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Post by JohnC on Aug 20, 2004 16:32:23 GMT -7
Ironically, when I lived in Las Vegas in the late forties (I lived in North Las Vegas, wouldn't drive through there now), one of my teachers was an old maid teacher who had taught my mother when she went to school there. My older sister had the same math teacher that mom had, also.
Believe me, you did what you were told, learned what they taught - they knew how to teach, by the way- or you took a trip to the principal's office and then (after receiving what discipline he/she deemed appropriate, carried a note home. This note explained the entire course of events and one of them had to sign it, affirming that they were aware of what had occured.
It was bad enough that we might get a whipping from the principal, but in our case, we'd get one from Mom and then our dad. I can assure you that for the most part, I was a VERY good boy! JohnC
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Post by Ricfly52 on Aug 20, 2004 17:38:30 GMT -7
Geez John, now I was raised in a small town in central Idaho, and my school penalies were almost the same as yours. Amazingly we had zero school crime! Today if my wife as a teacher, so much as verbaly scolds a student, she might face, a letter of retribution, or maybe even temporary suspension. She has absolutly no way to disipline students, to keep classes under control. Hence, classes never get to do the job they were designed to do. But you bet your bippy, the law says the district has to adhere to certian standards to graduate a student. Sh!$ after going through the system it is amazing that a single student can graduate!
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Post by stetto on Aug 21, 2004 3:52:55 GMT -7
Jeez Chris, other than the obvious need for a better income I'm not surprised you chose to remove yourself from the teaching profession. If it's becoming a trend to use AZ education as template, we are simply doomed...
Another factor that enters into this is the rising numbers of older, mostly retired folks. In AZ the axiom is "We already paid for our kids education, we'll be dammed if we're going to pay for anyone else's"...The older set (in AZ, at least) is a very powerful political faction, and has a lot of say via elections and proposition votes where the money goes--and in AZ it mostly goes for new gated golf communities.
In a way I can see these peoples' argument, but I don't think they see the hard stark crux of the matter; The kids they don't feel compelled to educate today are going to inherit this country, one way or another. I doubt that I have to draw a picture, as we're already seeing the results of poor education in our last generation of high school "graduates".
There is a high school game show on a local TV station (remember Collegiate Challenge?), and the juniors & seniors participating have trouble with subjects that we were taught in elementary school. 'Nuff sed...
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Post by JohnC on Aug 21, 2004 5:29:52 GMT -7
Concerning the lack of enthusiasm at the seniors paying more taxes, I've heard two reasons (not mine).
1. "I'm not going to pay any more taxes than I have to if the money is just going to buy the princpal a new car, desk for his office, carpeting, etc."
2. "Why should I pay more taxes for schools... let President Fox educate his own peoples kids!"
I kinda subscribe to both of them, especially when I see what caliber teachers are being hired. JohnC.
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Post by stetto on Aug 21, 2004 5:38:34 GMT -7
Gosh John, I forgot to list the exceptions to the generalization about the retired segment of AZ population.
Your points are valid, even if given toungue-in-cheek.
The people I was mostly referring to are the snowbird population, who pay large amounts of property taxes (the main funding for schools in AZ). These folks are predominately transient, having residency in more than one state. Their justification is that they spent their tax dollars putting kids through school "back home", and don't feel obligated to do it for kids they have no vested interest in...That population has become more permanent in recent years, but their attittudes haven't changed.
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Post by jim on Aug 22, 2004 16:47:10 GMT -7
Article today in the Austin paper about how poorly the charter schools in the state are doing in comparison to public schools. So it doesn't sound like doing all the wonderful things charter schools say they do works either.
Jim
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Post by Grug - American Neanderthal on Aug 22, 2004 17:01:27 GMT -7
I read a rebuttal to the NY Times article about the short comings of charter schools, that says the data they used did indeed show charter schools have not lived up to promise of their performance, but it was mainly in urban aeras where the public schools system also is rock bottom of the scoring curve.
Simply being a charter school doesn't automatically mean its going to work better, but it is a choice, those same parents could choose yet another charter school that does score better. Eventually the charter schools that dont perform will go away, the same can't be said of the public schools that turn out kids who cant read or add. If parents seek out schools that teach the choice of charter schools is crucial, unless its the lack of parent involvement that is part of the problem to start with.
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Post by JohnC on Aug 22, 2004 18:23:22 GMT -7
Face it, folks; our schools, whether they're public, charter, private or parochial are only as good as the administration and teachers.
If the administrators are concerned about hte education their students get, they hire good teachers (or at leat try to) and those teachers do the best they can.
Admitedly, when the politicians and "do-gooder" social service weenies stick their noses in, things can get to be quite sticky, but at least they're trying.
It's when the administrators are more concerned about their own self-gratification that things rapidly fail - poorer teachers are hired and in so many cases, money that was intended for education is side-tracked into the princpal's office for a new desk or a new car for the Superintendant of Schools.
These guys are simply imitating our legislators, folks! JohnC
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Post by ctdahle on Aug 23, 2004 7:23:38 GMT -7
ARIZONA "I already paid for MY kid's education...."
What these folks fail to realize is that any kid they fail to educate to day is one more kid that will be breaking into their house or stealing their car stereo tomorrow, and will be .
CHARTER SCHOOLS The theoretical advantage of charter schools is that the parents who are very concerned about thier kid's future can assure that the charter school is doing a good job. The problem is that these parents take the view "I put my kids in the charter school so I don't need to worry about their education anymore". In general, the parents of charter school kids have no more positive involvement with thier kid's education than the parents of the regualr public school kids. Moreover, the parents of charter school kids tend to be cranks and oddballs who are more likely to become negatively involved, "You're giving my kid too much homework, you're not sensitive to my kid's undiagnosed special needs/adhd/aspergers syndrome, you are stifling her individuality by making her wear modest clothing and take out her tongue piercing, et c."
ON POOR SCHOOLS
Having worked in a poverty school for three years, what I saw was faculty who put in hundreds of hours outside of contract time to try to bring families in to the school. I personally made a point to visit the home of every student in my class: to bring them books to help them set up a place to do homework to assure that the children had a protected NO TELEVISION hour during which they were to do thier homework. I also made sure that every child and every parent had my home telephone number and urged them to call me if there was ANY question about what was happening in the class room, or about homework, or about any other aspect of their child's education. I made a point of calling several families each night just to say something positive about their kid.
All of our teachers did these sorts of things just to try to make sure that the kids SHOWED UP at school, dressed, rested, fed and ready to learn.
The reward for all this extra work is that the testing continues to show that many kids are about one year behind by third grade (ignoring that fact that they started school, many of them, MUCH further behind), and therefore the teachers are considered to be failures and are forced to take additional "remedial training" at their own expense and on their own time just to be allowed to continue to work for $24,000, and with the axe over their head that if they don't "do better" their school will be closed and they will be out of a job.
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Post by jim on Aug 23, 2004 9:02:07 GMT -7
You notice I posted about charter schools in Texas. No reference to the national evaluation. This evaluation, done by the Texas State Education Agency, found that charter schools were doing worse than public schools overall and much worse in dealing with minorities. (in a year or two we will have no majority group in Texas, with hispanics being the largest group.) Charter schools are going under in pretty good numbers in Texas, in large part because of mismanagement by people with fancy cars and vacations in Europe. At least so I read in the newspaper.
Jim
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Post by JohnC on Aug 23, 2004 11:02:07 GMT -7
I have no input oncharter schools. However, I have enough complaints about the public schools to fill an extremely large file!
In the Douglas AZ school system i'm firmly convinced that in order to be hired, a teacher must place in the lowest portion of their graduating class, be a pedophile, be extrordinarily lazy, or have several relatives on the school board.
Some of the excuses I have heard from the teachers who I met at the parent-teacher confrences every year that my son and daughter were there are really classic!
Now there were a few teachers who really cared, but in most cases they were only there one year; the reason? I can't verify that this is gospel, but in one teacher's case I was told she made her peers jealous of the scores her students racked up.
Foertuinately, my kids had a good primary school background and we were able to help them on many of their classes. JohnC
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Post by Grug - American Neanderthal on Aug 23, 2004 18:10:46 GMT -7
I have very little hands on experience with the schools other than through my daughter. But I hear there are some good charter schools in this area and there are some good public schools too. There are a couple perenial problem schools too. Nebraska a has choice voucher which works that a kid may choose different school even in an adjacent district if they wish. They can only use it once and only within the public school system. They did this thinking all the rural school kids/parents would choose to come to town and they could then absorb the money when those schools closed, instead town kids were choicing to the rural schools. A fairly significant number of kids have choiced out of these problem schools and left the state kind of scratching their head what to do about it. They persued natural tact of bureaucrats everywhere do what flies in the face of logic, they decided to close rural schools.
Anyway, I commend you Chris for going to such efforts, I have never met one who has, never heard of 1st, 2nd etc hand, of a teacher ever going to a students home once much less weekly with the exception of once a kid who was very sick. My wife is the school cook at our little school, and the one time she had to even call home to talk about a lunch bill the woman was irate about it.
Sadly most of what you went and did was parenting and you cant pay a teacher enough to, nor should they be aked to replace the parent in the equasion.
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Post by Cablemender on Aug 24, 2004 2:52:05 GMT -7
I also think your visits to their homes was a great thing, above and beyond, but I think it was as much teaching as it was parenting. I think the way that society has changed over many decades, moving from families that tended to settle in one small are to one where families are scattered all over the place has had its toll on learning. We forget some times that children don't come with instruction manuals, so parents are left to their own devices in raising them.
In the days when families were much closer, there would be a tendency for deviations in good parenting to be corrected by others.. siblings, the grandparents, etc. Today there is little of that influence in many cases. Perhaps what you did, Chris, was to provide some of this missing guidance to parents who never learned the things you taught them. A good number of schools around here hold several workshops for parents and the subject matter is right along the lines of what Chris was doing in those homes.. stressing the importance of the basics - designated time and place to study, no distractions, getting enough rest, keeping them motivated, etc. Sadly, only about half of parent bother to go.
I'm sure this has to frustrate teachers beyond belief. One of those situations where you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink any.
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Post by ctdahle on Aug 24, 2004 6:24:11 GMT -7
I know that what my colleagues and I did in visiting kids at home is not the norm, but our student population is representative of the norm at so called "failing" schools.
The reality is that the only way the students at these schools will learn to succeed is if the teachers do, in fact, take on a "parenting" role and since the NCLB prescription for treating a failing school is to fire the teachers, the teachers must parent the kids, and parent the parents as well, to survive.
Unfortunately, the support that is given to the teachers does not help them effectively fill this role. Teacher training tends to be of the "attend a how to teach reading seminar at High Dollar Suburban Academy where they have high reading scores" variety. In truth, we know how to teach reading.
What we need is guidance on how to teach a ten year old who has the after school responsibility of feeding, bathing, laundering, cleaning and mommying 3 younger siblings while the real mommy is working the 2:00 to midnight shift at the starch plant. How do we keep the little girl from following her mother's footsteps into a bad relationship with a horny middle school boy, teen pregnancy, recreational babymaking, single motherhood etc.
We could debate endlessly about the responsibility of the parents in creating the situation, but the education system and in particular, the teacher is handed the job of breaking the teen pregnancy/single mother/lousy job/welfare chain.
The National Reading Panel and the authors of the NCLB Act are trying to suggest that the problem of low reading scores can be solved by teaching the children phonemic awareness, and maybe they are right, because what the ten year old surrogate mommy REALLY needs is sleep, and an hour with the phonics workbook is likely to guarantee that.
Anyway, there is good news, and that is that MOST kids really do learn how to read, calculate, write, spell, and think, at least well enough to participate in the Trash Can!
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Lightning
Listener
R/C Combat flier aka.Lawn Dart king
Posts: 91
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Post by Lightning on Aug 24, 2004 7:45:26 GMT -7
OOOPS Chris, did you mean "The Skeeter Pond" ;D ;D ;D
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Post by ctdahle on Aug 24, 2004 10:18:46 GMT -7
Ah well, a rose by any other name....
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Post by MrRepublican on Aug 25, 2004 3:26:30 GMT -7
JohnC,
Everytime I read the front menu to the pond, it makes me chuckle when I come to this title. Great topic, too. That alone is worth the bump!
Little Man so spic and span...
It typifies the protestations of the Kerry camp everytime their own strategery and dishonesty boomerangs. Now they are crying for the nation to shut up about Vietnam just weeks after centerpiecing it at their own dnc convention! LOL!
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Post by JohnC on Aug 25, 2004 8:23:42 GMT -7
But he won THREE Purple Hearts! JohnC
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Post by Galvin on Aug 25, 2004 10:08:56 GMT -7
Yeah, he has a few Purple Hearts. You get them whether you bleed a little or a lot. How many did GWB get? More to the point, how many did you get? Anyone who even set foot in Viet Nam rightly deserves a medal in my mind for just having been there whether they volunteered to go (like Kerry did) or were drafted and sent there.
And he has a Sliver Star and a Bronze Star as well, the Bronze for the very same action in which Thurlow got his; the one in which he claims there was no shooting. The constant efforts by the political opposition (and at times their own party) to pooh pooh and besmirch the records of people like Kerry, McCain, Cleland and others who paid varying degrees of price for their service are beneath contempt.
I wonder how things are going to play out in this little operetta now that Bush's own campaign lawyer has admitted he has been secretly advising the "Swift Boat Veterans For Bush". You want to pursue the dishonesty line further? He resigned this morning as the Bush campaign lawyer after the facts became known. This has been the most stinking display of partisan crap I have seen in all my born days and dates back to the time in the early seventies when Nixon hired O'Neill (Oh yeah, same guy) to smear Kerry for his anti-war activities.
In other news: Cheney has now come out in a town meeting and stated for the first time what everyone has already known; he has a gay daughter. He hasn't said it publicly before nor has he said before that he doesn't thnk much of the idea of the "man and woman only" constitutional amendment being promoted by Bush. Could it be my opinion of Dick Cheney's is actually rising? Take me now, Lord!
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Post by JohnC on Aug 25, 2004 10:49:49 GMT -7
This should make your day, Galvin I didn't get a single purple heart, nor did I ever set foot in Viet Nam; Nuclear Weaposn Technicians are pretty useless without their NUKES. I had a cousin who went over twice and came back in a body bag the second time, though. BTW, Did you go?
As for the Republicans still harping about Kerry's war record, I have heard Bush denounce them several times and say the ads should be removed. Personally, I disagree with him. John Kerry started this by denouncing (as far as I'm concerned) every military man who served in or during Viet Nam and claimed (again, as far as I'm concerned) we were all nothing but a bunch of murdering babykillers. (Except for him, of course, he merely shot a teen-age kid in the back because the kid MIGHT have used a grenade launcher). I particulalry enjoyed seeing him with Hanoi Jane and then again, over in France, sucking up to the North Vietnamese.
But the Republicans don't have to say much of anything... All they have to do is let Jay Leno speak for them. JohnC
Jay Leno on John Kerry:
The Secret Service has announced it is doubling its protection for John Kerry. You can understand why - with two positions on every issue, he has twice as many people mad at him." - Jay Leno
"We make jokes about it but the truth is this presidential election really offers us a choice of two well-informed opposing positions on every issue. OK, they both belong to John Kerry, but they're still there." - Jay Leno
"John Kerry will undergo surgery to repair his right shoulder. He originally hurt it when he suddenly switched positions on Iraq." - Jay Leno
"President Bush listed his income as $822,000. You know what John Kerry calls someone who earns $822,000? Not even worth dating." - Jay Leno
"Well the good news for Democrats, now over half the country can identify a picture of John Kerry. The bad news, the majority still thinks he's the dad from 'The Munsters."' - Jay Leno
"John Kerry accused President Bush of catering to the rich. You know, as opposed to John Kerry who just marries them." - Jay Leno
"They say John Kerry is the first Democratic presidential candidate in history to raise $50 million in a three-month period. Actually, that's nothing. He once raised $500 million with two words: 'I do.'" - Jay Leno
You go, Jay!!!!
"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
George Orwell
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