Half of Schools Fail
Once again there is more evidence that the No Child Left Behind plan is a travesty. Education secretary, Arne Duncan, calls it “broken”. Nearly half of the nation’s public schools didn’t reach the standards or “adequate yearly progress” needed to fulfill what the law intended! Many ideas seemed brilliant at the time and their paths were paved with good intentions. Unfortunately, No Child Left Behind has hit a dead end. The parallel with medicine is almost exact. The pay-for-performance philosophy using quality metrics sounds great but there is ample evidence that it is costly and does not work. Let’s get wise and stop this behemoth before it too leads down the same road as No Child Left Behind. The only thing driving this runaway train, unfortunately, are the people whose jobs depend on it…..administrators. And they will do whatever it takes to convince you and I that it is better for the patients when it is really just better for them. Listen to the doctors in the trenches on this one*
*Not the turncoat doctors who have morphed into half-clinicians and half-administrators. They know where their bread is buttered.
I applaud your attempt to expose what a few of us know to be true, and what ninety five percent of the population is either ignorant of, apathetic towards, or incapable of understanding. School systems across the nation have eroded as would be expected of any organization more or less controlled by government bodies, whether federal, state, or municipal. In this case, it’s a triple whammy. They are plagued by incompetence, backdoor political funding, cronyism, and “cooking the numbers” with regard to performance and results metrics. There are more than a few teachers who know full well the extent of the mess that they must participate in daily, but virtually all are silent to protect that paycheck coming in the mail, not to mention a visit from Vito(The Knife) Pastafazoolee, the union guy. As usual, money trumps decency and/or ethics. I can confirm such things after taking a position substitute teaching, just to see what really goes on in our public schools. I’d like to say that I was shocked, but considering that most high school grads can’t work with single digit numbers or put together a coherent paragraph, it was no shock at all, rather a grim confirmation of what I had expected. Chaos in the classrooms, scores of teacher’s aids doing the work that students either couldn’t or refused to do, little or no discipline, and a high percentage of parents who couldn’t care less about their kids’ education. What did surprise me was the extent of politically motivated socialistic-leaning brainwashing, which is inexcuseable. There is more emphasis on teaching twelve year olds how to have safe sex and take care of babies(when the safe sex training fails) than the good old three R’s. As you have written, administrators are paid the big bucks to paint a rosy picture of the failure that they are in charge of. It’s truly sickening to see a large percentage of our tax dollars spent merely to keep people employed while they pose as our children’s educators. But hey, that’s the new and improved United States of America.
While I wish you good luck with your efforts to enlighten the masses, you surely know by now that 95% out there are effectively clueless. Of the remaining 5%, 1 or 2 percent will disagree with you on ideological grounds, and 1% have the wealth and power to maintain the status quo. In other words, Rome is burning, and there isn’t a hose big enough to stop it. Check out my blog called the Sanford Tattler. It’s a bit more in-your-face, but along the same lines as your efforts.
Will check out your stuff. You make some great points.
Doug