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tom2
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 Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2010 2:45 pm Post subject: Where's superman for the middle class? |
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| Lance T. Izumi, The San Francisco Chronicle (click banner below) wrote: | 
Where's superman for the middle class?
Lance T. Izumi, Saturday, April 3, 2010
The documentary "Waiting for Superman" by Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim, who previously directed Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," was a big hit at the recent Sundance Film Festival. Voted best U.S. documentary by Sundance moviegoers, Guggenheim's film exposes the immense flaws in America's public school system and follows the lives of a handful of parents and their children who struggle to find alternative routes to a better education. Significantly, Guggenheim profiles both low-income and middle-class children.
The title of Guggenheim's latest film comes from an African American educator who recounts how, as a child, he would wait for his hero, Superman, to come and solve the problems around him. In too many of America's public schools, that wait continues. These schools are either dangerous, underperforming or both. Half of students tested in California scored below proficient on the state English exam. Guggenheim points out that bad schools and bad schooling affect more than just poor kids. "The revelation is that a lot of our schools, even our middle-class and our white schools, are suffering from the same dysfunction (as schools in low-income areas)," Guggenheim warns. The evidence bears him out. A recent study by the Pacific Research Institute found hundreds of California public schools in middle-class and affluent neighborhoods where significant proportions of students failed to achieve grade-level proficiency in core subjects. Many parents at these schools don't realize how bad things are.
"My entire extended family has gone through (Terra Nova), and everyone has been extremely happy with it," says a parent at Terra Nova High School in Pacifica. In an area with a median home price around $530,000, Terra Nova has a white-majority student population with virtually no students not fluent in English and only about 2 in 10 who are disadvantaged. Yet half of 11th-graders failed to achieve proficiency on the state English exam, and a shocking 83 percent of juniors scored "not ready for college English" on the California State University's college-readiness exam. In math, 54 percent of students taking the state's summative math exam for accelerated students failed to achieve proficiency, while 80 percent of those taking the algebra 2 exam failed to reach proficiency.
While some middle-class parents are unaware of the deficiencies at their children's public schools, others know too well their neighborhood school's shortcomings. Actress Laraine Newman, of "Saturday Night Live" fame, recently wrote on the Huffington Post that she and her husband "could no longer afford to pay for private school and expect to pay for a college education" for her children. However, at her neighborhood public school, University High in Los Angeles, about 70 percent of 11th-graders failed to hit proficiency on the state English exam, and a staggering 95 percent of students taking the geometry and algebra 2 exams scored below proficient. "(F)rankly, the school was low performing," Newman wrote. Luckily for her, Newman qualified for a special permit to send her daughter to a high school in ultra-wealthy Beverly Hills. Most other middle-class parents aren't so fortunate, which is why Sweden's universal school-choice voucher program is so appealing.
Funding is attached to every Swedish child and may be used at the public or private independent school of the parents choosing. "Choice is for everyone, whatever income level you have," says Per Unckel, governor of Stockholm County and a former education minister. Further, he observes, "It is not only a school-choice program which opens up choice for kids, it's also a choice program that opens up competition between schools for the benefit of quality." Davis Guggenheim comments: "Every morning I drive my kids past four public schools on the way to a private school, and when I drive past those schools it haunts me, the fact that there aren't good schools for my kids." If this reality haunts the Sundance documentary winner, it's surely like a horror movie for those who can't escape from those bad public schools. Source (click here) |
Pretty inconvenient for the NEA, seeing the most liberal newspaper in America (perhaps tied with the NYT) report that government schools suck. And it really must spin their heads to read such support for privatization in this, uh, sheet.
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fastdraw
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Joined: 25 Sep 2004
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Location: Gunbarrel, Colorado
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| Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2010 11:12 pm Post subject: Re: Where's superman for the middle class? |
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| tom2 wrote: |
| Lance T. Izumi, The San Francisco Chronicle (click banner below) wrote: |
Actress Laraine Newman, of "Saturday Night Live" fame, recently wrote on the Huffington Post that she and her husband "could no longer afford to pay for private school and expect to pay for a college education" for her children. However, at her neighborhood public school, University High in Los Angeles, about 70 percent of 11th-graders failed to hit proficiency on the state English exam, and a staggering 95 percent of students taking the geometry and algebra 2 exams scored below proficient. "(F)rankly, the school was low performing," Newman wrote. Luckily for her, Newman qualified for a special permit to send her daughter to a high school in ultra-wealthy Beverly Hills. Most other middle-class parents aren't so fortunate, which is why Sweden's universal school-choice voucher program is so appealing.
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Newman is infamous for being on drugs during her stint on SNL. I trust that she's clean today. In any case she is obviously trying to do right by her kids.
The government schools have failed far beyond the ability of anyone to redeem them. We need to call in air strikes to destroy them (buildings only, of course) and start over. |
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Hondo
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| Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 6:05 am Post subject: Re: Where's superman for the middle class? |
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| fastdraw wrote: | | The government schools have failed far beyond the ability of anyone to redeem them. We need to call in air strikes to destroy them (buildings only, of course) and start over. |
The problem for public schools IMO has nothing to do with physical facilities. The problem is the public education bureaucracy that has - in many if not most places - become overtly politicized, is more interested in self-perpetuation than educating children, and is "owned" by education unions.
IMO, a variant on the RI solution is in order. That is, mass terminations with show cause for rehiring for teachers coupled with mass terminations with full replacement for entrenched administrators. Not sure what is apropos for the clerical, maintenance, and food service employees. My guess is that in general they're salvageable.
This wouldn't fix all of the systemic problems affecting public education. It does nothing to change the clueless, biased academic nomenclatura responsible for conferring advanced degrees in education, nor does it change the current widspread lack of parental willingness to become involved in their children's education. But it would IMO be a decent start.
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There exist those who are so timid and misguided as to think that nothing is worth a war - not even freedom. History shall call such wretched souls fools; and history shall also call them, or their descendants, slaves.
This fate is predictable. History teaches that those who think their freedom not worth a war will not long remain free. |
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fencer
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Joined: 15 Apr 2004
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Location: El Paso, Texas
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| Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 12:13 pm Post subject: Re: Where's superman for the middle class? |
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| Hondo wrote: | | fastdraw wrote: | | The government schools have failed far beyond the ability of anyone to redeem them. We need to call in air strikes to destroy them (buildings only, of course) and start over. |
The problem for public schools IMO has nothing to do with physical facilities. The problem is the public education bureaucracy that has - in many if not most places - become overtly politicized, is more interested in self-perpetuation than educating children, and is "owned" by education unions.
IMO, a variant on the RI solution is in order. That is, mass terminations with show cause for rehiring for teachers coupled with mass terminations with full replacement for entrenched administrators. Not sure what is apropos for the clerical, maintenance, and food service employees. My guess is that in general they're salvageable.
This wouldn't fix all of the systemic problems affecting public education. It does nothing to change the clueless, biased academic nomenclatura responsible for conferring advanced degrees in education, nor does it change the current widspread lack of parental willingness to become involved in their children's education. But it would IMO be a decent start. |
In my view, privatizing the public school system would fix most of those problems. If parents were given the choice and responsibility of choosing a school and paying for it, they'd become much more involved. If schools are competing for students they won't be able to tolerate incompetent staff members so teaching standards would rise. The rising standards for teachers would eventually work its way back to colleges having to provide a better education to education majors looking for an edge in a more competitive job market. Competition between schools would also affect support staff as the difference between some schools might come down to the cleanliness of the hallways and bathrooms, the quality of the meals provided or the reliability of the school's network.
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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
-- C. S. Lewis |
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yoopr
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Joined: 31 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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She wanted a handout and she got one from the Leftists when CA is Bankrupt.
She probably blew all of her money on drugs.
Hey Laraine-When you don't have money for things you want you make do with what you have and don't expect me or anybody else to pay for your "Wants"
These people make me sick
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