This post will differ from my standard diatribe about the dangers of Islam, but it will be consistent with my conservative views. We recenty rented "Waiting on Superman". The information in this movie will stun you. I've stated for years that we need leaders and politicians (not necessarily the same thing!) that ask two questions before making any decision:
1. Is it good for the children?
2. Is it good for the country?
With the unions showing their true colors in Wisconsin, the information provided in "Waiting on Superman" is perfectly timed. Also perfectly times is this article I just read on TownHall.com: Supermans Frankenstein Comes To Life
Also, last week, my son's high school district sent an email requesting that we answer an online survey about where the district should cut $10.5 million. At the end was a section where we could comment. My main comment was that the district should re-negotiate the union contracts, as the only question of the 20-sum I answered about cuts that directly affected teachers was about increasing class size. All other cuts were ancillary and support services. This is due directly to the unionization and contracts.
Here are the facts taken directly from the movie:
We've doubled what we spend on each child, which would be worth it if we produced results.
Since 1971 reading scores have flat lined. Math is no better.
No Child Left Behing (NCLB) was a bold promise. To make good on that promise the architects of NCLB decided to measure every student in the country. The goal was 100% proficiency in math & reading.
In AL, only 18% of 8th graders were proficient in math. In MS-14%, NJ-40%, CT-35%, NY-30%, AZ-26%, CA-24%. Across the country, 8th graders were tested for reading & most scored between 20-35% of grade level. The worst scores were in DC at 12%.
Most kids do fine in school up to 4th grade. Between 5th & 7th grade, a huge numer of minority kids go from being B to D students. Either kids are getting stupider every year, or somethinng is wrong with the education system.
The following example was given: Students at Stevenson middle school in Los Angeles, CA only test 13% proficient in math. This school feeds into Roosevelt High School - one of the worst performing High Schools in LA. The CA school system has an A-G system. 15 courses are required to be accepted into the CA university system. Only 3/100 students at Roosevelt will graduate with classes necessary to go to a 4 year university. 57% will not graduate from High School.
Dr. Robert Balfans from Johns Hoplins University has studied the public school system and coined the term "Dropout Factories." Dropout Factories are where over 40% don't graduate on time. He saw a pattern: In cities, suburbs, & rural areas, failing elementary & middle schools were feeding poorly educated students into local High Schools where they lasted 1-2 years. In his research he found over 2000 drop out factories!
Lock High School in LA was one of the worst. Steve Barr has observed that 9th & 10th grade go from 1200 freshman to 300-400 sophmores. They are losing 800-900 kids between 9th & 10th grade. Most freshman read at 1st & 3rd grade level - they've been pushed through the system. Lock High School is 40 years old. 60k kids passed through the school in 40 years - 40k didn't graduate!
We now have millions of kids walking the street with no vested insterest in living - they dropped out of school, they have no diplomas, they have no skills.
For generations, experts blamed failing schools on failing neighborhoods. But reformers have begun to believe the opposite, that the problem of failing neighborhoods might be blamed on failing schools. (Infidel's note: most, if not all liberal idealogy can be disproven by simply reversing their arguments/positions)
In Pittsburgh, PA, 68% of inmates are High school dropouts. The state spends $33k/year on each prisoner. The average prisoner term of 4 years costs $132k. An average private school education costs $8300/year. For the same $132k we could have sent an inmate to private school from K-12 for $107,900, & still had $24,100 left over for college. (Infidel note: makes for a good argument for privatizing public schools!)
Jay Mathews, Editorial Reporter for the Washington Post, said of DC schools "It's the worst possible example of public schooling in the U.S. Lots of districts have certain things wrong with them. DC has everything wrong with it."
DC's Kimball elementary feeds into John Phillips Suza middle school which the Washington Post called an academic sink hole. Odds are most students entering Suza are 3-5 grade levels behind!
Michelle Rhee was appointed Chancellor of the DC public schools in 2007. She was the 7th Chancellor in 10 years. Each predecessor promised radical change. Predecessor Lt. General Julius Becton, two-time recipient of the purple heart and recipient of the Silver Star for heroic acts in battle, said he never faced a mor difficult task than reforming the schools of DC. He resigned 16 months later.
It should be simple, but we've made it complicated. The federal government passes laws and sends money to the states, but states fund schools too, and retain their own often conflicting standards. There are more than 14k autonomous school boards, making school governance a tangled mess of conflicting regulations and mixed agendas. Jonathan Alter, Senior Editor at Newsweek said "This whole collection of people, which is sometimes called 'The Blob'[referring to local school board members, state and federal departments of education, & district superintendants and their staffs] has been an impediment to reform. No individual is necessarily to blame, but collectively they are the goliath of the system."
Michelle Rhee said "This district did not become the way that it is by accident. There's a complete & utter lack of accountability for the job that we're supposed to be doing which is producing results for kids."
Eric Hanushek of Stanford University has tracked the effect of individual teachers on groups of kids. "The difference between a really good teachear & a really bad teacher is 1 yr of learning per academic year." Students with high performing teachers progressed three times as fast as those with low performing teachers, & yet they cost the same to the school. A bad teacher covers 50% of the required curriculum in the school year. A good teacher can cover 150%. (Infidel note: this is why unionization, which equates to a socialist system, is bad. Performance is not rewarded. Only exceptionally dedicated individuals will put forth the effort to overcome the system. See Stand And Deliver, Coach Carter, etc.)
In 1991 Howard Fuller was the superintendant of Milwaukee. An undercover investigation where a student video taped classrooms from a book bag revealed teacher abuses. Fuller fired the worst teachers in the video & was forced to rehire them with a year back pay due to a tenure clause in the contract, which guaranteed their jobs for life. Tenure started in universities & was meant to prevent professors from being fired for arbitrary or political reasons. In the university, professors were only granted tenure after many ears of teaching & a grueling vetting process. But for public school teachers, tenure has become automatic.
Taken together the AFT & NEA are the largest campaign contributors in the country. Over the last 20 years, they've given over $55 million to federal candidates & their parties. Over 90% of the money goes to Democrats!
John Kamras of Teacher Quality Control in DC showed the Professional Performance Evaluation Process. This document includes 23 steps that must be followed exactly in order to get rid of a teacher. Miss one step or deadline and the entire process must start over.
What reformers & other experts will tell you, often under their breath, is that the biggest obstacle to real reform is the contract with the teacher's union, which ties their hands.
Dance of the Lemons - chronically bad teachers are passed around. This is also called Pass The Trash & the Turkey Trot. In NY, the incompetent & teachers on charges are sent to the reassignment center or rubber room, where many just sleep. 600 teachers spend 7 hours/day in the center. Their hearings last three times longer than the average criminal case, and costs the state of NY $100 million/yr.
IL has 876 districts; only 61 attempted to fire a tenured teacher; only 38 were successfull in firing a teacher. Compare that to other professions: doctors, 1 in 57 lose their license to practice; lawyers, 1 in 97 lose their license to practice; teachers, 1 in 2500 lose their teaching credentials.
Charter schools were created so that they were not bound by the rules of the district or union contracts - public schools with public money, but independently run.
Since the 1970s, U.S. schools have failed to keep pace with the rest of the world. Out of 30 developed countries, we rank 25th in math & 21st in science. Our top 5% of students rank 23rd out of 29 developed countries. However, U.S. students rank #1 in the world in confidence!
Our schools haven't changed, but the world around us has. At the end of 2009 unemployment was at 10% in the U.S., but the high-tech sector could not find enough people to fill their high-tech jobs. Instead, they went 1/2 way around the world to recruit the engineers & programmers they needed. "The only really proven thing to make an economy work well is to have a well educated work force." -- Bill Gates
By 2020, 150 million American jobs will be high skill/high pay, but only 50 milliion Americans will be qualified to fill them.
KIPP schools prove that the right school culture can producte positive results. They closed the achievement gap between rich & poor, shattering the U.S. myth that poor kids can't learn.
With unions it's about the adults, not the kids. For example, Rhees proposed to pay based on performance. Her plan was so threatening that the union leaders would not even allow a vote on the plan.
Update - 4/1/11: A segment from The Patriot Post, Digest · April 1, 2011:
Village Academic Curriculum: DC School Choice
By a vote of 225-195 the House passed this week the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act, which would renew the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. According to Heritage Foundation's Rachel Sheffield, "Since 2004, this program has provided low-income schoolchildren in Washington, D.C., which ranks 51st in the nation in standardized test scores, with scholarships worth $7,500 each to attend private schools of their choice." The program has resulted in improved test scores and vastly increased graduation rates, but political games now jeopardize that chance for children.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) successfully amended other legislation in 2009 to phase out the program. Of course, Durbin and 40 percent of members of the 111th Congress sent their children to private schools, though just 11 percent of their constituents nationwide did the same. The White House released a strong statement opposing the renewal, saying, "Private school vouchers are not an effective way to improve student achievement. The administration strongly opposes expanding the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program and opening it to new students."
According to Patrick J. Wolf, the principal federal investigator of the scholarship program, the administration is trying to make up its own facts. "In my opinion," Wolf testified to Congress in February, "by demonstrating statistically significant experimental impacts on boosting high school graduation rates and generating a wealth of evidence suggesting that students also benefited in reading achievement, the DC OSP has accomplished what few educational interventions can claim: It markedly improved important education outcomes for low-income inner-city students." In short, Barack Obama is ignoring the research and selling out inner-city schoolchildren for purely political reasons. Support from those teachers union must be pretty valuable.
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