Defining Education Down
Earlier today, Diane asked why San Francisco is so culturally out of step with the rest of the nation. Well, if the Bay Area is the reductio ad absurdum of liberal social views, Detroit may well be its counterpart when it comes to dysfunctional left-wing governance. Andrew Coulson, writing at The Cato Institute's @Liberty blog, reports today:
A study funded by 10 major foundations reported yesterday that 47 percent of Detroiters are functionally illiterate–unable to read a bus schedule, fill out a resume, or make sense of the directions on an aspirin bottle.
When I checked back in 2008, Detroit public schools were spending $13,000 / pupil, which was then above the national average.
The report notes that half of the illiterate population has either a high school diploma or a GED (emphasis mine). That’s beside the point. Virtually the entire illiterate population has completed elementary school, the level at which reading is theoretically taught. That’s seven years of schooling (k-6), at a cost of roughly $100,000, for… nothing.
By now, most of us on the right are familiar with the utter falsehood that more money equals better outcomes when it comes to education. What's most striking about these statistics, however, is that more degrees don't equal better outcomes either. If half of the city's illiterate population has a GED or a high school diploma, what can we conclude about the values of those credentials? That they're worth about as much as a Weimar-era German Papiermark.
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Jun '10
Re: Defining Education Down
I guess if you can survive to age 18 in Detroit, without overdosing, or getting shot, you're smart enough to deserve a diploma. So, congratulations. "Call this number to set up an appointment with your social worker."
Jul '10
Re: Defining Education Down
I think mostly about how can "teachers" and Parents live with Themselves for allowing this game to continue.
Jul '10
Re: Defining Education Down
Besides, 47%? How many of those are "teachers[?]"
Dec '10
Re: Defining Education Down
I heard a funny line on the radio, today: "The other half could read the writing on the wall and moved out".
You can buy a house in Detroit, today, for $1, if you will take the house, but we have sent millions of "Stimulus" dollars there in the last year, to help people with their mortgage obligations. Taxes and insurance must be pretty high if you can't make your payments when houses are selling for $1.
Re: Defining Education Down
Is Detroit's governance any more liberal than San Francisco's? I actually don't know what the answer is here, but if it's 'no', what causes the disparity in literacy, wealth, capital, entrepreneurship, etc? It can't just be the the nice climate and ocean, can it?
Jul '10
Re: Defining Education Down
Race.
Jun '10
Re: Defining Education Down
I can offer you absurdity run amok. Almost every school in my district has at least one unit for students who are "medically fragile." I use the sneer quotes because some of these kids are literally brain-dead. Others have levels of cognition not much beyond that of an infant. Yet each "student" deserves a "free and appropriate education." The district's policy is to provide one teacher for each kid based on the student's individual education program (IEP). We're paying something like 35K per year to educate vegetables, and that's just the teacher's salary. Do the math. The cost per kid is about half a million bucks to provide what is essentially daycare till age 22. Public education is a scam. It's situations like this that need a good investigative journalist.
May '10
Re: Defining Education Down
I'm coming more and more to think that the entire public education system should be scrapped, at the very least end its compulsive requirement, and let people provide for themselves the education of their children. Those who value education for their progeny will not be deterred in obtaining it. Those who aren't concerned that their children be educated, as seems to be the case in Detroit, should not be subsidized by the taxpayers, and should be free to raise their children as they see fit and suffer the consequences.
I would be in favor of making a public education available to those who want and would value it, and for those who don't, I might support the creation of remidial acadamies where, for a fee, students who were neglectful of their studies earlier in life might return to catch up with their better educated fellows.
Apr '11
Re: Defining Education Down
Jimmy Carter
Race. · May 5 at 3:55pm
I don't think it's race. Too many places that have a high percentage of black American's and a good income average. I think the differance is money. The auto industry used to finance liberal programs, and ideas in Detriot, and now that cash cow is dead. In SF the money is still coming in.
Jul '10
Re: Defining Education Down
reidspoorhouse
I think the differance is money. . · May 5 at 4:43pm
Read the post again and see the amount per student is being spent.
If money were the answer, there'd be no problems in America.
Feb '11
Re: Defining Education Down
I've lived near Detroit most of my life. Alas.
The 1967 riots drove out a lot of people and businesses, followed in 1973 by the election of the openly racist mayor Colman Young. The inflation of the 1970s and well-paying industrial jobs allowed people to abandon their houses in crime ridden Detroit and buy brand new houses in the suburbs. End result: Detroit is a famous ruin, and everyone who can, leaves.
I knew a guy who had a 30 year mortgage with a principal payment of $35. He bought that house about 1970 for a small fraction of his salary when I knew him. If it had been in Detroit it would have been starring in a Youtube video as a burned-out ruin. I also knew a guy who bought and tried to rehab abandoned houses in the D. Once, he fixed up a house only to find a lady of the evening wink wink had moved in uninvited. When he called the cops, they went after him, and in court he was told he had to go through the months-long eviction process.
Eventually he gave up on Detroit. Wise choice.
Apr '11
Re: Defining Education Down
You're right. Personal advocates know how much power they have, including threats to sue. I have worked with handicaped children in the school, and out of the school, and the school has to pay for therapy. Even children as young as four, with no realistic possible learning ability, and the school has to pay for it.
Apr '11
Re: Defining Education Down
We have one person to blame for our current pitiful education system, Dr Spock. What is most lacking in our schools is discipline, there isn't any! Kids I coach each summer in baseball brag about the ISS, and OSS they get. It doesn't work. They need to re-introduce discipline, and competition if they ever expect our schools to improve. Sadly we no longer live in an adult society, and with that in mind, how do we ever expect our students to approach school with the degree of respect that it should have?
Apr '11
Re: Defining Education Down
Jimmy Carter
reidspoorhouse
I think the differance is money. . · May 5 at 4:43pm
Read the post again and see the amount per student is being spent.
If money were the answer, there'd be no problems in America. · May 5 at 4:48pm
Jimmy, I really do agree with you, I'm not talking money, I'm talking well educated, responsible parents. Whats left is a populace without good education, and without good jobs. The parents are pretty much full grown children. In Detriot the citizenry have children, and in SF they don't.
We used to do a lot more with much less money.
Jan '11
Re: Defining Education Down
2nd attempt at posting this:
Abigail and Stephen Thernstrum have thoroughly and convincingly studied the problem of public school education (No Excuses: Closing the Gap in Racial Learning), and have concluded that the curricula in colleges of education are useless for their intended purposes; that the primary focus of teacher unions is member self-interest, not student advancement; that public schools have undertaken the role of public orphanages without providing teacher/caretakers adequate training; and that all colleges of education, and the Department of Education, should be closed. They believe that trying to continually reform what invariably fails is lunacy, and that totally new perspectives should be formulated outside of the education establishment. But, sadly, that will never happen – it’s the self-interest thing.
Nov '10
Re: Defining Education Down
Jimmy Carter
Race. · May 5 at 3:55pm
To put it more bluntly, white flight.
Re: Defining Education Down
Anon,
So true. There are two types of professional schools in America that offer their students a net reduction in intellect: schools of education and schools of journalism.
Anon:
Abigail and Stephen Thernstrum have thoroughly and convincingly studied the problem of public school education (No Excuses: Closing the Gap in Racial Learning), and have concluded that the curricula in colleges of education are useless for their intended purposes May 5 at 6:54pm
Sep '10
Re: Defining Education Down
One of my all time favorite YouTube videos. Thomas Sowell on education.
"There are requirements in the world!"
Apr '11
Re: Defining Education Down
I live in a Philly suburb and read in the Inquirer recently of the violence levels in some of the schools and they were applauding the district for making the schools " safer " not safe mind you. There was a day I remember that bad behavior especially of a physical nature would have caused your permanent expulsion. Now the money you speak of is spent on video surveillance and school district police. You can't have a free republic without law and order what makes anyone think learning can take place in an environment of lawlessness.
Dec '10
Re: Defining Education Down
So many layers of fault here but let's focus on 2 politically incorrect facts. Sadly, both would be considered inherently racist outside of Ricochet: 1) Detroit city & county (Wayne County, that is) government is, and has been for decades, utterly corrupt. Cronyism, race politics, criminal behavior, you name it, is an accepted fact that only gets more and more pathetic. Like a third world nation run by despots, it will certainly collapse in a sickening, slow-motion demolition in upon itself dragging literally millions of foolish voters who seek only to keep the handouts coming their way. 2) Detroit is the picture of the consequence of the destruction of the black family. There are no fathers. Young boys & girls are raised by women barely old enough to string sentences together, much less discipline them effectively, provide proper role models, insruct them in fundamental ways like how to speak proper English, etc. Instead they're raised by Grandma's that are in their 30's. We are witnessing the multiple-generational destruction of people we've spent trillions to help folks that neither see the problem with the current state nor seem willing to do what is necessary to save themselves from certain destruction.