There is little doubt in my mind, after over forty years in the education business, that when the History of American Public Education is written for the last six or so decades that eventually “the story” will be how progressive education jumped the track and really messed up our schools. And the single worst sin of progressive education is the idea that all kids should perform equally well.
Even though almost everyone’s experience and common sense tell us differently, we have build the idea of equality, specifically equality of results, into virtually everything about our public schools. It remains one of the major reasons that there is so much opposition to giving parents choice in public education like they have in higher education. It is the driver in allocation of resources. Just consider the concept of “average per pupil expenditures” and the way we measure how resources are allocated.
But as every parent who has raised more than one child knows, children are not equal. They have different needs, abilities, motivations and temperaments. Thus, the equal treatment of unequals is inherent inequality. Yet our education establishment sets up a system that is built on the idea that equal results are desirable; indeed, demanded.
The obsession for equal results drives much of the accountability models used. For example, in North Carolina we base almost everything on “minimum proficiency.” Schools and school systems are pushed to get every child up to a minimum level, and little is done to measure in our state testing program how far individual kids go beyond that. And only recently have we even considered the idea of measuring how many kids make the amount of progress they should make in a year’s time. And that idea, although the technology has been available for more than a decade, is now only just beginning to be developed.
One of the most pervasive measures we have ever used is still dominant in American public education: The average. That concept, at its core, is the progressive idea reduced to mathematical terms, that every child should score about the same as ever other child. If they score “average” we consider that just fine. Never mind that the “minimum” for some children may just be “way above average.”
We spend way more on remedial programs to get “every child” up to average than we spend of “gifted programs.” And if we can’t get enough of them up to “average” we change the labels to something like “minimum proficiency” and lower the standards until most kids can pull that off.
When we design textbooks, computer programs and curriculum we focus on the middle or even worse, on being sure most kids can “succeed” at the level we gear the content to. If a kid does better than expected, we call him an “over achiever.” (just consider the absurdity of that term.) And of course, the progressive idea of eliminating ability grouping in our schools is but another example of the absurdity.
And there is no more ridiculous exhibition of this foolishness than the debate that has been raging in Wake County on the issue of student assignment. But it is not just Wake County. Pitt County is notorious for constant student reassignment for the purpose of “keeping balance among the schools.” Beaufort County busses kids from the Pitt and Martin county lines across the City of Washington, often past 3-4 schools to a more distant school because they want “everyone to get the same treatment.”
Consider the absurdity of the NAACP‘s position in the Wake County controversy. If poor kids, who happen to be disproportionately black, attend a school in which they are in the majority, that is viewed as a bad thing. But simply take those same kids and mix them in with wealthier kids who score better on these test and the “average score” of the the school these black kids now go to goes up and everything is fine with the NAACP’s State President. Never mind what happens to those black kids when they get homogenized into a high performing school—high performing not because it did anything for the poor kids, but simply used the wealthier kids scores to pull up the average.
We could go on and on. But there is no better example of the absurdity of the “Lake Woebegone Syndrome” (where all kids are above average) than the infamous “achievement gap.” John Bennett, writing in the American Thinkersays that:
Our educational system is self-destructing because of a fraud known as the “achievement gap.” One result of that fraud is that public school bureaucrats are taking away opportunities from good students in a misguided effort to help underperforming students.
The very concept of the “achievement gap” is a fraud. It assumes that the correct result in schools is equal educational outcomes among different ethnic groups. The same is true of the concept of “underrepresentation.” There is a simple problem with these concepts: It is resolutely ignorant to assume that there will be equal outcomes among ethnic groups. Thomas Sowell has richly detailed the myriad ways in which different ethnic groups have always behaved differently and had disparate outcomes in life, around the world, and throughout history. As Sowell points out, there is no basis in human experience or in logic to expect that different ethnic groups would have identical outcomes. Different ethnic groups have vastly different attitudes, habits, and preferences with regard to many aspects of life, including education. Berkeley Professor John Ogbu (1939-2003), who was black, concluded exactly that in his incredibly important work on black student achievement. Ogbu concluded that “black students did not generally work hard,” he wrote. “In fact, most appeared to be characterized by low-effort syndrome. The amount of time and effort they invested in academic pursuit was neither adequate nor impressive.”
…The expectation of equal outcomes only exists because of a radical ideology of liberal equality that has rooted itself like a tick into the public education system. Unfortunately, the academics who educate us and our children are profoundly biased, as even the NYT has admitted, and would not question their own assumptions. The liberal ideology of equality is so deeply ingrained in academic and popular beliefs that it is unquestioned and unacknowledged. In other words, the belief in equality of outcomes is a dogma, and that dogma misleads educators and policymakers into counterproductive and harmful policy.
You can read the entire article, which has numerous links some really good articles at the link above.
We said it before and we’ll say it again: No matter how much money we pour into public education we will never, ever fix what is wrong with it unless and until we change the system so that it looks at each student, sets high expectations in relation to what that child is capable of producing and empowers him to measure up to, at least, what he is capable of performing. And then really good schools will push kids (yes we used that verb intentionally) just a little further towards excellence and they will be constantly raising, rather than lowering, standards.
Remember the “best teacher” you ever had. Is that not exactly what he/she did to you and to just about every other kid they had. If you were fortunate enough to play on a championship team you remember that what the coach did was help you perform better than you ever thought you could.
We will see real reform in American public schools once the idea of “equal outcomes” gets discarded and “being the best you can be” replaces it. And it will be the best thing that ever happened to poor students. Indeed, it is the only chance they have.
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First, EDUCATION is not a field known for recruiting brainiac’s, not since the 1950′s, when personal responsibility, morality and commonsense were normal (and the Bible was still a text book, look it up!). Now it seems to be an intellectual backwater. The main recurrent image is a large school of slow fish drifting from fad to fad.
Second, the elite educators are lost in cloud-cuckoo land. That is, they rarely meet a theory, however silly, that they don’t fall in love with, and push. So they can promote counterproductive ideas without even realizing how bad the ideas are, or care after the fraud is exposed, as long as the money can still be siphened away from real problems.
Third, we are always told to follow the money. In this case it’s important to note that ordinary minds can make an excellent living in education. They have titles, credentials, prestige. and all they need do, is agree with their superiors…and tenure becomes a reward, regardless if your a good teacher…or a child molester sitting in a rubber-room, still getting paid…because you have ‘tenure’.
Fourth, they are subversives deliberately trying to undermine our society. Recall that in the 1930s, John Dewey and his progressive educators announced that public schools must be transformed (fundamental transformation?), so the country could be transformed (fundamental transformation?). That’s code for creating a socialist country, no matter how few people want it!
Which of the four explanations is best? Well, humans are usually driven by a messy mix of motives. When we are talking about the lower and middle levels of the Education Establishment, I can imagine those people being propelled by all four motivations…However, as we consider the top level of the Education Establishment, the smartest people, don’t we have to assume much greater awareness?
There is so much obvious decay, so much intellectual decline, so many dreadful statistics…Surely, the top-tier people have to know exactly what they’re doing and why.
One distinctive thing about the field of education is that the elite people rarely confess or write tell-all memoirs. Further, the media don’t do much investigative journalism. You almost never see, in a newspaper, any in-depth analysis explaining educational failure’s (plural!).
We have to use our intuition and solve this mystery as best we can (commonsense and looking for the WHOLE TRUTH?).
If my deductions aren’t correct, the Washington Post should put Woodward and Bernstein on the case, thereby returning to their glory days…If they can still find their way back.
I tend to suspect the top people can’t be driven primarily by incompetence, love of theory, or money. There has to be an agenda. Either it is in teaching, and doing their job…or recruiting to idealism’s and agenda’s outside education. That is just the commonsense you have to conclude to.
Doesn’t there have to be ideological commitment? Remember, millions of kids are being damaged, year after year, decade after decade. This is no job for weekend warriors. You have to be a hardcore “change agent.”
Recall that these elite educators embraced Whole Word in 1931; in 1955, Flesch explained why it didn’t work. But here we are 50 years later and the schools are still churning out millions of citizens who can’t read, write or even care about values, morality and commonsense. Dwell on that.
These education commissars decided to keep pushing a ‘clunkered’ tenured socialistic valued educational system…no matter what. How many people have that kind of will and discipline? Take a good look at who is in charge, who surrounds us…Who surrounds you?
LATINOS FOR HONEST GOVERNMENT
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_reli.html
http://www.westernjournalism.com/
Help us to spread the truth, pass this on and help us to take our country back.
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant. (Maximilien Robespierre)
May 15th, 2012
President Barack Obama should close the US Dept of education, they are an impediment to the education system of this United States. Their well intended legislation do not work, because the bureaucracy and the Unions. The system is corrupt by the unions and the politicians that accept their money to finance their campaigns. Obama will free 10 states from the strict requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, giving leeway to states that promise to improve how they prepare and evaluate their students. The first 10 states to receive the waivers are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee, but this will not fix this education crisis.
Every state in the Union should claim their independence from the rules of the federal government and privatize the education system by forming non-profit education schools. Education is the responsibility of the parent’s and the community. The families are the ones that have the best interest on the education of their children. During the last 40 years we witness the destruction of our education system by the implementation of the bilingual education and the no child left behind. We had produce two generations of uneducated people and the downfall of our human capital; generations that have become this new class “The welfare class”
The solution to this education crisis is not money, what we need to do is simple. Close the US Dept. Of Education. The States should organize a new system base on responsibility. Every school in the states should be a non-profit non government private school and have a base curriculum for grade level, that the State require for the maintenance of licensing the school operation. Each school should be run independent and the responsibility for performance should rest on the principle, the teachers and a committee, form by the student’s parents and the taxpayers of the community.
Fellow Americans this crisis on our education was created by our government, they take away the rights of parents and teachers to discipline, to teach our children morality, respect for each other, peoples rights, responsibility and work ethics, to work hard to be the best they can be and be supportive and encourage good behavior, manners and morality and last but not least our American values and patriotism.
Congress nor the President have the right to mandate or legislate education on the states because education is not found among the enumerated objects of the Constitution. Article I does not authorize Congress to establish a Department of Education much less grant it jurisdiction to encourage the education of the people in the several states. Furthermore, federal involvement in education is not an appropriate means plainly adapted to carry out an object contemplated by an enumerated power. Congress may, however, maintain voluntary educational facilities and academies if those means are plainly adopted to raising a military and the like.
Though Congress is prohibited from entangling itself with the education of the people in the several states, it may concern itself with those objects enumerated in Article I, Section 8, Clause 17. This clause grants Congress exclusive legislative authority over the District of Columbia. With respect to the District of Columbia, Congress has legislative authority pro-tanto. It may act as a State legislature, but may not abridge any constitutionally retained right of the people over education.
As far as congressional authority over Federal Territories and property is concerned, the Constitution enumerates certain powers in Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2. This Clause grants Congress power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territories or other property belonging to the United States. This proprietary function differs from the legislative function over the District of Columbia though both constitute grants of power.12
The extent, however, of congressional power with respect to education is limited to the promotion of science and arts and is provided for by Article I, Section 8, Clause 8. The means Congress may employ in the promotion of these enumerated objects is also noted. Congress may only promote these objects “by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discovery’s.” Thus both the object and the means are clearly enumerated and explicitly limited. If Congress exercised any other power inconsistent with these objects in respect to education, it would be pernicious both to the states and the people, and contrary to the Constitution as a legal compact and the Supreme Law of the Land.
Constitutional limitations which clearly precluded the assertion of federal jurisdiction over education.
A proper regard for these limitations requires withdrawal of federal jurisdiction over education and the abolition of the Federal Department of Education and its functions. Such a measure would:
1. Strengthen the people in the exercise of their preexisting inalienable right and power over education acknowledged by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. This includes education, both publicly and privately, directly and indirectly;
2. Strengthen the federal government by redirecting its time, energy and resources toward those objects for which it bears express constitutional responsibility;
3. Strengthen the national economy by acknowledging the constitutional limitations on the purpose to which the federal treasury may be directed and by reducing federal deficits;
4. Strengthen education by encouraging educational diversity and by opposing continued expansion and centralization of educational policy.
Continued federal intervention into education, however, would only disparage historically acknowledged inalienable rights, and would further distort the constitutionally enumerated limitations on the Congress of the United States. These limitations are compelling and deserve further attention.
http://drlwilson.com/Articles/school%20system.htm
http://eagnews.org/american-students-frighteningly-ignorant-of-government/
http://ipatriot.com/video/lunch-scholars?xg_source=msg_mes_network
http://www.lonang.com/foundation/5/f5E1a.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1800556280/dream-with-me-a-documentary-that-will-change-the
http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2000/summer_education_hill02.aspx
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_homeschooling_better_than_public_schools
http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html
http://kathrynvercillo.hubpages.com/hub/Homeschool-vs-Public-School-vs-Private-School
The Fredom Movement – posted by Juan Reynoso – teapartyoftx@gmail.com
Strengthen the federal government by redirecting its time, energy and resources toward those objects for which it bears express constitutional responsibility. The power not delegated to the federal government by the written Constitution is reserved to the states or to the people respectively.
We must stop the trashing of our Constitution and end the Obama’s Nazism dictatorship type of Government.
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_reli.html