Some, yes, have you? I know our daughter teaches it well, but her mother is a historian so she may not be the best example.
If you take out minorities, we score well above most other nations in the world. If you take urban schools out of the equation we score higher than most other nations in the world. It is not the system overall that is broken, it’s inner city hellholes and it is not the system that is failing them, it is families, or more precisely, the lack thereof. Those problems can be traced to poverty and poverty among minorities can be traced mostly to cultural AND government attitudes and policies respectively towards minorities. Redlining, employment racism, Jim Crow, prison sentencing inequaties, the list goes on. The civil rights amendment is recent history, it did not fix things like a magic wand, that ■■■■ takes decades to filter through society, it takes generations. People can argue till they are blue in the face that everybody has the same rights now, but when you start from a seriously disadvantaged position, the chances of success are diminished, impressive success stories notwithstanding.
Edit to add; I don’t know what the guy does and forgot about that question, I’ll check.
Considering one party is a little less proud of America over the last 20 years, I think it does. We’ve done a great number of things that reflect poorly on us and our values.
Iraq
Endless war in general
Torture
The response to Hurricane Katrina
The response to Hurricane Maria
The election of Donald Trump
The rise, and normalization, of white nationalism in this country
If you take out stupid people, we’re probably at the top.
What does “redlining” have to do with public education? You do realize it was part of the New Deal? And that it has been illegal for 50 years? It’s irrelevant to this discussion any way.
Jim Crow laws? What are you talking about? Schools have been desegregated for two generations. Unlike wealth, education only takes one.
If you go to the same 1st grade as everybody else it doesn’t take “generations”. Education is individual.
Yes. I spent my first 10 years working with adolescents in treatment programs. And the last 20 working in special education and developmental disabilities overall…
Why?
Also, my wife and parents and soon to be my son are all educators.
Yeah. I do completely. We are confounded by millennials, not by the fact that they aren’t educated, they are. Exceptionally bright. But the lack any know how, or common sense. Example: we train new staff to pass medications. It’s not hard. Yet 1 out of every 5 or 6 cannot understand or won’t understand the concept of following a process. Therefore they have unacceptable rates of medication errors. Because they don’t get the concept of process, policy and procedure.
RT…my wife’s compensation depends on her ability to show growth to a certain level of in all her students. That are often unobtainable. This also includes the several individuals on individual education plans who are also expected to reAch these levels. If she does not show specific levels of growth she does not get as high a raise as she should or does not get a bonus as high as she could.
And believe me. She works her tail off with two autistic kids in her class each year. It is not standardized test scores that make a great teacher.
Trust me I know. I work in the system. My compensation levels do not rely on that but the head teachers does and we all fight the same battle based on percentage of IEP kids in the class. That is not to say those kids are not smart. They are. I am not a fan of standardized testing at all. It does not show how bright some kids are and some kids are just not test takers. Test anxiety is a real thing. We refuse to teach to the test, we teach what needs to be taught and let the scores fall where they may. Sucks all the way around.
