The Horror of Public Education
I teach (when circumstances allow for actual teaching) in the State of New Mexico. Our public schools are rated 49th in the nation (again). Allow me to provide you with a few statistics. Only half of our high school students actually graduate. Of those who do, only about a third are proficient in math. Reading scores are only marginally better (less worse?). Any student who graduates with a 'C' average (not hard to do if you actually show up for class) gets an automatic scholarship to the University of New Mexico. Of those who attend U of M, only 15% actually graduate.
Now for the irony. The state's education system was awarded an 'A' for assessments and accountability, but a 'D' minus for achievement. That's right, kiddies, we know exactly how badly you are failing. We have the statistics and documentation down to the last punctuation mark. So why can't the state government do something about it?
The sad truth is that public education exists to serve the bureaucracy. The New Mexico education establishment, by any ratio you care to employ, has more administrators per capita than anywhere in the nation. This is the hallmark of any socialist system: the populace exists to serve the state. The citizenry is required to fork over tax dollars to hire bureaucrats to tell them how to run their lives. As the paperwork multiplies, less and less teaching occurs in the classroom. Administrative mandates act like hundreds of spanners tossed into the gears of the system. Eventually the machine comes to a creaking halt.
There you have it in a nutshell. In the words of Ronald Reagan: "The government can't solve the problem because government is the problem." If you think it's bad now, wait till the government gets its hands fully around our health care system.
"The horror, the horror . . . "
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May '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
True story. I was a teacher in a small Texas high school. I noticed that there were three times as many 9th graders than tenth graders. How come? In tenth grade, Texas students are required to take a standardized test, the results reported to the State. So, our way around it was to test them ourselves in the ninth grade with am exam calibrated to predict sucess on the State test. If a student showed that passing the 10th grade test would be unlikely, we found a way to keep him in the 9th grade.
Dec '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
At the risk of bringing something up that has been pounded into an oily spot on the concrete, students pretty much live up to their parent's expectations, regardless of the quality of the school. If the parents do what's needed, the quality of the teacher, the facility, and of the bureacracy is secondary. Not unimportant, but of much less importance.
The reason that the low quality of schools is so glaringly obvious now is that as a society, we've decided that parenting is secondary, that parental rights and responsibilities are granted by the state, and that important things will be taught in the public school system. This vital training will be provided by school systems that don't even do very well with subjects like math and English.
Pouring money into facilities, administration, training for teachers, even giving students a route to higher education is not going to have the desired effect without some means of encouraging parents to take a more active roll in the education of their kids.
Edited on Feb 27, 2011 at 8:13amJun '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
Pouring money into facilities, administration, training for teachers, even giving students a route to higher education is not going to have the desired effect without some means of encouraging parents to take a more active roll in the education of their kids. · Feb 27 at 8:12am
Edited on Feb 27 at 08:13 am
True. And grist enough for an entire thread in its own right.
Jan '11
Re: The Horror of Public Education
I agree with Jerry. I've met a number of former/retired teachers and they agree that the problem is the parents.
Jerry: ". . .parental rights and responsibilities are granted by the state." This I find interesting b/c my sister and brother-in-law adopted a Russian girl a few years ago. "Lana's" mother had had her right to be a parent taken from her by the state as she was unable to provide for her daughter. The mother did take "Lana" home form the "baby home" once or twice.
~Paules: ". . .State of New Mexico. Our public schools are rated 49th in the nation (again)." I thought AZ had the glory of besting LA?
Anyone have the capital to set up some private schools??
Jul '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
Paules, I know it's horribly incorrect to point this out, but New Mexico's - and California's - dismal public-school achievement statistics have a lot to do with their high Hispanic enrollments.
Hispanics represent nearly 70% of enrollment in New Mexico and 50% in California.
Nationally, the high-school drop-out rate for Hispanics is nearly 5 times that for whites.
Exacerbating New Mexico's problem, 8% of your public school students are Native American, who drop out at nearly the same rate as Hispanics.
Clearly, there is something amiss within those communities which causes their children to perform so poorly and to devalue education. (Could part of it be that so many Hispanic families are transients?)
As for national trends in educational achievement, it's worth noting that, while enrollment of white and black students in high school has increased only marginally over the past decade, enrollment of Hispanic students has increased by more than 50%. In other words, increased Hispanic enrollment is dragging overall achievement levels down.
Jun '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
In my view, at least in the Rio Grande valley, the problem is historical and cultural. The Spanish Catholic Church arrived in New Mexico with an order from the crown to convert the natives. Providing schooling for Hispanic colonists was never part of the mission. The role filled by the Polish, Italian, and Irish Catholic churches on the east coast was not addressed in New Mexico until the arrival of a French bishop, one Jean Lamy, in the second half of the 19th century. During the first 250 years of Spanish colonization the populace survived as subsistence farmers and pastoralists. Education was a low priority for people laboring in medieval isolation. To this day a large part of the Hispanic population views itself as a class of laborers. The few who go to college gravitate toward government where they become the new patrons.
As for the Native Americans, the reservation is simply a ghetto for Indians with all the associated pathologies.
Jan '11
Re: The Horror of Public Education
So, where do all the PhDs send their kids? A long time ago, didn't NM have the highest per capita of PhDs?
I thought of moving to NM when I got out of the Navy but the energy, if you will, was off and I landed in "northern" AZ. Nonetheless, NM is beautiful. (I considered the landscape as the 3rd main character in "3:10 to Yuma." Yep, could tell it wasn't AZ pretty quick like.)
Jun '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
True, but it's a statistical anomaly. All those PhD's work for the defense labs, Sandia and Los Alamos.
Dec '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
I have a good friend who is an administrator in a public HS. He told me several years ago that the primary factor in achievement is socio-economic level. Here in Oregon, that bears fruit - the school districts who churn out the best scores, the most kids going on to higher ed, etc. are the ones in the more privileged suburbs (not counting the private schools). The worst are in poorer areas. Socio-economic of course entails many factors. Wealthier areas tend to have fewer single parent families, more stay home moms, etc. This in turn tends to provide more parental volunteers at the schools and more stability to the home life. The wealthier districts tend to pay higher teacher salaries and thus are able to attract the better teachers.
So I guess I'd ask (excuse my ignorance) - where is NM in terms of overall standard of living? Per capita income - avg housing cost?
Jul '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
I am very uncomfortable with that usage of the word "privileged". I'm sure you don't mean to fall in line, but the term was coined by socialists, who intended it to mean that wealth is the illegitimate result of rent-seeking by the upper classes.
Better to use the term "affluent".
Jan '11
Re: The Horror of Public Education
Do you suppose, Kenneth, that the affuent children have any idea what a privilege it is to have monetary wealth?
Jun '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
The Great Adventure!:
So I guess I'd ask (excuse my ignorance) - where is NM in terms of overall standard of living? Per capita income - avg housing cost? · Feb 27 at 11:52am
NM is at the bottom in so many socio-economic categories I hardly know where to start. We're probably the only region of the country with generational poverty stretching back 400 years. I often say that we were the first area of the country settled (1598) and the last to be civilized. When I used the term "medieval" earlier on this thread, I meant it literally. You will remember that the Spanish dug their heels in against the Reformation that was sweeping Europe during 16th century. In my opinion the Spanish character was forged in an 800 year religious struggle against Islam. Such would rather explain the militant Catholicism of the Spanish in the New World and elsewhere. So say I.
Jul '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
Let's look at the definition: privilege is a "...right or immunity granted as peculiar benefit, advantage or favor..."
Privilege, then, implies a grant from government. True, some of the wealthy in this country have gained that wealth through rent-seeking. But most have gained it from the sweat of the brow.
Jan '11
Re: The Horror of Public Education
Kenneth, You left out part of it. ". . prerogative; especially : such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office."
But we're splitting hairs.
Jan '11
Re: The Horror of Public Education
This. Is. Simply. Not. True.
It may be that parents who don't pay attention produce lousy students, but even parents who do pay attention and who care passionately are sometimes unable to overcome the toxic effects of teachers who don't know their subject, don't want to do their job, and humiliate or belittle their students. I spent years battling the public schools' effects on my children, and in retrospect I really, really wish there had been some way that I could home-school them.
Want to know what an oily spot on the concrete looks like? Say that to my face.
Jul '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
MLH: Kenneth, You left out part of it. ". . prerogative; especially: such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office."
But we're splitting hairs. · Feb 27 at 1:32pm
Prerogative is merely a synonym for privilege. But suggesting that the wealth produced by labor is the same as a privilege bestowed by the state is not hair-splitting.
Jan '11
Re: The Horror of Public Education
Kenneth
But suggesting that the wealth produced by labor is the same as a privilege bestowed by the state is not hair-splitting. · Feb 27 at 2:12pm
I was not making that comparison and I doubt that TGA! was speaking of suburbs existent solely due to cronyism.
But enough English lessons for me today. . .
Edited on Feb 27, 2011 at 4:32pmDec '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
Margaret, I'd happily say it to your face, as it was not meant in any way as the insult you seem to have detected. And in no way did I intend to imply that schools are not at all important, just that their importance is diminished considerably if the parent takes part in the process.
As evidence, I present the tens of thousands of children of Asian immigrants who excelled in crappy public schools, and then went on to destroy the grading curves in public and private universities. Does that mean that every interested and earnest parent can ignore what goes on in the school down the street? Of course not.
And if you actually read what I wrote with hopes of finding the specific passage in which I advised parents to do that, I'm pretty sure you'll come away a little disappointed.
Edited on Feb 27, 2011 at 3:52pmSep '10
Re: The Horror of Public Education
The state of education is just about the same in all 50 states.
Bureaucracies with a decided liberal slant run education departments in most states and liberals are in charge at schools of education at most universities.
Most parents have abdicated the education of their children to the state and do little to help or encourage their children to achieve above their cultural or familial norm.
Children of the elite (wealth, education or otherwise) learn, because their parents value education and shop school districts and schools before buying a house, or find other special programs established for children of those with status. If wealthy enough, their children go to private schools. Do you think the grandchildren of Nancy Pelosi go to a regular public school?
Jan '11
Re: The Horror of Public Education
Margaret, I am sorry I do not know your truth, but my observations support Jerry's opinion. Perhaps you should have spent years moving to a different district. Do not all parents spend years (i.e. lifetimes) battling the effects on their children of the world in general?