There Is No Such Thing As Failing

I’m not an educator, but my personal opinion is that if you don’t know what failure is like, you can never truly appreciate or understand what success is!

OT But this is really bad

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html

Is that what we’ve done to our Government? By being party at all costs, haven’t we let them know that they can’t fail, we will still vote for the big D or R next to the name? Look at the results of that! Disasterous!

Not every child that has difficulty reading is not smart. My husband is one of the smartest men I know, he has difficulty reading. A friend of mine, had to do a grade 3 times. He is a millionaire several times over. Another multi millionaire client of mine, never went past the 6th grade.

Myself I had no education between the age of 5-12. None, nada, zip. But I had learned to read in 1st grade at the age of 4. So I became a reader. Books, magazines, newspapers, became my lifeline to education. When I was 12 I took a test and was put in the 3rd grade.

All that to say this. I don’t know the right answer, but lifes a funny thing, it is what we make of it. I could have huddled in a corner, casting about for the cause of my woes. I choose to not be a victim. I can feel for someones difficulty, but I not their wallowing in victimization.

In my mind this is treating the symptom, not the disease, which is the growing academic underperformance in many of our schools. You’re not going to correct anything by merely taking letter grades away. I’m sure the administrator has good intentions but even the best intentions will not turn a chronic problem around. Children are not clones; they mature and develop at different rates. Learning can be fun but it doesn’t come without effort, and at times pain when we fall short of the goal. What I’m hearing in this segment is that the goalposts will be removed and–viola! Everyone succeeds.

This repeated idea that one size fits all rings very hollow, even ominous to me.

Thanks for the piece, Amy. I hadn’t read this before. I’m glad my own kids have completed their schooling.

somewhere along the line we have decided that our children are weaker than we were. Poor babies can not face criticism, should not have to work to attain goals. Should live a feel good life. We have weakened them. Is it any wonder the drop out rate is high, drugs take the place of reality and children think the world owes them? We stopped making them accountable,it is easier to say my child can do no wrong. It is the teacher’s fault or the school’s fault or the neighbors fault We no longer expect them to be the best they can be. It is easy to say with two parents working there is no time but that is a fallacy. During the 18oo’s with high immigration the poor had two parents working and children working while going to school. The children were expected to succeed. The teachers were respected and expected to teach.
It angers me just what we have done to the kids. Lower expectations, Reward laziness and bad behavior.
Do you ever wonder why a lot of jobs left this country?
Why large companies import people for certain jobs?

end of rant

WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS

PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE

We are already seeing some negative impacts from the “self-esteem” movement ofthe 1990s.

Everyone should feel good about themselves no matter what. Not only has it led to bizarre acts (e.g., the boy who killed the little girl for standing in his shadow) but when the shit hits the fan it can all go terribly wrong. Employers want people who know what they are doing and who do it well and responsibly. The self-esteem generation think they are doing employers a favor just by showing up. Guess who wins?

Hello, all! I wish to respond to this as a former educator- I just allowed my certification in the state of Maryland to laspe last month, and I quit teaching three years ago, due to the harrassment I was receiving at the school where I was teaching. I graduated from a great university, summa cum laude and ended up teaching in a private school, due to the fact that I didn’t know anyone on the school board, who could “vouch” for me….anyways, the school where I was teaching, when I finally quit, was a CATHOLIC school, and I was constantly chastised for being “too conservative”, and expecting too much from my students. I have always found that when you expect a lot from children, you get a lot from them. I also expect good behavior, especially in a religious school. My student load at the time was 250 students. I taught them, had to grade assignments from this number of students, record the grades in a computer data-base, and was constantly hounded by parents because when their dear children didn’t hand in assignments, they received zeros. Every time this happened, the principal defended the parents, and I was made to look like an idiot (in front of the parents) and in every instance, when it came out that I was correct, I NEVER once was told, “I’m sorry” by anyone. The children destroyed my own personal property in the classroom, and the principal asked me, “well, what do you expect, in a middle school?” I simply could not continue to be treated in this manner and told my husband that I had to quit. Parents need to understand that the quality of education in this country is sliding downhill FAST, in all schools, public and private! You need to pay attention to everything that your child is exposed to, all the time, because if you don’t, your children will be the ones to suffer for it in the end. Sorry to rant so long, but it still frustrates me terribly, even after three years….I went into education because I wanted to make a difference, and because I remember fondly all those teachers who made an impact in my life. Just like everything else liberals touch and infest, they destroy! When I was in school during the 1960’s, we had Christmas holiday parties, celebrated Halloween, enjoyed making bunnies at Easter, and danced around the May pole, in celebration- our entire American culture is being destroyed, and it will only get worse, unless we rise up and fight it!

This made me think of a movie or a play or something I heard or saw in the past:

The idea of a not pretty lazy, inadequate “black man” skirting and working the system, playing the race card, palling around with holigans and terro*sts, playing at being smart, pretending to have a long form birth certificate and good grades from school ………………………. (had to throw that in)……………….

Does that theme sound familiar to any of the rest of you??????

Wow, I must seem like a rac*st! So, go ahead and COLOR ME RAC*ST!

CAROL HAKA

Good News!

The Feds have asked the SarahPac for information regarding two donations! Hopefully, Holder went issue a “reprieve on not torturing” long enough to WaterBoard her. One of the donations was to Senator John McCain. Maybe they can Waterboard him also for taking it.

Meanwhile, some of you are familiar with me from other sites and may remember that I have had over 22 years experience in all aspects of Merchant Services and wrote a short, detailed route to the proper authorities for tracking all of the illegal transactions from “no name”, “no address”, “fake names”, and my favorite, “Gift Card”, transactions donated to the Obama and DNC campaigns. This took place as the “O’Fraudme” campaign declared “they really didn’t think” that Credit Card Companies had a way of “checking” all of that “fraud tracking” information.

It was an assignment that truly would take maybe an hour or so………..

I’m hopeful I will still hear back from them when they finish investigating Sarah Palin ……..

IMPEACH THE FRAUD!

CARO HAKA

I’m not quite sure exactly the impact of the program, but it sound more like they are provided funding and personal to catch these kids early and get them back on track.
“When you fail once 50% are not going to graduate, when you fail twice, 80% aren’t going to graduate,” Cash said.
The Memphis City Schools Board approved spending three million dollars on literacy and math materials support for students who need intervention under the no-fail policy. Dr. Cash says not failing students will save taxpayers money in the long run.”

My wife is a 5th grade up here in MA. Go figure, my writing skills stink.. I know she has had a student or two that somehow made it 5th yet tests and a much lower reading grade level. She identified them early and coordinated with the administration to put the on a corrective action plan (my verbage) to get them caught up by working with them both in class and in after school sessions. I believe she pulled them up to level by the end of the year.
So I would bet this is a good thing. Not some negative don’t ever let them know failure business. When it comes to reading and math at these ages, failure is not an option.

I’m not quite sure exactly the impact of the program, but it sound more like they are provided funding and personal to catch these kids early and get them back on track.
“When you fail once 50% are not going to graduate, when you fail twice, 80% aren’t going to graduate,” Cash said.
The Memphis City Schools Board approved spending three million dollars on literacy and math materials support for students who need intervention under the no-fail policy. Dr. Cash says not failing students will save taxpayers money in the long run.”

My wife is a 5th grade englishteacher up here in MA. Go figure, my writing skills stink.. I know she has had a student or two that somehow made it 5th yet tests and a much lower reading grade level. She identified them early and coordinated with the administration to put the on a corrective action plan (my verbage) to get them caught up by working with them both in class and in after school sessions. I believe she pulled them up to level by the end of the year.
So I would bet this is a good thing. Not some negative don’t ever let them know failure business. When it comes to reading and math at these ages, failure is not an option.

Edited:
I’m not quite sure exactly the impact of the program, but it sound more like they are provided funding and personal to catch these kids early and get them back on track.
“When you fail once 50% are not going to graduate, when you fail twice, 80% aren’t going to graduate,” Cash said.
The Memphis City Schools Board approved spending three million dollars on literacy and math materials support for students who need intervention under the no-fail policy. Dr. Cash says not failing students will save taxpayers money in the long run.”

My wife is a 5th grade English up here in MA. Go figure, my writing skills stink.. I know she has had a student or two that somehow made it to 5th grade yet tested at a much lower reading grade level. She identified them early and coordinated with the administration to put the on a corrective action plan (my verbage) to get them caught up by working with them both in class and in after school sessions. I believe she pulled them up to level by the end of the year.
So I would bet this is a good thing. Not some negative don’t ever let them know failure business. When it comes to reading and math at these ages, failure is not an option.

Oh read this New Yorker article about the battle over New Yorks worst teachers and how teacher unions and easy tenure, combined with extremely difficult rules for firing incompetent teachers, work togather against the best interests of students and communities:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill?currentPage=all

I wish someone would pay me $100,000 a year to sit in a room and read, sleep, play board games and talk with others during school hours. And give me summers off!

Learning begins long before a child enters school. Very often the children who eventually do not learn to read are the ones who have never been exposed to books, were never read to, lived in disorganized, even chaotic homes, never been expected to sit still for any length of time, sometimes were verbally or physically abused. Sometimes the children are sent to school as soon as they are legally eligible regardless of their readiness or developmental levels, and/or the parents do not contact teachers/schools unless forced to. Sometimes the children are sent to school sick; sometimes children are absent more often than not. Sometimes the children have undiagnosed learning or physical problems; sometimes parents are unable to provide or unwilling to provide remedies even when problems are discovered and possible remedies suggested. Problems that are not addressed or solved at the earliest possible age just lead to a compounding of the social and emotional consequences of not learning.

Maybe where some of you are heading with this is accurate, but I see this particular issue differently.

I know one of my wife students was a young hispanic girl who was extremely bright, but had a reading issue. It was probably due to a number of factors. Apprently she had faked her way through by memorizing stories from book by listening in class etc.. Yet her reading vocabulary and comprehension was 2 or 3rd grade. My wife was able to help her get upto garde 5 level by working with her and making her work… This is the real idea of no child left behind rather then thr punative tool it has become in the wrong hands and inadequte funding.

As an elementary educator I can tell you this is a rehash of the 1980’s elementary teaching style.

We were not allowed to give letter grades from K through 3rd grade. Our job was to emphasize the reading skills, introduce math skills and language arts skills - some way too early, and get the kids test ready. With so much emphasis on end product it is very easy for teachers to overlook the one thing that will determine a child’s success in school. That is, the teacher’s real job is to instill a LOVE OF LEARNING in all their students. School in the early grades has to be a rewarding place to come to five days a week, not unlike jobs for adults.

Reading is a tricky skill. I found that classrooms typically fell into a pattern of thirds. The top third would master new skills relatively easily and be able to incorporate them almost immediately. The middle third would take longer to acquire the skills and need added practice to become confident. The lowest third of the class would not be ready for the information usually due to maturation, wicked bad home environments, or learning disability issues. They are the ones that need added services to deal with the interfering issues that prevented them from learning.

To prepare my students for fourth grade (when I taught third grade), I would give them letter grades about the last six weeks of school on some assignments based fairly on percentages. Reality was a big wake up call for some of them that had become used to stars and happy faces!

But, since the love of learning was always emphasized, most of the children would rise to the challenge to improve themselves.

If we had an elementary aged child, we would home school today. I would not let my child’s education be handed over to an unprepared twenty something that most likely has gone through a prep program that has no real standards, let alone much of the coursework training done online. But that’s just me.

When I prepped, I had to pass a board exam to even be admitted into the educational coursework required my university. Affirmative Action knocked that step out and the quality of teachers went down precipitously.

End of soapbox! LOL!

…required by my university…

Here is one factor that I think has drastically changed a child’s reading environment over the past 90 years: the demise of comic books. Oh yeah, comic books still exist, but they are expensive and aimed at teenagers who can already read. Back in the 1960s and earlier, comic books were plentiful and cheap and were everywhere. There were lots of comics that catered to younger kids. There was a comic book stand in every drug store and grocery store.

I learned to read largely by figuring out the cartoon speech in comic books. I wanted to know what was going on! Oh yeah, even back then comics were scorned by teachers who often saw them as a corruption of real literature. But we got a taste of the scope of literature through “Classics Illustrated.”

Also, the comics in the Sunday papers used to be something special. Many parents would read the Sunday comics to their kids, and point out the words. No more.

That’s true on the comic books.

How many parents consistently spend five minutes with their child’s Happy Meal bag going over the games and other content? It’s right there and yet many parents are too busy to notice.

I used to collect the bags for my students a couple of years ago. We would use them as a reading lesson to instill the concept that words are everywhere. I was always surprised at how many kids would say, “Oh, I got this last night.” Then, they would have no clue what was on the bag because no parent had taken the time to read to them.

I am a college teacher, I can’t wait to get more of these students who have been socially promoted in K through 12. Students, who when they get into college are academically retarded, and can’t pass anything. They have never been taught how to pass a class, or better said, taught how not to fail.

Failure is not a bad thing, it is one our greatest teachers. Should we now keep our children from learning to walk because they might fail a few times before they actually succeed.

In Denmark, where there is a 99% literacy rate for adults, children do not start formal studies until the age of 7, and pre-schools and kindergarden rely on play and activities instead of formal lessons. As long as children are in a safe and stimulating environment, they will naturally be learning, and some might be more co-ordinated and athletic, while others more facinated by books or mechanical toys. By age 7, most will be at least ready for reading and writing, and all will have had success and learned to think of school as an enjoyable, exciting place.

That made me smile, Cooney!

give them tools.not crutches,
kids are our future.

I am a retired educator, so naturally I have strong opinions about this topic.

We have a no-fail policy in Colorado that is worse than this. As a teacher of ninth-grade English, I would get students in from the middle school who had been failing almost every subject for all the years of their elementary and middle school education and being passed along. They got to high school, and that was the first time they would have to pass to earn credit for graduation. I had students who had been placed in remedial reading courses too from the time they were in first grade. (More about this practice in a minute.)

I spent much of my last years teaching those ninth graders while taking a different approach than many of the other teachers. Those teachers would tack on all kinds of rules that I didn’t want to have to enforce because it would have taken too much of my time doing math and record keeping when grading rather than in actual teaching a subject I loved. Their syllabi always appeared to me to be outlines for trying to teach “responsibility” rather than teaching their actual subjects. So much of a percentage taken off for being a day late, so much for two days late, a deadline when the assignment would not be accepted, etc. It seemed counter productive to me because kids who were struggling to organize themselves about getting work done would still be penalized for finally getting it done.

After I had a young girl in my class who was the epitome of ditziness, who made my hour teaching her class a real challenge, I came to a conclusion that I would no longer ever work to teach responsibility and just leave that up to the child and his/her parents.. In a conversation with her mother, I could no longer also put all fault on parents. This girl’s older sister was a top school performer. This second girl had failed every single class the year before and most in the seventh grade also. They were desperate for help. They weren’t wealthy; both worked and couldn’t afford to put her in something other than a public school. They said to me, “Please fail her. We try taking away privileges, grounding, everything. Nothing gets into her head other than that she continues on in school at the same time those with good grades do. She doesn’t do so bad on standardized tests. She thinks they are all suckers. It is only now in ninth grade that all her failure will finally catch up to her.”

From that time on, I began to take the first few weeks of teaching ninth graders to develop a list of students who had horrible study habits, who didn’t turn in work on time, who forgot to study or read the assignment. Then after time enough to know just who those kids were, I began contacting those kids’ parents either through email and then by phone. I made one thing clear to them: that I would do my best to get those kids to pass required ninth grade English so they would be on their way to earning credit for graduation, if the parents would work with me. I accepted late work and gave it full credit, but only if they knew I would not accept copied work. Since I did indeed grade all the work I assigned, I could always tell a copied paper. (Unbelievably to me, some teachers assigned work and simply gave credit for its being turned in, without grading it.) I worked with each parent to develop a notification system when the child didn’t turn something in. I found ways to get assignments to parents in advance so they could counter the child who had lost the assignment, etc.

Those kids’ self esteem and confidence were raised more by their actual accomplishment after a semester of having their parents and me making sure them that they just HAD to do the work. I had so many of those parents thank me for doing that.

I developed this tactic also because of my son, who had an Individual Education Plan through school that few of the teachers paid attention to. My son has a normal IQ but he has dyscalculia, which is similar to dyslexia but has different symptoms. It has more to do with not being able to perform mathematical equations and keeping organized because he has trouble sequencing (what should he do first, then second, etc.). Heck, in the stupid block schedules many of our high schools follow, he could never figure out easily what class he was supposed to be in on any day, and he was always put down when he arrived late after figuring it out and sometimes punished. As a parent, I wanted the teachers to let me work with him on coping with his dyscalculia and for them to concentrate on teaching him the subject matter.

One of the things you notice, if you’ve been following the recent reports about the current SAT scores is that again our students’ scores are slipping and have been for the last five years. Educator apologists will complain that this slippage is due to more students taking the exams than before. I personally think it explains some of why so many young people voted Obama—no reasoning skills because they’ve learned to cheat, jump through hoops, and do what it takes to get that diploma without really having to do the learning.

I truly feel our whole public education system took a wrong turn about the late 70’s. Education departments—can anyone say Ayers?—decided the people in education, the teachers and the administrators, knew way more about teaching responsibility than parents did. They got into education to “save” these kids from parents and society because they, like the Messiah, have messianic complexes. Me—I just loved my subject so much when I first began teaching that I wanted the kids to like it too.

Now, as for remedial reading, I disapprove. Except for kids with true disabilities that make reading difficult, all kids can read if it is made clear to them that they should read. But again, educators with their “I am compassionate and know how to nurture” attitudes, put them in remedial reading sometimes in first grade. Have you ever really studied remedial reading materials? They are so vapid, uninteresting, and unchallenging, that the longer a child stays in remedial reading, the further behind they get, and often that’s the case because they’ve come to accept the notion that they can’t read well. Again, it’s making kids understand somehow that they SHOULD learn to read that will get them reading.

My daughter-in-law is from Turkey. She attended one of the top universities in Turkey. It’s an international university in which all her classes were taught in English. She speaks Turkish, of course, but also speaks English as well as most Americans. She also reads Italian. This brilliant young woman married my son (lucky man), who, because of his profession moved her into a very rural small town in Tennessee. The school district there gladly hired her as a substitute teacher. She was getting calls all the time from the teachers who had used her because they wanted only her for their substitute. She was so surprised by American schools, even in a state with poor schools, because the classrooms were so elaborate with so many materials and such a small number of students in each room compared to her experience in Turkey. She said she could not believe how lazy and unconcerned the students were about learning.

She was also very surprised at the lazy lesson planning of the teachers.

Now, there’s my rant and I stand by it.

I fought against our daughter’s high school, because they passed her with D’s and F’s; this is partially what caused the big meltdown in our family. Imagine the parents actually doing what they are suppose to and the school does not honor their end of the deal. She did not “feel” she had to do anything but sit around and look pretty….without making this an insane tirade(still a very touchy subject in the details); she joined a specific church group there after, in the presumption that she would get a free ride for college; paying little attention to what the real price would be to pay. We refused to pay for her first year, due to her attitude of entitlement and lack of honest effort, she had the ability but simply felt she shouldn’t have to.
Well the bill “came due” with the church and she realized it was a price she couldn’t pay; as of Wednesday she started basic training in the U.S. Army; not because she didn’t have options and not because she wasn’t given chances, but maybe, God willing she realizes she needs to gain some self control, become an individual instead of a sheep and grow herself up a bit. We tried, and the school was the first front to fall, caving in and telling us we were too strict because we didn’t want her to lie, which she did to both school and us about her work or lack of, to manipulate the system, because we didn’t reward he entitlement behavior, because we were willing to negotiate but never compromise our basic principles of fairness, and Honesty.

I am not surprised to see this, but I surely wish I was.

My long post was caught in the spam filter. Please retrieve it.

My wife and her colleagues are qualified to teach and are making a difference. My wife’s students, even the disadvantage one’s are good kids, eager to learn, full of promise.

What I’m talking about is catching the social promotion and intervening. Catching 5th grade student with a second grade reading ability that some how got promoted through the system
, if possible, get them the help they need to get up to up to grade level. Doing it in away with minimal impact to the rest of the class.

I have three of my own in public schools. My wife and I gave them our undivided attention when they were young to give the fundamental they need to succeed. The are prolific readers and
straight A students. They have the skills to weather the occasional bad teacher or two.

Now my wife is trying to do the same in the class room. her results have been good.

Good for you, CentralMass.

Of course all those who teach like to think they make a difference and many do as long as the system allows them to do exactly that. When the system gets sick is when the problems occur. Perhaps your wife is teaching in a school that allows real education to take place. Perhaps she trained in a setting that required personal responsibility. Great!

It is NOT the same experience everywhere in the nation. Having taught in three different states, I can vouch for that. In two states I taught in, the substitute teachers had to have a four year degree in education. The last state only required the substitute teacher to have a GED - and that was only after several lawsuits.

The real measure will be where your wife’s students are ten years from now. Hopefully your wife and her fellow teachers will take it upon themselves to instill a sense of responsibility in their students for their learning and behavior.

Hopefully, they won’t use Obama as an example for personal responsibility. That would be a massive educational failure to do so.

Corrected Repost: I can only blame it on spending way too much time on a soap box.

Not every child that has difficulty reading is not smart. My husband is one of the smartest men I know, he has difficulty reading. A friend of mine, had to do a grade 3 times. He is a millionaire several times over. Another multi millionaire client of mine, never went past the 6th grade.

Myself I had no education between the age of 5-12. None, nada, zip. But I had learned to read in 1st grade at the age of 4. So I became a reader. Books, magazines, newspapers, became my lifeline to education. When I was 12 I took a test and was put in the 7th grade.

All that to say this. I don’t know the right answer, but lifes a funny thing, it is what we make of it. I could have huddled in a corner, casting about for the cause of my woes. I choose to not be a victim. I can feel for someones difficulty, but I not their wallowing in victimization.

C’mon, you knew it was coming to this. It’s the same reason why everybody in little league sports gets a trophy. Can’t have any hurt feelings now can we? Because schools are all about promoting self esteem! For Forest Gump life may have been a box of chocalates but for me life is a lesson I learned in the batters box on a little league baseball field a long, long time ago. Never liked the feeling of striking out. Practiced like hell to make sure it never happened again.

chocolate, not chocalate. oops

Absolutely. Once in a teacher’s meeting in the 1980’s, I sat next to a teacher who had been around awhile.

The curriculum directors where espousing the joys of “warm fuzzy” teaching where no student would ever have to face the embarrassment of failing.

The older teacher, a man, looked at the rest of us and said, “Good Luck. I’m eligible for retiring at the end of next year. I will not be responsible for creating self indulgent monsters.”

Pretty Good

by Charles Osgood
from the Osgood File, 1986

There once was a pretty good student
Who sat in a pretty good class
And was taught by a pretty good teacher
Who always let pretty good pass.
He wasn’t terrific at reading,
He wasn’t a whiz-bang at math,
But for him, education was leading
Straight down a pretty good path.
He didn’t find school too exciting,
But he wanted to do pretty well,
And he did have some trouble with writing
Since nobody taught him to spell.
When doing arithmetic problems,
Pretty good was regarded as fine.
5+5 needn’t always add up to be 10;
A pretty good answer was 9.
The pretty good class that he sat in
Was part of a pretty good school,
And the student was not an exception:
On the contrary, he was the rule.
The pretty good school that he went to
Was there in a pretty good town,
And nobody there seemed to notice
He could not tell a verb from a noun.
The pretty good student in fact was
Part of a pretty good mob.
And the first time he knew what he lacked was
When he looked for a pretty good job.
It was then, when he sought a position,
He discovered that life could be tough,
And he soon had a sneaking suspicion
Pretty good might not be good enough.
The pretty good town in our story
Was part of a pretty good state
Which had pretty good aspirations
And prayed for a pretty good fate.
There once was a pretty good nation
Pretty proud of the greatness it had,
Which learned much too late,
If you want to be great,
Pretty good is, in fact, pretty bad.

That really sums it up. Thank you Denisel.

I can see where this applies to Obama, too.

I can’t believe that money is still being spent trying to figure out why the education system can’t teach kids to read.

go back to the time when some freakin genius decided that phonics is a waste of time and dropped it from the curriculum and that would be the time when the education system stopped teaching kids how to read.

many teachers are incompetent (no matter how many people would deny that, it is a fact) since they themselves are the product of this failing education system.

kids are lagging in reading, science, and math skills and not one “expert” in the US know what to do. as long as we keep seeing those Sylvan learning center commercials on TV we’ll know that the education system is still in a downward spiral. whatever Sylvan learning center and other tutorial centers are teaching kids in order to improve their grades should’ve been given to them in school in the first place.

the education system has been on a decline for at least two generations and it all started when the ULTRA-liberals got hold of it. I’m not saying that the education system should turn conservative (I think that would be a mistake), but come on, we all know how idiotic schools are now a days. then add whiny parent to the equation, you know, those parents who think that an hour’s worth of homework is too much for their kids, then you have a failing system that keeps on failing.

my son, had a teacher last year that was so bad every kid in her classroom complained about her. the kids in her classroom didn’t do good at all, yet the school honored her at the end of the school year for gaining some stupid certification. my daughter had an awesome teacher that brought fun and innovation into the classroom and my daughter had straight A’s! yet my daughter’s teacher did not get any recognition after the school year except for the gratitude expressed by parents like me. when will these bad teachers be forced to be accountable for their failures?

bad curriculums, bad teachers, lack of funding, will always, always, create a bad educaton system. want to make it better, weed out the bad teachers, get the union out of the school system, start teaching the basics to kids once again (like phonics, basic math) and stop funding schools through property taxes (that is the most repressive of all taxes whcih takes money from property owners and distributes to non-property owners). fund schools through an income tax and have EVERYONE with income pay for it.