Chicago Educational Mastery to the Federal Level....
All you young parents... start saving now for parochial and private schools... you do NOT want your kids taught in anything that resembles the Chicago Public School system:
An impromptu flub would be one thing. But Obama Education Secretary-designate — and Harvard grad — Arne Duncan was reading from a prepared text. Guess they teach inventive grammar at Haaaaahvahd.
I’ll add one more dot: University of Chicago Everyday Math. It’s the favored curriculum of Arne Duncan’s schools. It’s the corruption of math education in America, as I’ve reported to you many times over the last year.
This crap math is a good proxy for the quality of the rest of the academic diet.
Arne + Obama + Annenberg + Everyday Math = Same old, same old.
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Did anyone else watch the ed secretary announcement? Obama let Joe Biden out of his cage for a few minutes. Gritted his teeth the whole time as Biden rambled on about his relatives who worked as teachers.
Disappointingly, no gaffes from erratic Joe.
Just a matter of time…
I hope the Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran and Jewish school systems can ramp up in time to help out.
PS: What's up with Joe Biden?
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"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm."
- James Madison, Federalist No. 10
All you young parents... start saving now for parochial and private schools... you do NOT want your kids taught in anything that resembles the Chicago Public School system:
And more: I hope the Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran and Jewish school systems can ramp up in time to help out.
PS: What's up with Joe Biden?
No doubt. This is taking the Federal Education system down to the lowest common denominator. My sister is Principal of an Elementary School in The Burbs up there and has not one good thing to say about Arne Duncan.
Gaffemaster B seems intent on repeating everything he says for emphasis. It reminds me of Tommy "Two Times" in Goodfellas.
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"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
How dare you question the authority of the chosen one. What's good enough for Chicago public schools is good enough for the nation.
Afterall, CPS are the worst in the country. Did you expect anything better?
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‘‘When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ...... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it.’’
— Bill Clinton, 3-22-94
All you young parents... start saving now for parochial and private schools... you do NOT want your kids taught in anything that resembles the Chicago Public School system:
Are you kidding me? Chicago's schools are the BEST! The best and brightest go on to be governor, or even PRESIDENT. You just have to finish first in Corruption 101.
My children will not be taught in a school micromanaged by the department of education.
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No doubt. This is taking the Federal Education system down to the lowest common denominator. My sister is Principal of an Elementary School in The Burbs up there and has not one good thing to say about Arne Duncan.
Interesting .... the talking heads say that he is respected for his reform ideas, is respected by teachers, and has made strides in improving the public education system.
I will defer to your sister though since she is there and "in the trenches."
As a side note .... public education sure gets bashed around a lot as if all public education is bad. I think it's all dependent on where you live and your experiences with public ed as a student or parent of a student. Certainly, there are areas for improvement within the public ed system and certainly there are some crappy teachers. Improving the system isn't a one size fits all solution. What might work for XDC's sister may not be a good fix in my community. Anyway, speaking for my school District and Oregon in general I am amazed that anyone would want to be a teacher here considering the pay, and some of the headaches that teachers and staff have to deal with in terms of students and parents. And yet, every year I see fresh young new teachers who are dedicated and enthused about doing their best.
Sorry for the "side bar" comments .... just seemed like the right place and time to thow out a comment without making it into a thread.
Interesting .... the talking heads say that he is respected for his reform ideas, is respected by teachers, and has made strides in improving the public education system.
I will defer to your sister though since she is there and "in the trenches."
As a side note .... public education sure gets bashed around a lot as if all public education is bad. I think it's all dependent on where you live and your experiences with public ed as a student or parent of a student. Certainly, there are areas for improvement within the public ed system and certainly there are some crappy teachers. Improving the system isn't a one size fits all solution. What might work for XDC's sister may not be a good fix in my community. Anyway, speaking for my school District and Oregon in general I am amazed that anyone would want to be a teacher here considering the pay, and some of the headaches that teachers and staff have to deal with in terms of students and parents. And yet, every year I see fresh young new teachers who are dedicated and enthused about doing their best.
Sorry for the "side bar" comments .... just seemed like the right place and time to thow out a comment without making it into a thread.
It's absolutely dependent on the District you choose to/can afford to live in and the tax base that goes along with it. We moved to our current house 5 years ago specifically because it's one of the best in the State but doubled our taxes in doing so.
IMO the problem is not the teachers, new or old. It's the material that they are forced to into emphasizing due to the idiotic NCLB laws.
Quote:
100% compliance
The Act is promoted as requiring 100% of students (including disadvantaged and special education students) within a school to reach the same state standards in reading and mathematics by 2014. Critics charge that a 100% goal is unattainable. In fact, the "all" in NCLB means 95% of students.[45] Recent regulations allow schools to use alternate assessments to declare up to 1% of students with disabilities proficient for the purposes of the Act.[46] No Child Left Behind Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
95% to 100% compliance in passing students by 2014. IMO very, very few schools could ever hope to acheive 95% Graduation rates without taking special circumstances into account and creating an exception for these students (and NCLB doesn't).
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"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
Public schools are a waste of time. As a child I learned more from the Discovery and History channel than school. In high school I knew more about some subject than the teachers that were teaching them. The sad thing is that my HS was ranked in the top 3% in the nation. I wish I would have gone to a private school.
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The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
-Thomas Jefferson
Public schools are a waste of time. As a child I learned more from the Discovery and History channel than school. In high school I knew more about some subject than the teachers that were teaching them. The sad thing is that my HS was ranked in the top 3% in the nation. I wish I would have gone to a private school.
I don't think they were a waste, nor do I think they are now. My 12 year old is getting a very, very good education with all A's in AP classes...with the material they are mandated to now present.
My argument is that the scales are now so heavily weighted to teaching the NCLB measured subjects (Math/English) that the education is not as well rounded as it used to be. Teachers "teach to the test" and do not go into areas the students might be having problems with in non mandated areas. They have no extra time for this. Other problems IMO are:
-It's underfunded but there's no exclusion for this lack of funding
- There's an incentive to pass along lower performing students in the interest of reaching goals
- There's no Language barrier exclusions
- There are incentives against higher achieving students as they "blow the bell curve"
- It seriously reduces individual school's control of subject matter
- It requires that student's names, addresses and phone numbers be available for Military Recruiters.
__________________
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
IMO the problem is not the teachers, new or old. It's the material that they are forced to into emphasizing due to the idiotic NCLB laws.
Quote:
100% compliance
The Act is promoted as requiring 100% of students (including disadvantaged and special education students) within a school to reach the same state standards in reading and mathematics by 2014. Critics charge that a 100% goal is unattainable. In fact, the "all" in NCLB means 95% of students.[45] Recent regulations allow schools to use alternate assessments to declare up to 1% of students with disabilities proficient for the purposes of the Act.[46] No Child Left Behind Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
95% to 100% compliance in passing students by 2014. IMO very, very few schools could ever hope to acheive 95% Graduation rates without taking special circumstances into account and creating an exception for these students (and NCLB doesn't).
To add to this NCLB madness ... several years ago Oregon had the Certificate of Initial Mastery and the Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CIM/CAM). They were introduced by our state Superintendent (a former news anchor ) as a eventual replacement for the traditional diploma. However, neither the CIM or CAM were required to graduate. At least at our local high school I think it was less than 30% of all graduating seniors were even doing what was required in order to get the CIM and very few if any were doing the CAM. The CIM/CAM required student work samples in a variety of areas (math, English, etc) so teachers were always having to deal with special testing and evaluating student work samples from a program that was not mandatory. Once the kids realized that the CIM/CAM was a joke they treated it like one. Must have been the case statewide because it went the way of the dinosaurs in the last few years.