Education/Split topic from Obama

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I agree mostly with Bob.
I suppose we could also have a state/national fund for those without health care, too. I sort of like that idea.

Bob, on national education....baaaaaad idea. If you notice, US test scores started slipping when Carter took education out of the hands of local school boards and created the national one.
Do agree with not giving schools national money, though. The district I attended existed on community bonds and it's one of the best in the entire Valley (not that that really says anything). The community pays for schooling, and expects results. They get it. Even the lowest scoring schools in the district consistently do better then the average school in other local school districts.

[Alpaca]

I agree that the current national oversight scheme for education is abysmal, but I don't know of a good replacement. Here in Florida, some enterprising local school board members decided that evolution shouldn't be taught as part of the science curriculum, and there was a big fiasco until that idiocy finally got overturned, but it gives a sense of what incompetence the local level is capable of, too. I'd hate to give people like that complete control over education in this area.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Bob, on national education....baaaaaad idea. If you notice, US test scores started slipping when Carter took education out of the hands of local school boards and created the national one.
Do agree with not giving schools national money, though. The district I attended existed on community bonds and it's one of the best in the entire Valley (not that that really says anything). The community pays for schooling, and expects results. They get it. Even the lowest scoring schools in the district consistently do better then the average school in other local school districts.

Did you not see what I wrote?  The ONLY thing the national level could do is issue and regulate a standard testing scheme.  Sort of a "MPG" for schools.  Participation is voluntary.  It's meant to be a measuring stick, for prospective parents of a particular school district.   That's it.  The rest would be strictly up to the local communities.   

So, I agree with you-- nationally controlled education doesn't work at the primary and secondary level.    Creates too much corruption, as the locals are too low in the bureaucracy to be effective.

And, you need to re-examine Carter's methods: he did NOT take any control from the locals.  Re-read it again, carefully.  What he DID was offer federal money.  But with a PRICE.  The schools HAD to meet specific standards with regards to testing, if they wanted the money.  There were facility standards, and food standards, too.  IF they wanted the federal $$, they HAD to meed the MINIMUM federal standards.

If they didn't want the money?  They could do whatever they pleased.

Re-read it carefully: the repugs have carefully obscured the reality in this issue.

[Alpaca]

From what I've been able to determine from the years I spent in public school, standardized testing is a colossal failure. Even if used as a "measuring stick," schools that wanted to measure up would end up doing their students a disservice. Year after year, teachers would spend time teaching the test instead of teaching a decent curriculum, and that's a recipe for monotony inside the classroom and an undereducated student body.

[beagle]

Best to keep the testing out of the hands of politicians and examining boards in our experience. What politicians want is not high standards but "proof" that more kids are doing better and better each year, and examining boards get more work if their exams are easier. You need employers and university admissions people setting the standards, because they're the ones who have to sort out the people who can't count or read.

Occasionally the politicians get caught out, like when it was shown that an old O-Level exam (for age 16) from about 15 years ago was re-used unchanged as an A-Level exam (for age 18) recently.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I agree with beagle that a politicized testing scheme will not work.

I have conflicting feelings on the subject, on one hand I did have to deal with state tests back home and it is a grueling test lasting 18 hours compressed in 2 days. The tests are NOT taken in the same school and students are assigned to a location at random, making quite unlikely that anyone in the room is from the same school (this prevents institutional cheating). A minimum score is required for graduation and it is used as a benchmark to enter a university. The institute in charge of it (the Colombian ICFES) is mostly concerned with higher education, and as such the test is actually a fair measure of both individual and school achievement. The test applies to all schools public and private and while you can't tell if the best school is the one with better averages, you can be assured that a good average will happen in an academically good school.

OTOH I see the big problem of funding being linked to test scores. A rich community is likely to have higher scores than a poor community, simply because there is a better chance of parents being better educated on the 1st place.

What is certain is that the system as it is right now on the US is broken.
---
Shouldn't the education discussion be split from the thread?

[Sibling Chatty]

A national standardized test would prove essentially meaningless--unless used once, for qualifying for graduation, and tested only the basic, gross minimum knowledge needed to survive in the world as we know it.

Assorted specific testing at intermediate levels, as currently written OR as previously written, is an exercise in futility. A test for 5th graders trying to judge their competence in a certain section of "general earth science" asked a fairly innocuous question about what to do in a tornado. The intended answer was "go to the basement or storm cellar". Children in coastal areas of Texas almost ALL missed that...because they'd grown up in an area where there are no basements or storm cellars--because if you dig a 6 inch hole, it fills with water. You get in a ditch, a low spot, or out in a field or street where you can try to run the other way. There ARE no cellars. But, they were told they were wrong.

Regional peculiarities make nationalized testing in the US a waste of time, unless you stick to generalities. (Can you add, subtract, multiply and divide? Tell time? Understand the language?)

The national standards that SHOULD be enforced? Sufficient textbooks and enough space, enough teachers and enough supplies, adequate funding and healthy foods for subsidized meals (and a lower threshold for those meals, up to and including locally--on site--decided exceptions for kids who literally DO NOT have a responsible enough adult presence to make sure they're fed--it happens, and there's often a need long before Children's Protective Services can be brought in.) If the locals can't provide enough (think the poorest of the poor areas) then subsidize them, even if it takes removing funds from somebody's pet projects elsewhere.

AS to roads? Highways? The Interstate system is a federal thing. Upkeep and expansion need to be federal. The quality of roads nationwide AND the support of the infrastructure we already have is VERY important. (Bridges. The Bushies cut bridge maintenance funding to nil. And bridges are failing. Not a good thing.)

We NEED a better system of public transport. European countries have this. The rail system in the US sucks. We NEED high speed, above grade rail, and the federal level is where it'll have to be mandated. AND funded. Take a tiny percentage of the Pentagon budget away, call it "National Mobility for Security" and move on.

If the US would quit electing greedy-ass bastards to Congress (need funding reforms, lobbying reforms and ethics reforms, all with some long, sharp teeth) and quit feeding the Perpetual War Machine (all about profits for corporations, not about security at all) there would BE the money available for education, infrastructure, health care and so on, ad infinitum.

Of course, if the US ever paid a damn bit of attention to the government and held them accountable... The last 7.5 years, there's been a real fear about doing just that. We allowed the rape of our country by inertia.

If you get a chance, read the cover story in the current Esquire magazine. An interesting and insightful look at Obama and the way he's positioned himself in this election--by making us believe that we're NOT the morons the rest of the world has noticed we are. (Blithely re-electing the smoke and mirrors guys and allowing them to use and abuse us and blame us for it.) It's not in their on-line stuff this month, more's the pity.

There's also a good article on bigotry, and an interesting chart on hate crimes. http://www.esquire.com
http://www.esquire.com/features/hatred-0608

---------------

Zono,

Splitting the education discussion might get problematic, since some of us (me, especially) do a whole several-problems-one-post style.

I'll try to gather the brains to do it, or to at least c/p out the education stuff and set up another discussion--if I can stay off the phone, that is. (Doctors offices and labs, all confused about what Doc W wants.)

My brain hurts. It's not accustomed to such intense use.

[beagle]

I agree with beagle that a politicized testing scheme will not work.

Sorry for the flashback but this is sort of relevant to the academic standards debate. Thirty years ago only a couple of people per school class here got three A grades at A-level, now far more get high grades in far more subjects. The politicians say that it is due to better teaching and brighter students, but strangely the universities don't seem to see it that way.

[Swatopluk]

The universities begin to get infected by this too, shifting the burden of testing job applicants to industry because they can't trust the university degree any longer with certainty.

[Griffin NoName]

Thirty years ago only a couple of people per school class here got three A grades at A-level, now far more get high grades in far more subjects. The politicians say that it is due to better teaching and brighter students, but strangely the universities don't seem to see it that way.

....and twenty years ago academics were saying they were having to spend the first year teaching students stuff they used to know when they left school....... so presumably now it's three years and hence the extension of many degrees to four years.

It's all a ruse to continue to increase the age of retirement.

[beagle]

The academics were probably right then too. The Torygraph published a public school test for twelve year olds from the early 1900s, and it looked about (1980s) O Level standard to me.   One of the questions was quite advanced trigonometry and another required a detailed knowledge of the causes of the loss of the colonies that became the USA. I doubt many 16 year olds could do it now.

[ivor]

My step-son can't even spell.