Yep they are. Kids know very little. Just put up a map of the U.S., remove the state names, then ask them to point to a particular state. More often than not, what they point out is more far out than a drunk doing a sobriety test. If they don’t know important things about their country, how can anyone say schools are doing a good job?

If you think schools are doing a good job, just ask any high school kid working a cash register to make change without the use of the computer. There is much work needed here.

Public schools are working but the parents of today’s society are not. There are plenty of good students out there without the help of their parents. They want to be their best friends, which spells out that they let their child do what they want so they seem cool. Its time our parents take a look at what responsibilty, honesty, integrity, etc. their teaching their child. Schools/Teachers are fine…Parents are not (not all parents).

It’s obvious that if there is no child left behind, that it is necessary to teach to the lowest common denominator. What challenge does that provide to the “bright students”. None. The feds must think that IGNORANCE IS BLISS. They are certainly promoting it, non stop.

A new a new proposal, one that worked. It’s called the “no child left with a behind.” That’s self explanatory.

Further, There are more than 299 different federal agencies dispensing money to schools. That is craziness. One cannot pin responsibility on any one agency since the pass the buck. There is no control anywhere.

Now to St. Louis Schools, they are no different than schools elsewhere. public schools nationwide have problems. It starts with the dereliction of parents Then they transfer it to their kids. No good teacher, or administrator can change that. The end result is that parents, students, administrators, and teachers fail.

Now, can the Feds be cajoled into spending money for schools wisely even when they violate their own regulations? Yep. I know because I have got them to do it many times. I am just a private citizen who has helped deserving schools to get money for justifiable reasons.

My last project was the Jennings School District in Oklahoma. I wrote grant requests to the USDA, The USDA gave them 1 computer for every 5 kids, wired the classrooms etc. I asked the Superintendent what their science labs needed. They needed everything. Their microscopes were bought on sale for $19.95!!!!!!!!

There is more.

Just a ditto on the parents comment. The best teachers and all the money in the world don’t have a chance when the kids are ill-behaved, and it only takes a couple to disrupt in entire class.

In my paragraph above I said there are more than 299 federal agencies that can provide funds to public schools. That was a typo error. There are more than 200. I think the actual figure was 218.

My apologies.

Johnh wrote “It’s obvious that if there is no child left behind, that it is necessary to teach to the lowest common denominator. What challenge does that provide to the “bright students”. None.”

I would chalk this up to just another outrageous statement by johnh. However, I must defend teachers. Most classes today offer differentation to teach the same concept. Not all students are on the same level. Not all students have the same learning style. Not all have the same interests. Today’s teachers are coming up with multiple ways to facilitate learning as well as to measure that the learning has taken place. It is almost like coming up with 20 different lesson plans.

If johnh would stop fishing and actually volunteer at a school he would know that his statement is completely false. (Then again, he is the type of volunteer the schools do not need or want–the guy who would come in and let them know “he already knows everything and how to fix anything wrong”.) I’m no fan of No Child Left Behind, mostly because of its cost prohibitive factors (w/o associated funding) and rules that will backfire like stated in the article. However, the concept behind it is solid. The way it was made into law has been a nightmare.

It’s ridiculous to legislate how much an individual learns and by when. My children attended a terrific public school district, learned a great deal from dedicated and qualified teachers, and now have great careers and futures. The same can be said for millions of students across America.

I really don’t think they are. By my understanding of the NCLB act, it sets all public schools up to be “failing”, and thanks to the “equitable participation” clause, creates a back door voucher program.

The NCLB standards aren’t reasonable. An example of reasonable requirements would be - if 90% of the students in the school pass the requirements, the schools is passing. The NCLB act, however, says that 100% of the students have to be above the 50% median, including special needs children. Even aside from the difficulty of getting 100% of students to do Anything (much less a Spanish speaking student to pass an English exam) it’s statistically impossible for everyone to be “above average” (look it up, think it out). Furthermore, even if all of the students in a school did pass the requirements, all it takes is one “failing” school in the entire district – and all the schools fail.

So the requirements are set up to make public schools “fail”, then the “equitable participation” clause institutes the voucher. It provides that any child who attends a “failing” school can go to any private school, and that private school will get the same money as would be spent if the student were still in the public school system. It may be called “equitable participation”, but it’s still a voucher.

A discussion of the merits of vouchers would be off topic, but the point is, NCLB needs to be overhauled. Right now, it wrongly paints excellent schools as “failing” in order to push a political agenda.

Bad parenting is the real problem, not the schools. A great turnout for parent/teacher conferences is 50% these days.