connecting more closely with children (as compared to most of the other school systems in the world), leaving no children to inferior educations (be they mentally handicapped, inner city, etc.), granting the students more power in the classroom and parents more say.

That being said i would also blame programs such as the neo cons No Child left Behind, teachers being attacked often by the media and government as easy pandering, i would also blame the administrators of schools.

Finally and most of all i blame parents.

I agree with pretty much all of this except that first sentence. In order to make this structure easy for me to write, I am just going to make my points on what the problems of the education system are and what people should be blaming in a nice list.

1. Teachers Unions are crappy and hold back change. They do this for a very good reason.

The main complaint about the liberals in education comes in when people start bringing up unions. It is true that unions are holding the system back. Reforms need to be made, and unions in general stop them from being made. Why? Because teachers are unfairly demonized by crappy parents who follow right wing politicans that in turn punish them with less pay and representation. If I could make a quick 1.5 here it would be this: Teacher's are at the very bottom of the list of problems with education.And they are not in anyway a problem when it comes to the financial expense of education. It's a lie. Teachers do not make bank. The union is the only thing separating the teachers from the rabid parents demanding that their child get an A because he/she is supposed to go to Harvard. If you want to blame the union for being over protective, first make sure that teachers are not being shat on by everyone from parents to politicans as if they hold the entire future of the child in their hands.

2. Teacher tenure is crappy, merit pay is crappier.

If there is one problem with the actual teachers it is that many are sub par. The vast majority are not, but there is a large proportion of them that are. I know I had a few... This is relatively straight forward, there is no incentive for teachers to constantly work hard besides their own personal care for the students and the love of teaching. There is no push for the burnt out teachers to gently bow out. However, if you think merit pay will fix it? Think again. Merit pay is quite possibly the most poorly thought out way to create an incentive for teachers to teach. The idea is that if somehow you tie a teacher's pay to the results of the students that somehow the teacher will work super hard to get the students working at an above average level. This of course is not how students work, nor how teachers work. In order for a teacher to work, the student needs to work. Unfortunately, high schools students seems to be anything but hard working. The teacher can lead the students to knowledge all they want, but crappy students are crappy students. Punishing a teacher with a pay cut because Jake is a lazy **** who just wants to skateboard all day and cut class is a surefire way to push even the most dedicated teachers into a new profession. Not to mention that if this were to be implemented you essentially create two tiers of pay for teachers, one higher tier of payment for all the teachers that teach the "advanced placement", "honors" or "accelerated" course full of kids eager to memorize and regurgitate on a test so they can get into a good college, and then there will be the lower, poorer paying tier of teaching jobs for all the normal kids taking average classes, happy with getting C's in their life. What this will do is essentially push teachers into jockeying for the advanced placement students who need help the least and leave the average or below average students who need help the most in the dust. This is completely backwards and will only further screw up the quality of the education system by essentially make a dividing line between those that get left in the pit and those who are put on a pedestal.

Once again, the issue of tenure is the same with the unions. It is there to protect the good teachers from the parents who send in complaints about teachers giving "inappropriate" books or "unfair" grades. It is the legal framework to shield the education from the parents. It is has largely backfired by covering for bad teachers, but if you want to get rid of tenure, first make sure that you completely eliminate parents from making any sort of complaints or lobbying for decisions at all. Period. Because the bible thumpers and the general crazies won't stop until their and everyone else's kids are all reading pg-13 books at age 18.

This is where the "liberal" utopia building claim ends. You can talk all you want about the union's and tenure being failures, but they were created and are still needed out of necessity of making sure that education does not get dictated by the lowest and loudest common denominator. Fix the cause of the problem before you tackle the problem itself.

3. Administration is where the money flows. There is too much administration. Stop blaming teachers.

For the most part, school districts are draw up and designed differently according to each individual state. However, what is constant everywhere is the large sums of money that principles and up make in the administration chain. Principles can make 75,000 easily. The superintendent and the accountants for the district level and all the other administration on those higher levels all make good wages and there are a lot of districts depending on the state. The # of students per district is better for some states, but in others it is grossly inefficient leading to redundant amounts of administration.

Let us take an example. Both California and New Jersey have problems with their educational system, especially in regards to their cost. Now, what are the number of districts between the two? Well California has 4.2 times the population of New Jersey and is much, much larger. So you might expect that California has around 4 times as many school districts as New Jersey, right? Wrong.

California has 1,131 separate school districts. New Jersey has half as many for it's much smaller population at 668 districts.

What this means is that if we are to assume that each district within a state all service the same number of people (basically an average) this is would give the following results in how many people per district as:

California: 32,939 people per district
New Jersey: 13,162 people per district

As you can see, if California can make do with 33k per district, why is New Jersey trying to work with 13k? Now don't get me mistaken, this is not an attempt to have less students per class. This is simply how large number of students or of areas will one single administration cover. I would have to work out all the numbers, but there seems to be a strong correlation between how encompassing the distracts are for a state with the average amount spent per pupil. According to this list on education spending, Vermont tops the lists of spending per pupil with $15,139 per pupil.

Let us check what the average # of people per district is for Vermont. Vermont has 360 districts. Doesn't seem much, but Vermont has an extremely small population. The number comes out to be:

Vermont: 1,738 people per district

Yes, for every district and all the administration that goes along with it, there is an average of 1,738 people living in that district.

Now you might say, oh well, how do we know how big these administrations are? The teachers ultimately make up all of the work force. That also is bull. New Jersey has a total staff of 203,960 for all positions in the school system the number of full time teachers is only 109,077 or 53% of the jobs being employed by all of New Jersey for it's school system. Admin and support staff from the numbers given here show that they constitute 25% of the jobs employed by the New jersey school system. I don't have time to look at all the states, but I don't think this is an isolated incident.

So for all the Governor Walkers or Gov. Chris Christie's out there, trying to demonize the teachers, trying to cut their pay, trying to cut their benefits while absolutely not touching the admin situation at all, they are only actively making the situation worse. And for those that support them in charging after the teachers, all I have to say is that you will reap what you sow for listening to those snake salesmen.

Here is a good clip from a documentary I enjoyed called The Cartel about spending and how much teacher salary actually contributes to it.



4. Parents are ruining everything. It is ok to silence them if you give them a choice of school.

Parents are for the most part, not that good at parenting when it comes to their child's education. They either like to throw money at the problem or tear apart the teacher. Both are terrible solutions and it is why we have the situation where we are now. Parents should not have their say in how the public schools are run or how they are taught. It is absolutely insane that 1-3 busy body soccer moms with nothing to do with their life can lobby school boards to get a book banned for personal reasons and win, effectively parenting for everyone's child who now cannot read a certain book in school. The extent varies by year as seen here, but nevertheless this should be happening at all and is indicative of how much power parents have that they should not have.

For many school districts, the public votes for who is on their local school board. I feel that school board members should not be elected officials, parents should not have the right to lobby them. If they are elected then by the first amendment they have the right to lobby, so I have to go the route of no elections for school board. Parents should nto be able to say who is running the show or how it should be run. What parents should have however, is their choice of school.

Voucher programs I feel are excellent ways of promoting competition and a better use of funds without punishing the teach or the student. Attach the money to the student and if the parents wants to take him to private school for whatever reason, fine take him there and don't let your beliefs dictate what is taught in a school that belongs to the entire public. If a particular school is run like crap, the parents will gladly take their students out and the school will start scrambling to get the kids and their money back in, making sure that wasteful spending will be reduced by a large margin. It is a win-win for everyone. Except unions, and in this case they are wrong in resisting change and don't really have a good reason to resist it.

And of course #5. Kids just don't want to learn because the US has a strong undercurrent of not putting enough pride in intellect. But that matter is entirely social and there is nothing to be done about that, so I might as well save my fingers from another 30 min spree of research and typing. But it is a problem that ultimately hinders America's ability to learn and compete competitively.

Idk if any of you are particularly interesting in reading any of this and picking it apart, but I wanted to at least get all of this out there at least once. Any comments or further insights would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: oh and I didn't even touch upon #6, the disaster that is No Child Left Behind.

To sum it up, No Child Left Behind has massively dumbed down education to factoids that you can memorize for a test.

oh and, the point Cent made about liberals trying to make school connect more to students is something I disagree with on the basis that there is no one correct way to skin an animal when it comes to education. at uni people can learn by being a nobody in a class of 350 students, or they can learn with a one on one tutor. it all depends on how it is implemented and imo for younger people under 16, it is probably better to have a bigger connection to students since they have not acquired the study skills to be able to operate in such a large and anonymous setting.

[PanzerJaeger]

And absolutely no mention of busing, which is, in fact, how liberals destroyed the American school system?

[a completely inoffensive name]

And absolutely no mention of busing, which is, in fact, how liberals destroyed the American school system?

Umm, busing hasn't been around since the early 1990s if I remember correctly. If there was busing still going on, my 60% white high school would have had some African Americans bused over. Unless you are saying that the kids who were bused 20+ years ago are still ruining the system today?

[PanzerJaeger]

Umm, busing hasn't been around since the early 1990s if I remember correctly. If there was busing still going on, my 60% white high school would have had some African Americans bused over. Unless you are saying that the kids who were bused 20+ years ago are still ruining the system today?

If you only wanted to discuss contemporary issues, the title of your thread should have been 'Liberals are not destroying the American school system.'

And yes, the effects of busing are very much with us today. Look at Nashville, Kansas City, Richmond, and pretty much any large metropolitan area with awful city schools. The problems you discussed began when the Great Society builders dismantled the public school system - the fabric of neighborhoods and communities.

[a completely inoffensive name]

If you only wanted to discuss contemporary issues, the title of your thread should have been 'Liberals are not destroying the American school system.'

Yes, well, English was never my strong suit in school.

And yes, the effects of busing are very much with us today. Look at Nashville, Kansas City, Richmond, and pretty much any large metropolitan area with awful city schools. The problems you discussed began when the Great Society builders dismantled the public school system - the fabric of neighborhoods and communities.

I really don't see where any of this comes from. From the 1960s to the late 80s there was busing of blacks to white schools. It turned out that this did not have any major effect on the education of the shipped black students and actually created more hostile race relations in the bused schools. It had no major financial impact and any actual impact on learning in the classroom was gone when the last class that experienced busing in the early 90s graduated in the mid 90s.

The Great Society builders didn't dismantle anything. White flight from the cities to the suburbs, creating a de facto segregation is what really tore apart communities. It's why schools are to this day predominantly white or black. White flight was not prompted by the government or any of the Great Society builders. It was provoked because whites couldn't learn to get along with blacks after lawful segregation was struck down and blacks could intermingle in public life with whites.

So unless you want to tell me that liberals ruined public education by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that they shouldn't have ended segregation, than your stance just seems completely absurd.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, this really doesn't make sense.

So before segregation ended and busing was implemented. Schools were great.
After segregation ended, busing was implemented and failed.
Whites during this time fled to the suburbs.
Now schools are again segregated just by de facto now. Now somehow it is different this time because instead of the blacks having a different school next to the white school like before, now the blacks school is miles away from the suburban white school. So now everything is terrible because of that busing, which caused the communities to rip apart. Even though the end result is the same as when it was before segregation ended.

[Rhyfelwyr]

For some reason, most of my the people my parents know are school teachers, and I hear a fair bit of talk about whats going on and get a bit of insight into the system. Of course this is coming from a UK perspective, but somethings I would say...

It is not 'liberals' or 'conservatives' that are to blame for the problems in the teaching system, but at the risk of sounding partisan and butthurting the anti-anti-intellectuals on this board, it is down to politicians being scumbags. Because every government has been so determined to make it look like they are improving results, they have created a system that is far, far too heavily based on examinations. This creates a pretty unhealthy learning culture which is focused on being able to answer pretty predictable questions, but not actually give a real understanding of whatever subject they are learning. At secondary school I spent much of my time churning out past papers, and from what I hear this is more and more the case even at primary schools now, where pupils will just continually work on mock exams until they can pass the real thing.

Obviously such a style of learning is far too focused and doesn't allow them to learn how to apply what they learn more broadly. It is also really unfair on a lot of students, since not everyone will excell in learning that way. Right now people are going to school to learn exam techniques, not maths/science/whatever.

So this might work for churning out good looking results for kids in any given year, but in the long-term it is going to make them struggle.

This is the #1 problem in the education system today. And yet as the government keeps taking such superficial measures to make things appear better with better results etc, they keep making the problem worse.

As for your points ACIN...

1. Teachers Unions are crappy and hold back change. They do this for a very good reason.

Maybe this is a problem with American culture but I think teachers are more respected here. In fact one of the government ministers pleaded to teachers not to join in the latest round of coming strikes since it would diminish peoples' respect for them.

As for parents being annoying and expecting teachers to hand students of any and all abilitie with straight A grades... I haven't really heard of such problems. But what is pretty common is parents not accepting the fact that their kids are badly behaved, a lot of fuss is kicked up about suspensions etc that makes it very difficult to remove bad kids from the class even when they hold others back. Teachers need more respect in such situations.

3. Administration is where the money flows. There is too much administration. Stop blaming teachers.

Point 2 wasn't relevant to the UK, but 3 is something the UK has very much in common with the USA. Some of the stories I have heard about the many pointless yet highly paid jobs that are supposed to uphold the school system. Some of the stuff is really unbelievable. There are people with literally no responsibilities getting paid because the system is reformed so continually that its a mess and there are jobs hanging about that are not even relevant to the current system. Although I expect such problems are not unique to schools but in fact run throughout the councils sphere.

As for the distribution of funds, again you're onto something. A piece on the BBC a while ago showed what some tiny schools in remote parts of the Highlands are getting in funding, and its unbelievable. There is always a reactionary outrage with a lot of these schools getting shut down these days. But opposing these changes is really dumb, when you consider what a leach these places are on some of the massive yet really run-down inner-city schools.

On a similar note, the system as it is creates a cycle of success for the good schools, but a vicious cycle for the poorer ones. For example, the town where I live has a repution as a dump and its two main secondary schools are pretty poor. But there is a much nicer town down the road with a pretty decent school. And since the two towns are close enough for parents to be able to send their children to schools in either of them, all the more driven parents where I live send their kids to the good school in the other town. This problem could probably be fixed by making the catchment areas more limited, it doesn't even cost anything to do so.

4. Parents are ruining everything. It is ok to silence them if you give them a choice of school.

I'm going to disagree on this. Maybe it's because I don't live in Texas where some overbearing parents want their kids to learn about Jesus' free-market values, but it is generally a sign of a healthier school where parents are more involved.

Sure you can question the order of cause and effect with this (is the school healthy beacuse parents are involved, or are they more involved because its good performance has made their more positive and less apathetic), but both factors probably at least complement each other.

I'm also skeptical about how having parents being concerned with "inappropriate" content has any sort of impact on the quality of education. There are enough literary works for schools not to have to cause controversy in this respect.

Damn look what you made me write!

[Major Robert Dump]

TO ACIN:

Wow. Someone just had a class on White Flight. You know, I understand how it feels to sit in a class and have some new idea tossed at you, and even though the idea deosn't quite seem so clear-cut and logical, well you cannot argue because all of your classmates are nodding in agreement and, maybe, some of them are black and you don't want to make them mad.

The Great Society builders didn't dismantle anything. White flight from the cities to the suburbs, creating a de facto segregation is what really tore apart communities. It's why schools are to this day predominantly white or black. White flight was not prompted by the government or any of the Great Society builders. It was provoked because whites couldn't learn to get along with blacks after lawful segregation was struck down and blacks could intermingle in public life with whites.


I have been waiting diligently on this board for someone to repeat this absolute garbage of "white flight" being 100% racism, which I intially heard in college and no amount of reasoning could convince the teachers or the race baiters otherwise. It sounds like you recently had a lecture on the subject. Awesome. It's still blamed for dozens of ills within minority communities as if it were some deep government/civil conspiracy to destabilize the black man and lead them to a life of crime. Whites fled did they?

I don't disagree with most of your post BTW. Teachers are demonized unnecessarily and administrators are way overpaid.

But lets talk about white flight. Lets bring some reasoning into this. Was there racism involved because Archie Bunker didn't want to live next to darky? Of course there was in some cases. Probably many cases. But were there other factors that played out that are ignored because its not as easy as just saying "racism?" Does it not do everyone a disservice to ignore these other factors and simply say whitey fled cuase he is scared of blacky?

1 -- Property Value: Black people made the property value go down. There are a lot of reasons for this, some legit and some illegit (discussed later), but I don't make the world I just live in it. It was what it was, and people who had an influx of black people saw their property value go down. So my question to you is this: If you stood to lose money hand over fist on a hard-earned investment, would you up and move to another neighborhood or "Stick it out" for the sake of some abstract idea of race relations and eqaul opportunity?

Yeah, me neither. What if they said "OMGZ Whitey if you leave you will be responsible for the next 60 years of black problems OMG" would you still tough it out and lose money?

Me neither.

2. Crime. With poor people comes crime. Yeah yeah, theres plenty of white crime, too. Even more so with poor whites. It's not usually the older poor people who are trying to make a better life for themselves, its the youngsters they bring with them. The same thing happened in poor Irish, poor Italian and poor German neighborhoods. The second generations were buttholes. And it continued and continued within those communities, and the #1 of perpetrator against those specific "minorities" was people of the same "minority." With black people that is still the case by a longshot. The same phenomenon is currently going down in a couple of European countries with neighborhoods of immigrants.

But I digress. Crime came with the integration. So I ask this question: Crime goes up in your neighborhood. Do you move, or would you stick out an increase in crime that put you, your family and your property in jeopardy both real and indirect (see #1) for the sake of some bastract idea of race relations and better understanding?

Me neither.

3. Employment.
Older, Undereducated people tend take unskilled jobs that used to go to kids in high school and college. There go the young people. White flight (PROFESSOR LEFT THIS OUT ON PURPOSE) also corresponded with the advent and construction og highway interstate systems and the more affordable automobile. This means people could afford to commute to work over long distances. One less thing to keep you in your crappy neighborhood.

4. Business. On the subject of crime, your business (and home, I forgot to mention) insurance just went up because your neighborhhod now sucks. Your store gets more shoplifters. As your professor may or may not have told you (HE/SHE PROBABLY LEFT THIS OUT ON PURPOSE BECAUSE ITS EASIER TO DEMONIZE EVERYONE) well businesses were the last to leave because they had a stake in the community, they had invested in their neighborhoods. And in the course of sticking it out they lose money, they see the quality of employees go down, they get robbed.

What this boils down to is that these neighborhoods got integrated, they became not so appealing for multiple reasons due to a small segment of the larger minority, and the people who had the means to leave did leave. Yeah, businesses closed. Jobs went away. Crime got even worse. Its a natrual turn of events, its human nature, its the way the world works. People come in and screw things up for everyone else, and other people start to leave. If you weant to blame someone for the vast ghettos and the subsequent hit the black communities had to take, don't just blame it on racism and white people being scared living near black people. Blame it also on the black people who screwed it up for all the other black people.

[a completely inoffensive name]

TO ACIN:

Wow. Someone just had a class on White Flight. You know, I understand how it feels to sit in a class and have some new idea tossed at you, and even though the idea deosn't quite seem so clear-cut and logical, well you cannot argue because all of your classmates are nodding in agreement and, maybe, some of them are black and you don't want to make them mad.

Ehhh, I never had a class on white flight. What I said is solely from reading I have done over the years, where people generally use white flight to explain something in their argument, which generally in the process gave a picture of what white flight was for me. I have absolutely no problem with learning new ideas or calling a crappy idea for what it is.

I have been waiting diligently on this board for someone to repeat this absolute garbage of "white flight" being 100% racism, which I intially heard in college and no amount of reasoning could convince the teachers or the race baiters otherwise. It sounds like you recently had a lecture on the subject. Awesome. It's still blamed for dozens of ills within minority communities as if it were some deep government/civil conspiracy to destabilize the black man and lead them to a life of crime. Whites fled did they?

Never had a lecture on it, see my statement above. My major in uni is chemistry, soon to be chemical engineering. I don't take classes on subjects like white flight.

I don't disagree with most of your post BTW. Teachers are demonized unnecessarily and administrators are way overpaid.

Well thank you. I kind of wanted the conversation to stick to the points I made, so after I reply to this post, if you could comment on my main points in the OP, that would be great.

But lets talk about white flight. Lets bring some reasoning into this. Was there racism involved because Archie Bunker didn't want to live next to darky? Of course there was in some cases. Probably many cases. But were there other factors that played out that are ignored because its not as easy as just saying "racism?" Does it not do everyone a disservice to ignore these other factors and simply say whitey fled cuase he is scared of blacky?

1 -- Property Value: Black people made the property value go down. There are a lot of reasons for this, some legit and some illegit (discussed later), but I don't make the world I just live in it. It was what it was, and people who had an influx of black people saw their property value go down. So my question to you is this: If you stood to lose money hand over fist on a hard-earned investment, would you up and move to another neighborhood or "Stick it out" for the sake of some abstract idea of race relations and eqaul opportunity?

Yeah, me neither. What if they said "OMGZ Whitey if you leave you will be responsible for the next 60 years of black problems OMG" would you still tough it out and lose money?

Me neither.

2. Crime. With poor people comes crime. Yeah yeah, theres plenty of white crime, too. Even more so with poor whites. It's not usually the older poor people who are trying to make a better life for themselves, its the youngsters they bring with them. The same thing happened in poor Irish, poor Italian and poor German neighborhoods. The second generations were buttholes. And it continued and continued within those communities, and the #1 of perpetrator against those specific "minorities" was people of the same "minority." With black people that is still the case by a longshot. The same phenomenon is currently going down in a couple of European countries with neighborhoods of immigrants.

But I digress. Crime came with the integration. So I ask this question: Crime goes up in your neighborhood. Do you move, or would you stick out an increase in crime that put you, your family and your property in jeopardy both real and indirect (see #1) for the sake of some bastract idea of race relations and better understanding?

Me neither.

3. Employment.
Older, Undereducated people tend take unskilled jobs that used to go to kids in high school and college. There go the young people. White flight (PROFESSOR LEFT THIS OUT ON PURPOSE) also corresponded with the advent and construction og highway interstate systems and the more affordable automobile. This means people could afford to commute to work over long distances. One less thing to keep you in your crappy neighborhood.

4. Business. On the subject of crime, your business (and home, I forgot to mention) insurance just went up because your neighborhhod now sucks. Your store gets more shoplifters. As your professor may or may not have told you (HE/SHE PROBABLY LEFT THIS OUT ON PURPOSE BECAUSE ITS EASIER TO DEMONIZE EVERYONE) well businesses were the last to leave because they had a stake in the community, they had invested in their neighborhoods. And in the course of sticking it out they lose money, they see the quality of employees go down, they get robbed.

What this boils down to is that these neighborhoods got integrated, they became not so appealing for multiple reasons due to a small segment of the larger minority, and the people who had the means to leave did leave. Yeah, businesses closed. Jobs went away. Crime got even worse. Its a natrual turn of events, its human nature, its the way the world works. People come in and screw things up for everyone else, and other people start to leave. If you weant to blame someone for the vast ghettos and the subsequent hit the black communities had to take, don't just blame it on racism and white people being scared living near black people. Blame it also on the black people who screwed it up for all the other black people.

I stand corrected about white flight. I never thought that everyone moving to the suburbs was a racist (maybe they just liked having a large lawn), I was just under the assumption that for most people it was because they didn't want to live with the blacks. Never thought about the economic aspect of it all with property vales. And I kind of figured it wasn't only a white person thing going on, that blacks may have prompted or provoked many whites to move due to reasons you just listed. I will not make the same generalization about white flight again, MRD, I promise.

Since this could be a thread in it's own right, maybe MRD, or someone else will make a new topic about it. However, the main point I was making with white flight that still applies here with what MRD has told me is that white flight was not some deconstruction of the Great Society builders. It was a natural process for the reasons MRD gave. So I still don't see where busing and white flight either:
A. Is to blame on liberals
or
B. Is still wreaking havok on schools even though the before and after of forced desegregation has the result of segregation.

[HoreTore]

I love how the people who whine about liberals ruining education never backs their claims of how things should be with actual research and science.

But that may be because no research supports most conservatives view of education. The authoritarian school system is dead and buried - and I hope it will never return.

I might have more to say after I've read this thread, but right now there's a footie game on....

[Centurion1]

I love how the people who whine about liberals ruining education never backs their claims of how things should be with actual research and science.

But that may be because no research supports most conservatives view of education. The authoritarian school system is dead and buried - and I hope it will never return.

I might have more to say after I've read this thread, but right now there's a footie game on....

oh wait it is all over asia. and in Europe your school system is more authoritarian than American education.

[HoreTore]

oh wait it is all over asia. and in Europe your school system is more authoritarian than American education.

Yes, and that might be the reason why Europe is lagging behind the US when it comes to inventions.

The US has, since Dewey, lead the way on education. The Cape Cod convention staked out a new course, the one we are on now, because they realized that the american education system pre-1950 quite frankly sucked. The education system we have now wasn't made by hippies, it was made by old men, most of them scientists i maths, physics, chemistry, etc as well as education(though curiously, those schooled in eucation was actually a minority).

As a treat, I'll list the four main influences of modern education for you:
- John Dewey
- Jean Piaget
- Jerome Bruner(who led the cape cod convention)
- Lev Vygotsky

2 yanks, one frenchie and a russkie. All four of them belonging to the first half of the 20th century. No hippies.

The reasons why traditional authority in classrooms, if I may call it that, has been dismantled is overwhelming evidence that the following things further education:
- learning by doing, not transfer of knowledge
- learning through social interaction between peers
- student ownership of its own education. This has long ago been implemented in the corporate world, by the way(mowt commonly through stock options).
- evaluation FOR learning, not OF learning.

[HoreTore]

Damn it! One can never remember everything, eh? I forgot Thordike and his law of effect and Skinner's work which built on that, of course....

That would be the 1910's to 1930-ish....

Obviously influenced by the social radicals of the 60's and 70's!!!

[Lemur]

Not to be too mushy-feely, but is this subject really a conservative/liberal one? Some schools in the USA are very good. Many are not. I think everyone can agree that non-educational spending by districts is a joke, and should be slashed.

Honestly, I expect there's more agreement than disagreement amongst the Orgahs on this topic. Far more interested in looking at models that work than pointing the partisan finger of blame (which is kinda a dead-end conversation, although an amusing one).

I'd like to know why Finland is doing so well, for example.

[HoreTore]

If I may allow myself to be bold, Lemur, I'll point at the two largest obstacles in the US system as I see it:

1. The school board system where parents have a say.
2. The constant evaluation OF learning.

None of these two are as far as I know part of the left/right divide, so honestly, I don't believe this is a partisan issue.

I also believe it is a myth that the education system is "broken" or any of the other terms people like to fling at it. I actually believe it is moving forward nicely. But then again, I am an optimist by nature....

To expand on the points above:

Number one is because it gives plenty of people who have no idea what they're talking direct power. There is no other field than education where the incompetent have such power over the incompetent. Democracy gives us better solutions, but only when we make larger, strategic and more general decisions, not through micro-management. For example, we can all chip in on whether or not to invade Iraq, but can you imagine a situation where a board of civilians with no military training overseeing the orders of a captain in the field, and changing them when they feel like it? No, of course not, that would be ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as parents controlling the classrooms is.

Number two is evaluation OF learning instead of FOR learning. Almost every study that measures the effect of various things to increase learning, lists evaluation for learning as number one, usually with a big margin on number two. That it is what we should do is almost unquestionable.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Not to be too mushy-feely, but is this subject really a conservative/liberal one? Some schools in the USA are very good. Many are not. I think everyone can agree that non-educational spending by districts is a joke, and should be slashed.

Honestly, I expect there's more agreement than disagreement amongst the Orgahs on this topic. Far more interested in looking at models that work than pointing the partisan finger of blame (which is kinda a dead-end conversation, although an amusing one).

I'd like to know why Finland is doing so well, for example.

The thread title came from PJ and Cent claiming that america's schools are broken because of leftist uptopia building in my gay marriage thread.

[Centurion1]

Yes, and that might be the reason why Europe is lagging behind the US when it comes to inventions.

The US has, since Dewey, lead the way on education. The Cape Cod convention staked out a new course, the one we are on now, because they realized that the american education system pre-1950 quite frankly sucked. The education system we have now wasn't made by hippies, it was made by old men, most of them scientists i maths, physics, chemistry, etc as well as education(though curiously, those schooled in eucation was actually a minority).

As a treat, I'll list the four main influences of modern education for you:
- John Dewey
- Jean Piaget
- Jerome Bruner(who led the cape cod convention)
- Lev Vygotsky

2 yanks, one frenchie and a russkie. All four of them belonging to the first half of the 20th century. No hippies.

The reasons why traditional authority in classrooms, if I may call it that, has been dismantled is overwhelming evidence that the following things further education:
- learning by doing, not transfer of knowledge
- learning through social interaction between peers
- student ownership of its own education. This has long ago been implemented in the corporate world, by the way(mowt commonly through stock options).
- evaluation FOR learning, not OF learning.

authoritative laerning has nothing to do with political parties nor is it what the conservative american party advocates so your point is moot.

[Centurion1]

The thread title came from PJ and Cent claiming that america's schools are broken because of leftist uptopia building in my gay marriage thread.

I blame dit on a plethora of things and what i view as leftist social experimenting is but a tiny fraction of the larger problem. as i stated parents being given power over theirs childrens educations is what has contributed most to breaking the system.

i will respond in greater length later.

[a completely inoffensive name]

If I may allow myself to be bold, Lemur, I'll point at the two largest obstacles in the US system as I see it:

1. The school board system where parents have a say.
2. The constant evaluation OF learning.

None of these two are as far as I know part of the left/right divide, so honestly, I don't believe this is a partisan issue.

I also believe it is a myth that the education system is "broken" or any of the other terms people like to fling at it. I actually believe it is moving forward nicely. But then again, I am an optimist by nature....

To expand on the points above:

Number one is because it gives plenty of people who have no idea what they're talking direct power. There is no other field than education where the incompetent have such power over the incompetent. Democracy gives us better solutions, but only when we make larger, strategic and more general decisions, not through micro-management. For example, we can all chip in on whether or not to invade Iraq, but can you imagine a situation where a board of civilians with no military training overseeing the orders of a captain in the field, and changing them when they feel like it? No, of course not, that would be ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as parents controlling the classrooms is.

Number two is evaluation OF learning instead of FOR learning. Almost every study that measures the effect of various things to increase learning, lists evaluation for learning as number one, usually with a big margin on number two. That it is what we should do is almost unquestionable.

Still need to get rid of tenure otherwise you still have crappy teachers that just suck, and teaching to a test needs to stop as well. The latter especially is hurting education more than anything else.

[HoreTore]

authoritative laerning has nothing to do with political parties nor is it what the conservative american party advocates so your point is moot.

You need to put your reading glasses on.

I specifically made the point that this had nothing to do with partisan politics.

@ACIN:

"Teaching for the test" is a symptom of evaulation of learning.

[Centurion1]

You need to put your reading glasses on.

I specifically made the point that this had nothing to do with partisan politics.

@ACIN:

"Teaching for the test" is a symptom of evaulation of learning.

so why address my point? i simply said that authoritative education policies are common throughout the world.

[Kralizec]

Yes, well, English was never my strong suit in school.

This is clearly the fault of liberals.

[Xiahou]

People have lots of ideas on how to fix the schools- many of them are good ideas. The real problem is that no one is free to try their ideas out.

Simply put, the problem with schools is the government run monopoly on them.

[PanzerJaeger]

I really don't see where any of this comes from. From the 1960s to the late 80s there was busing of blacks to white schools. It turned out that this did not have any major effect on the education of the shipped black students and actually created more hostile race relations in the bused schools. It had no major financial impact and any actual impact on learning in the classroom was gone when the last class that experienced busing in the early 90s graduated in the mid 90s.

The Great Society builders didn't dismantle anything. White flight from the cities to the suburbs, creating a de facto segregation is what really tore apart communities. It's why schools are to this day predominantly white or black. White flight was not prompted by the government or any of the Great Society builders. It was provoked because whites couldn't learn to get along with blacks after lawful segregation was struck down and blacks could intermingle in public life with whites.

So unless you want to tell me that liberals ruined public education by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that they shouldn't have ended segregation, than your stance just seems completely absurd.

The problem was not the end of segregation, but the forcing of integration; and race is only tangentially linked to the issue.

Your description of busing and its effects is largely myth, an excuse dreamed up in leftist academia to explain the failure of this particular element of the Great Society. To understand why it is false, we must first examine the structure of the public school system before busing.

The foundation of that system was the neighborhood school. Most children went to schools within walking distance of their homes, many times the same schools that their parents went to and often the same ones that their grandparents attended. Teachers, as well, were often drawn straight from the neighborhood and sent their own children to the schools in which they worked. Children grew up together and their parents ran in the same social circles, creating lasting social bonds tied to the school, much like what was described in the BBC piece Lemur posted about Finland.

This created a sense of community revolving around the school that turned out to be critically important to performance. The social factor, in effect, was a meaningful deterrent to parent disinterest. All the other mothers knew if Sally Wilson didn't show up to the PTA meeting, and all the fathers knew if Joe McCoy skipped out on his Boy Scouts responsibilities. Good kids and bad kids, smart ones and stupid ones, were not only known, but so were their parents - which gave them a social incentive to keep their kids out of trouble and focused on learning. You might not have gotten invited to that dinner party if your kid was the neighborhood bully. Further, teachers had a more direct connection to the students, as poor performance not only reflected badly on the students and parents, but also on themselves in their social lives.

These social bonds not only bound most people to a certain level of involvement in their children's education, it also led to a great sense of pride in the neighborhood school - the heart of the community in many ways. Parents not only donated their time, but their resources as well. Sports equipment was donated, libraries were stocked, and extracurricular activities were sponsored. Many times, even school mascots actually had a direct connection to the heritage or ethnic makeup of the neighborhood.

And that communal pride translated into national pride. Americans of all political stripes loved public schools. It is hard to imagine today, but before busing they actually represented something that made America special - the right of every citizen to a good education. That love was so strong that most states passed Blaine Amendments - forbidding state funding for private religious schools. Why should Catholics send their children to special schools? It was downright un-American!

In one fell swoop, busing - conceived and pushed by the American Left - destroyed all of that, taking most metropolitan schools systems down with it. Children in both the white and black communities were now forced to wake up hours earlier to be bused across cities to schools and areas neither they nor their families had ever been to, many of which were significantly more prone to crime and danger. Worse, children were subjected to last minute racial quota filling, being randomly pulled from their classes - their friends and social system - to be sent to some school across town, many of them seniors who could not graduate with the friends they'd grown up their entire lives around. Sports teams were broken up, clubs lost their leaders, and parental involvement plummeted. Most American households were still single car when busing was implemented, and it was far more difficult for parents to be actively involved in schools so far away. Many of those whose children were spared left in disgust.

It was particularly difficult for the black communities. In addition to the new transportation burdens placed on their children, they were often seen as being at fault by their new white schoolmates for the loss of their friends. Further, black parents often had even less means than their white counterparts, making involvement in cross-town schools nearly impossible. Finally, busing led to many black neighborhood schools - which had just as much pride of community as any of the white schools - to be closed.

Naturally, discipline issues skyrocketed while performance plummeted across the board. More critically, busing changed the nature of public schooling in America, and how people viewed it as more and more Americans were forced to watch their children be packed off to distant and often hostile districts. School was no longer a reflection of the community, but a government Petri dish where social experiments were conducted with America's children as the guinea pigs. And those anti-public school feelings bled over into many districts that didn't even have busing schemes. Public edcuation went from being an American asset, to something American children had to endure and overcome. And as parents reduced their involvement in the schools, government increasingly had to step in to fill the void; and most analysts with an understanding of education will attest that no amount of money and bureaucracy can make up for parental involvement.

That great psychological shift in the way Americans viewed public education had all sorts of negative externalities. One of the largest was a brain drain of the critical human capital that kept the school system functional. The fierce controversy and racial politics that busing injected into school systems around the country caused many great administrators and teachers to leave, and many more to stay away. Their replacements were often not of the same caliber, leading to the problems we see today with poor teachers and more and more money having to be offered to retain competent administrators.

In essence, busing transformed public schools from hubs of communities into just another poorly run government enterprise and teaching from a noble profession into just another government job - one to be avoided if at all possible. The children themselves were devalued, as well. They became nothing more that black guinea pigs and white guinea in the eyes of the government, and little more than widgets on an assembly line to teachers that didn't know and didn't care about them.

Now we get to the great myth of white flight.

Segregation in American schools was ended in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Busing was pushed because of a perceived injustice among the Left in the fact that most schools were still naturally segregated based on the profile of American communities. What was not acknowledged then and what is little known today is that many schools that sat on the edges of white and black areas had naturally integrated since the '54 decision with few issues. When left alone, even in the '50s and early '60s, the national shift in understanding about race and culture was reflected in the school system. Neighborhoods that were naturally growing more integrated produced naturally integrated schools.

And that's the big myth. White flight had far less to do with racism than it did abject disgust with the mechanics of busing, and studies from the time confirmed it. One commonly cited one was conducted by the RAND Corporation in the late '70s. It found that whites were against busing not because of racism, but because it 'destroyed neighborhood schools and camaraderie' and led to more discipline problems. The study concluded that busing 'eroded the community pride and support that neighborhoods had for their local schools'. And those feelings cut both ways. Public opinion polling in support for busing throughout the period remained in the single digits for both the white and black communities.

Both groups overwhelmingly would have preferred the escape from busing (and all the other Great Society schemes that characterized American cities of the time) that the suburbs and outlying areas offered, but only the whites had the resources to leave - and with them went the tax base that supported the cities in the first place, exacerbating the problems even more.

I'll end with a short anecdotal example. Before busing, the city I live in, Memphis, had one of the best school systems in the South, one that could compete with any city in the country. During the Great Society era the city implemented a very aggressive busing scheme. Today, that system is such a toxic mix of racial politics, union politics, violence, crime, gangs, awful teachers, and even worse students, the state is going to have to take it over. Ask people alive during the time when it all went to pot and the answer invariably will be when busing was at its height. I went to private school here because my parents would never consider sacrificing my education to the public schools, and along with the usual group of wealthy brats that you'll find in any private school, there were many children of working class households whose parents made great sacrifices - bigger homes, new cars, nice vacations - just to ensure that their children didn't have to attend public schools. It wasn't always this way, it didn't have to be this way, and busing was the catalyst to it all.

If you're interested in the roots of the public education problems we have today, I recommend The Burden of Busing: The Politics of Desegreation in Nashville, Tn by Richard Pride, Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960's and 1970's by Ronald Formisano, and David Frum's The 70's, which actually goes into a lot of depth about busing.

[Strike For The South]

White flight is not a myth guys.....It's a documented phenomenon

I know its fits the narritive that those damn libreals destroyed all these wonderful schools but in fact it was the white people themselves who had firesales on their neighborhoods and took the tax base with them.

[PanzerJaeger]

White flight is not a myth guys.....It's a documented phenomenon

I know its fits the narritive that those damn libreals destroyed all these wonderful schools but in fact it was the white people themselves who had firesales on their neighborhoods and took the tax base with them.

I'll forgive you for avoiding what turned into a wall of words in my last post, but I'm not arguing that it didn't happen - only that the motivation behind it wasn't so much racism but aggressive Leftist policies that destroyed neighborhood and community cohesion and caused social disharmony to such an extent that the people who had the means to leave chose to do so. When the government starts monkeying around with people's children, it creates enough incentive for many to pack up and move.

[lars573]

White flight is not a myth guys.....It's a documented phenomenon

I know its fits the narritive that those damn libreals destroyed all these wonderful schools but in fact it was the white people themselves who had firesales on their neighborhoods and took the tax base with them.

Which is the real problem with the US education system. It's funded by property taxes. I'd really like to know who's "good idea" it was to have your schools get a good bit of their operating budgets from something as mercurial as property taxes. I mean throw a rock at a map of western nations and they've got issues with their publicly funded school system. But really funding via property taxes is a huge mill stones your system has to drag around.

[HoreTore]

I have never understood why on earth budget posts should be financed by a specific tax.

All the tax money collected should go into one big pile of cash. Then distributed. Earmarking taxes is a retarded practice.

[Strike For The South]

I'll forgive you for avoiding what turned into a wall of words in my last post, but I'm not arguing that it didn't happen - only that the motivation behind it wasn't so much racism but aggressive Leftist policies that destroyed neighborhood and community cohesion and caused social disharmony to such an extent that the people who had the means to leave chose to do so. When the government starts monkeying around with people's children, it creates enough incentive for many to pack up and move.

Meh, Certainly busing is one of the stupidest ideas ever concived but I would be more scared for the black kid getting bused to Southie than the white kid getting bused to whatever part of Memphis the black like to live

I think to look at 1 cause and extrapolate to the entire nation is wrong. In some places (Atlanta & Miliwake....SP lol) Race was most certainly the defintive reason for white flight. While in other places (SoCal) busing was the main culprit

At the end of the day the culprit was most likely the federal government taking the civil rights act of 64 and screaming "everyone needs to be best friends NOW" Real life doesn't work that way

[a completely inoffensive name]

I read your post PJ and you seem to know a lot about busing and it's impacts. But even if what you said was 100% correct, your response is still 100% wrong in the context of contemporary times. It has been 20 years since large scale busing ended. Kids are once again graduating, and living in their own neighborhoods and doing everything that busing disrupted. To claim that the effects of busing are still causing mayhem on schools systems nationwide seems to be nothing more than the last thread that conservatives try to hold onto in an attempt to justify why liberal policies should not be trusted with the school system.

I have not seen one reason why any of this has any application to today. Things are back to where they were before the busing. It has been back to normal for a few years longer than I have been alive. If I asked any of my friends about busing, they would not know a single thing about it or even know that it was a policy.Society did not suddenly have a big mental break from busing. There are much more different reasons why students and parents don't give a **** about schools than a policy that ended so many years ago.

Let's say that all these white people left because of the children as you are suggesting. So obviously all the white people in the suburbs rebuilt their communities and they must all be flourishing right? Nope. Well that doesn't make sense. They left because their communities broke apart, but didn't bother to rebuild new communities in the places they fled to?

Yeah, this just reads as some big sappy story of the liberals who tried to implement a solution, and now everything is ruined forever. Those dumb liberals. How long is public apathy for schools going to be blamed on a 50 year old policy that ended so long ago, students who never experienced it are going to be having kids of their own in 5 years?

[Major Robert Dump]

White flight is not a myth guys.....It's a documented phenomenon

I know its fits the narritive that those damn libreals destroyed all these wonderful schools but in fact it was the white people themselves who had firesales on their neighborhoods and took the tax base with them.

Yes, the white people did take the tax base with them. And I cannot blame them for doing so.

To ACIN: Sorry for going off topic and having college flashbacks. I'm still shell shocked.

The problems with the shcools are so multifaceted that it's hard to pick just one issue. But in the spirit of partisan politics, it's easier to dumb the issue down to just Liberal or Conservative induced problem because catchy phrases and tag lines work best in sound byte politics.

Lazy parent? Check. Overpaid Admin staff? Check. Touchy-Feely programs that cost money and wussify our kids? Check. Teacher who brings political agenda to school? Check. Politicians deciding what we teach and how to test? Check. Funding being attached to idiotic programs? Check. Reactionary parents? Check. All of these things play off each other and make things worse when people react with more accusations, more laws, more denials and more amdinistration.

We could easily make a thread like CRs Police Abuse thread that shows stupid things that schools and parents and kids do that just get shrugged off as being okay.