They don't call it "dumbed down" for nothin.

I think students should choose own path and find what makes them happy, with the exeption of English and Semantic Math (Syntatic Math is for the that 5% that have no social lives) which is needed in order to survive as a intellegent nation.

Like work, the best job is one that you don't mind waking up for.

Somewhere along the line during this "great social experiment" we decided that it may hurt someone's psyche if they fail...at anything. Now we don't want that, so we avoid terms like failure. Sadly, when you recognize achievement, it automatically shows the adjacent failure. But, we can't have that ... so we quit recognizing great achievement. We stopped having "slow", average and fast classes, and put everyone into the "general population" (except AP courses). We smoothed the grading scale. We lowered test standards. We teach to the test.

Then we wonder why we are losing ground in our educational system.

Years ago, a friend told me we are "defeating the laws of nature by passing laws to keep the dumb ones alive". There was more detail, but you get the drift. I scolded him for being uncaring. Thirty years and much observation later... I owe him an apology.

The funny thing is, I was in many advanced classes in Jr high and HS and as kids we didn't think anything of it on either side. Many of my friends were not in those classes and the subject never even entered our minds. The idea that it would hurt kids psyche's is of course idiotic.

Teaching that there are no winners and no losers should be considered child abuse.

It so easy that we have one of the highest drop out rates in the world.

Today, teachers are teaching to a test, and not simply teaching. However, I don't blame them so much as the districts. It's all about scoring and not the kids. Poor student scores are justified by the district as being attributed to the students' academic ability versus whether schools actually take the time to TEACH. Education is big business in our country and are for some reason not held accountable. What I find interesting is that even those schools of higher learning do not prepare their graduates for the real world. It's the status quo and for an industry who's primary mission is to educate, they have a lot to learn.

Students have to many distractions as well. As a generation X'r, we had a walkman to tote around in the school bag. However, we didn't have a lap top, iPads, Cell phones, or Xboxes waiting for us at home.

My teachers gave reading assignments in my text books and had quizes the next day over what you were to read. Teachers were never afraid to invoke the "F" death penalty and my parents were not afraid to invoke their own forms of the death penalty... (grounded, no TV, no going outside to play) until my grades went back up. Teachers and parents worked together and school was seen as the vehicle to a better life.

Maybe its time school returns to what it was intended to be.. a place to learn. Parents need to get more involved in their childrens' lives and not leave it up to the school to take care of it. School districts need to stop with the "standardized testing approach" and start teaching again. Children need to learn failure doesn't define who they are. What will define them is how they rise up and learn to not fail the next time around.

That is why I send my kids to private school. Public school just sucks. I really wish they passed vouchers and let the parents decide where to send their kids to. It is the unions that are messing up are what is killing this...

Amen!! Schools and everything else has gotten soft. We didn't have a laptop or and iPad, or hell even a calculator watch in school. We were there to learn.. Go in to any fast food place or convenience store and pay with cash and see how long it takes them to figure out your change...they CAN'T..Why? Because technology is at their disposal. I have actually seen people try to count stuff out on their fingers!! What a joke!! We learned how to do it first on paper and then in our heads...But oh no, not in today's society where even the mere basketball score, if it's a blowout, will not register because "everyone is a winner". A comedian I once watched said, "Someone has to cook the hamburgers"!

ctdad:

Beat me to it. As someone who graduated college 2 years ago, up until I hit university it was always about changing the curriculum so there was time to teach to standardized tests. Real knowledge and learning be damned, we need those test scores! The things I learned were usually by my own accord by doing extra reading or research.

That would explain why kids in the 16 to 20 range are so stupid, now. Well, for that matter kids in my generation were pretty damn stupid, but they all at least knew some very basic and important things. Teenagers and early 20 somethings don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. They say stupid things, they do stupid things, they have stupid political and moral beliefs, they can barely do basic math, they have horrible spelling and grammar, can't do any higher math, and are very poorly read. They can't handle anything complex. They don't know Shakespeare outside of the "old" Dicaprio film. They think Kanye West, LMFAO, and Katy Perry are high art. It has bred an entire culture that rewards stupidity and vilifies intelligence.

And I'm not a bitter old man, hell I'm barely 28

Congratulations. I can tell from your writing that you are still working at it.

If they make it harder 80% will fail, most don't study and let computers figure it out.

You can blame the parents too.

Ask any teacher what happens when they give students a F, D, or even a C. End up getting the parents to demand, yell and scream why their precious kid got an awful grade and should deserve an A. Never occur to them that maybe the kid gave a half ass effort. You see the same parents fighting and arguing in the school's baseball, basketball, and other sport games.

This is what happens when you dumb things down to the least common denominator. You can thank all those touchy-feely types with the you can not tell a kid he is failing or you will hurt his psyche and self esteem attitude. The reality is that success and failure are part of life and kids need to understand that. They need to understand that hard work leads to success and laziness leads to failure. This lesson should begin with class work in school. If you do the work and learn the material you will get good grade and pass your classes, if you slack off you will will fail and get held back. The touchy-feely approach has left us with an entire generation that is not prepared for what they real world is like and do not understand that you only get things through hard work. They have been raised under a system where every one succeed and everyone is a winner and gets a ribbon. This is just not reality and this generation has been done a great disservice by all of these so-called experts who convinced people that we should not ever tell kids that they failed at something. Telling kids they failed or that they lost does not damage their psyches or hurt their self esteem, it motivates them to try harder the next time and prepares them for life by teaching them to accept failure and move on from it. We need to make school more challenging again and accept that some students are not going to cut it and are going to get held back or have to go to summer school for extra help. Without failure being a possibility there can be no real success.

First of all, I want to address the question of failure. It depends on how you handle it.

I taught mostly fourth, fifth and sixth graders from GenX, the Millennial and Homeland (post-9/11) generations, about 1000 kids, from 1971 to 2010.

One thing that hasn't changed is that most kids really do care what adults think. If they think you think they are failures, they're likely to see themselves as failures. When we give tests, we need our students to regard them as tools to assess what they do and do not know -- and help them focus their future learning. (Any standardized test I've ever seen does NOT serve this purpose well at all.)

No need to worry that the kids won't learn about winners and losers. They are surrounded by that meme. We're so bad about that, that during the Olympics, when the most talented athletes in the world compete, we look as anything other than a gold medal as a failure. That is sick. I had a poster up in my classroom that said, "We are all winners." Everyone has strengths, and everyone has weaknesses to overcome. One of my biggest challenges as a teacher was to help kids recognize their strengths and see their weaknesses not as something to hide but as something that can potentially make them stronger.

Most of what was quoted above was from 8th and 12th graders. I'm not sure how the questions were worded, and maybe middle-school and high school teachers don't ask kids to write about what they have read or learned, but we elementary school teachers have kids writing things like that every day.

No engineering and technology, really? In the '70's we had Technology for Children -- T4C. We had workbenches with tools where the kids could make things -- and learn how physical things do (and don't) work. In the '80's we started getting computers and the kids learned LOGO. In the '90's there were educational computer programs and word processing, and in the '00's there was learning how to use the Internet, as well as iMovies and other applications on the computer. Kids take all that for granted today.

Engineering? It would surprise me tremendously if the science classes in middle school did not contain lots of the basics for engineering. There are different kinds of engineering. Even in elementary school, from kindergarten blocks to early grade LEGOs to upper grade design projects, engineering is addressed. Physics, biology, chemistry, environmental studies -- all of those areas provide the base for engineering skills. They probably just don't call it that.

I'm personally glad that the survey included reading. It is a disappearing art. If you look at the statistic up there, it implies that 2/3 of the middle school students ARE reading every day. Given all the distractions, especially at that age, that is an encouraging number. I'd be all for reading more -- especially reading for pleasure, which builds reading ability and also makes it more likely that they will read in the future.

Finally, ALL of the high school students I know have worked their butts off. They take their work seriously and they had tons of schoolwork. They are the engaged ones. They are the ones who have a future they are looking forward to.

I'm concerned about the others. When my son was going into high school, a young friend advised me, "Get him into the honors classes. The other classes suck. " When I asked her about it, she told me that the kids are disengaged, that they don't want to learn, that you can't really learn anything in those classes.

The report was probably taking into account the whole range of students. What has to be looked at is how to engage the disengaged students, not how to make it harder for everyone. The 'achievers' have it hard enough. And -- going back to the beginning of this -- those disengaged students are very likely the ones who have labeled themselves as failures.

@Amazed It's intentionally typed that way.

Check out this blog post: (and the comments)

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/11

Excellent!

This is not a new overnight predicament in US education. My wife and I both found public school too easy compared to private secondary and universities. That was the 1970s. My kids experienced the same difference in the 1995 to 2005 era. We all graduated with honors from private universities. And we all felt we didn't get our money's worth at public universities. Sadly a quality education is being denied too many American youth and we are already paying the price in falling global competitiveness. Fixing education is not rocket science. Look at private schools, or even home schoolers, and compare where graduates from high school rank in percentile rankings against public education. We are failing our kids, in that the majority of families cannot afford private schools or are unable to forego one income in order to home school.

I blame the atmosphere of public schools. Not enough emphasis on succeeding, when you pay for school you know you have to do good to get your moneys worth and at home you get the personal attention that you need that you do not get from public schools.

Jerry-that sounds snobby. I was a Natl Merit Scholar in h.s. and attended 2 highly selective private post-secondary schools (on scholarship, no way could my parents have paid for that). I also attended public university to complete my degree and for grad study (mathematics). It was the content that challenged.

How can you expect students to be prepared for the real world when the education systems only teaches to the test. IMO, if you put anyone the in the education industry into a private sector job, they would not last a week. In the real world, you need to think on your feet and adapt. You need to understand what is expected of you and work to meet it and excel beyond it. Unfortunately, those in the education industry either don't understand this concept or don't care.

Thats a tad fatalistic, don't you think?

When we've reduced school to a 'feel good, "diverse",dumbed down to the stupidest kid in the class' education, is it really a wonder school is boring and easy to kids that would take part in these type of polls?

To be honest, I graduate High School in '86 and school was easy, even then. I didn't learn ONE THING in it. College was so refreshing and I learned so much. I feel bad, because now I think college is being dumbed down too, for the same reasons...

If school is too easy and boring for kids, why is it they need to cheat on their exams?

Truth seeker, you took the words right out of my mouth. Keyboard.

They're thinking "I'm getting straight A's. I'm so smart", while conveniently forgetting having cheated on every test.

This can't surprise anyone with kids in the public school systems...at least if you're paying attention.

Every mini van out there has a "My Kid's an Honor Roll Student" bumper sticker on it. I look at my kids homework and trust me...it's a joke. Then I wonder why my 10 year old can't spell "please" correctly.

Schools no longer teach math & english; that's up to me and my wife via homework assignments. It's a joke. I asked one of my kids if they ever do math on the blackboard in class...she had no idea what I was talking about.

And just look at the BOOMING biz of private education and home schooling. Enough said.

Our Dept of Education is a JOKE.

Raider is totally correct. Give the states back control of education. Once the Feds. get control of anything, it is doomed.

Every mini van has a "My Kid is on the Honor Roll" sticker because it is what PARENTS want, not the educators. Are schools easier now then ever, absolutely. Why? Because educators cannot give students anything below a C without administration wanting to know what is being done to lift these students up so that PARENTS do not complain. PARENTS want to see only A's and maybe some B's on report cards, they don't care how they get there. They want their children in advanced classes, whether they belong there or not. It is the new version of keeping up with the Jones' - look my child is so smart, they have all A's. Our society cares little about what a student can actually do, just what their test score is, or what it appears to be.

Actually, radar is not totally correct. It depends where you live. The public school education my daughter receives is phenomenal. The issue is that we live in a high income area where there are more resources. The problem is that the quality of public education is highly associated with socioeconomic status. And I don't say that to disparage teachers in low income areas. It's just that when most children in a class come to school with good skills, ready to learn, which is more likely in a high SES area because of the resources parents have to provide enriching experiences, teachers can focus on higher level skills, such as critical thinking, rather than basics, such as letter recognition.

"Man..." your correct...it's LONG been recognized that the number one predictor for school achievement is family income. Lots of income means better neighborhood, more involved (2) parents, more prepared kids, higher expectations, etc. BEFORE the kids even begin school. Lack of income usually means crappy neighborhood, less involved (1) parent, kids not prepared, no expectation or even anti-education feelings, etc.

The problem with every one of your posts is you are compairing different systems to each other. The US Department of Education influences education in every school that accepts federal money, as it should. There are 50 different systems of public education, each of them similar in aspects and each of them different in more aspects. I can only speak with limited knowledge about one of those 50 systems, Texas. Texas is nowhere near the top of any ranking of public school systems so it would not necessairily be a good model for public schools in USA. Each public school in Texas is "run" by a locally elected board of education. Each of these boards chooses to either accept or refuse federal funds from the US Department of Education, with the funds come conditions that affect the entire local system. The rest of the funding is from local property taxes (currently around 60% of the local budget) and State of Texas funding (around 30% of the local budget) With the state funding comes more conditions on how the local district can use those funds, anytime you accept money from a governmental body one should expect contitions on how those funds can be spent, as a taxpayer I dont want any district being given 100 millon dollare as a bonus for a local administrator for instance. Local public school districts in the state of Texas have the option of not accepting any state or federal funds, they have the right to fund everything from local funds. To my knowledge no local public school board in the state of Texas has chosen to do so.

Unfortunately, you do have teachers some teachers trying to collect a paycheck, but in my school we work so closely together, that one unwilling teacher with low expectations can sabotage an entire grade level! I've seen it happen. We finally got rid of two teachers like that on our campus just this summer.

Now, the school supply issue---if requiring parents to buy massive amounts of school supplies were true, I wouldn't have a supply list and a $2500 credit card sitting by my purse right now to purchase supplies for the 85 out of 120 students that I will teach this year. By the way, that credit card is on MY credit report. I only use it for school purchases to keep track of how much I'm spending. I can max that card out at least twice in a year. I use my debit card at times, and I have grabbed my husband's credit card in the bookstore to purchase anywhere from $500-$800 worth of books at a time. The tax rebate is a whooping $250!

While there are many problems in education, please don't blame just the teachers. I know there are horrible teachers out there, but in middle and high school we spend 75-90 minutes a day with a particular child. When their parents refuse to buy supplies, that becomes our responsibility. When I required them to read at least 20 minutes a night, one parent told me that was too much time for 13-year olds to sit still and just read. When the parents only call when the child is finally kicked out of school, then it's kind of late to pretend you care.

Teachers fight against students who don't respect anyone (including their own parents), parents who want you to cater to and rear their children, administrators who want high test scores at any costs, a public who likes to place blame because they don't know what else to do, districts requiring us to purchase our own copy paper to make copies (try being an English teacher copying a nonfiction article for 120 kids), and governmental policies created by people who have never spent one day teaching in a classroom.

Can we please stop ignoring the elephant in the room? Why are parents not required to be there for their children? Teaching is the only profession where we feel guilty for leaving other people's children to be with our own. When my son is sick, I panic---NOT just because he's sick, but because I have to leave 120 students with a substitute teacher! Shouldn't my focus then be my son? But we feel guilty because I know little Johnny doesn't like new people, so he may act out with a sub, there's a delicate balance between Jennifer and Leah. If they are not completely separated from each other, there will be middle school "drama", the list goes on.

I have to think about all of that in one day, but here's the secret. I don't mind! It's a part of my job. I do everything my administrators, the district, and the state ask me to do. My test scores are amazing every year. I shock myself. This past year, when I saw the test scores I cried, because it made me feel like all the time I sacrificed with my husband and son was not in vain. Policies are created everyday to "fix" bad teachers. Doesn't anyone get it? Bad teachers are bad teachers because they don't do anything. The policies are just more work for already overworked and underpaid GOOD teachers. We will do what we're asked to do to set a good example. We will try the new strategy in the hopes that it will help little Bobby who's struggling with reading. BAD teachers won't even try!!!!

Please, in the future, refrain from making comments about the American teacher if you don't truly know what we go through physically, mentally, and emotionally. Next time, find a good teacher and ask her/him what they experience in a day. That may change your viewpoint. Sorry for the long prose, but I'm a teacher--I like to inform others!

I don't agree with that generalization, Dave & 'Man'. I come from a lower middle class background. The h/s I attended was not known for churning out high numbers of college-bound students. Most of my classmates became parents, or went into minimum wage type work. In fact, a couple of years ago, my h/s was almost shut down because of the low test scores.

Despite that background, I still succeeded. I went on to university and completed a masters in engineering. My parents both worked 40+ hours a week, and by the time I was 10/11, I was coming home after school by myself. And around 13, I was even cooking dinner and had it ready before my parents got home from work. I don't remember them ever helping me with my homework, but then I usually had it done before they even got home. Heck, after my freshman year, they couldn't help if they wanted because I was doing higher level math than they had done themselves. Maybe I'm an exception to the rule, but if kids really want to go to college, coming from a poorer background won't stop them learning and achieving.

I think the problem is that for some kids today, they have no incentive to learn. I wanted to work hard and learn and earn more money than my parents, because I knew what it was like to be poorer. I can't stand all these techno gadgets that kids get to use today, and I do think our own technology is working against us and making us stupider. Heck, I know in my calculus classes at university, we weren't allowed to even use calculators (and this was in late '90's and early 2000's), but my husband is allowed to use one in his classes. The easy technology at our fingertips is going to be to our detriment. But, alas, I digress from the topic at hand.

I found h/s pretty easy too, and it didn't do much to prepare me for real life in college.

Miss Allison, Bravo!!!! Your comment was perfect!!!! Everything you said was dead on. You spoke about having a sick child and how that creates worry about your students. I would like to add my guilt. My girls are 14 & 12 and I feel overwhelming guilt because at the end of the day I am exhausted. I give everything I have in me to reach students all day every day and by the time I get home I am wiped out. The "good teachers" as you stated give everything they have and it is their family that suffers.

I love your comment about policies being more work for the "good teachers". I've never really thought about it this way, but you are right on this point as well.

It seems there is always one article, study, etc. explaining how public education is declining. Maybe if they would give teachers back the right to teach and take all the many "rabbit trails" I call teachable moments instead of teaching to the TEST we could have a wonderful education system.

I also hate the way USA is compared to other countries. All students in USA are required to go to school, but the data doesn't show that many countries only require the most promising children to continue past a basic education. If we took only the top, most promising, students and only showed their scores then our education system wouldn't seem so grim.

Thank you for your comment; I couldn't have said it any better.

(Also a teacher in public education)

That money never makes it to the schools. It is ALWAYS rerouted to pay for some road project it was never intended for during the budget debates. Politicians everywhere use it to gain support and money for a bill and then shift that money somewhere else. Happens all the time in my state.

We should purge our leadership and make lobbying and Citizens united illegal

Yeah.... the parents use the school system as a way to dump their kids in during days and save on babysitting costs. Barely put any effort to help their kids with their homework or continue with teaching at home. What happens when the kids get back home? Parents park their kids in front of the tv so they don't have to deal with them. That explains volumes about a parent. And they still complain why the school is not teaching the kids enough and are too dumb.

It goes both ways. Both the parents and the school has to teach the child not just one.

Iris Cobb: "No Child Left Behind" is not likely a cause of the problem, as the same problem obtained in the 1960s and 1970s, when I went to primary and secondary school in the US. University (two of the three times I went) proved more challenging, but even graduate school--I did that to the terminal degree--can be too easy: I got an MA at one of the better known universities and found it less challenging than most of my undergraduate work.

Having one degree in education and having worked in education, I would put much of the blame on the quality of teacher education: very few professional teachers know much about the topics they teach and few even understand teaching to the point that they are able to improve their own.

More the over reliance on Standardized Testing and just making the average with the core requirements. I was class of 91 and in the advanced classes. I took Health Careers which included Anatomy and Physiology. But there was no Biology classes. I was ahead of the game having come into the school from a catholic school and did have Biology in my freshman year. My daughter was/is ahead of her reading materials because that is something I encouraged early on. She asked me to get her copies of the senior reading material so she could get a head start. We're not talking about Twilight here. We're talking Shakespeare, Orwell, Lovercraft and others. A number of classic and the like. ASk her about the twit material and she makes a face. She'd rather read Stoker over Meyer.

As the late, great comedian George Carlin said, "what ever happened to giving the kids a 'Head Start', now we have No child left behind, someone is losing f***ing ground"

i have to agree that no child left behind is hurting students. The smarter more capable students are left sitting for days, having grasped the material and ready to move on, while the slower students still don't get it. What happened to ability grouping? Teachers are supposed to differentiate in class for students levels, but there just isn't time when you have to keep the slowest in the class moving. I have heard this from many teachers. Another problem is too many teachers do not know the subject they are teaching. I hear this alot from my high schooler. He has had to correct teachers who were teaching something incorrectly. He didn't want his classmates to learn the wrong thing, not to embarrass the teacher.

You should probably stick to sign language because when you start to speak/write you sound like, well by your own definition, an all A student.

I absolutely agree with you. I'm a computer science student in university, and I can't bring myself to do the useless and uninteresting busywork to teach me what I already know. Give me problems that need to be solved!

My son's problem too, the teachers don't like it when he tells them why he doesn't want to do the homework.

Geowil -

A have a few issues with what you said.

First, I don't think the article ever stated how many students were surveyed, or where they were from, so I can't see how you can critisize the study on those grounds (unless I missed it, in which case, never mind).

Second, while I agree with your assesment of NCLB, as an instructor, I don't think that final grades are terribly good indicators either, although they are significantly better than standardized tests.

If tests are not a good indicator of a child's knowledge, then why administer them in the first place?

Red,

Tests are a tool for gauging progress but not for determining the understanding of the content. This is the main problem with out school system, we have an obtuse focus on testing instead of comprehension of the concepts within the material being taught. What we need to do is move to a system like they use in college. Instead of having tests be the majority of the grade they only account for about 30%. 50% of the grade is from homework and the other 20% is gained through contributing to critical thinking discussions about the topic to further develop and mature the learned knowledge and to expose multiple view points or questions/thoughts that could allow for a deeper understanding.

Right now we rely on tests far too much in grade school.

I don't think this is a liberal/conservative issue. I definitly agree that you have to teach to the students abilities. And while it is a problem when that alienates some students from the others, the solution isn't drop the difficulty to the absolute lowest level possible, its to try to remove the stigma associated with not being the absolute smartest. And as someone who teaches college level courses, I agree that high school students are not learning enough. I basicly have to assume that my freshman will know next to nothing.

But I am still a west coast, bleeding heart, enviromentalist, pro gay rights liberal.

I remember watching a show about school in Japan and how Japanese high schoolers work very, very hard to get into a good college where they go on to learn very little. It's all about the prestige of graduating from a top college so they can work for a high-powered firm, not the college education itself. Japanese high schoolers learn way more than Americans.

Pardon me, I'm assuming you are from California hamjam? I live here and it's 1000% a liberal thing. The idiot liberals of this state have ruined our educational institutions by instituting crap from every liberal agenda to come along in the history of the human race...at the expense of teaching important subjects like reading, writing, arithmetic, etc.

Nope. Not from California. And having taught Intro Biology and Evolution to Freshman, I can tell you that liberals aren't the only ones trying to push their agenda on the education system. By the way, your educational institutions are crap because they are BROKE.

College freshman are generally pretty illiterate. I don't know what they learn in HS, but it isn't english, science, math or geography.

I think personally that what most high schools call a 4.0+ (yes, some give higher than 4.0s) should be re-calibrated to a more reasonable 2.0.

And we should have a policy in this nation. If you don't want to be educated, then you're out. Come back when you realize you can't support 1 person on a McDonald's employee's wage.

I live in California and my school district pushed to remove extracurricular subjects such as music, art, and certain sports. Interestingly enough, it was the conservative "soccer mom" types that came out in droves and cried about "culture" and a "well-rounded" education. To me it seems the upper echelon is more concerned about keeping their kids in golf than preparing the competitive workforce of the future.

As i posted in an earlier discussion, not every kid is going to be a winner, but for some reason we have to make them feel like they are...someone has to make the hamburgers.

I live here and it's 1000% a liberal thing. The idiot liberals of this state have ruined our educational institutions by instituting crap from every liberal agenda to come along in the history of the human race

No Child Left Behind was a liberal thing? News to me!

Yes, No Child was a liberal thing. It was the brain child of Ted Kennedy, only approved by Bush. A nice touchy feely piece of legislation which has had unintentional consequences. As does most legislation written by politicians with no real knowledge of the subject.

Were you even cognitive in 2001?

Three days after taking office in January 2001 as the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush announced No Child Left Behind, his framework for bipartisan education reform that he described as "the cornerstone of my Administration."

http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/execsumm.html

Boom, the word would be cognizant not cognitive. Apparently alot more than you. Bush made education reform a cornerstone of his administration, he did not write the bill. The bill was co-authored by Democratic Rep. George Miller of California and Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Were you cognizant then because this was well known.

Boom, the word would be cognizant not cognitive

No, the word I intended to use was the one I used. I was asking you if your brain was functioning, in the literal sense. I was not merely asking if you knew about it.

Bush made education reform a cornerstone of his administration, he did not write the bill.

First you say it's "only approved by Bush" then you acknowledge that it was the cornerstone of his administration. Good, you're learning.

No president writes bills, and nobody ever suggested that they would. You show that you lack understanding of our legal system.

Presidents can and often do call for certain bills to be written, which Bush did. Likewise, Obama did not write the health care legislation, affectionately dubbed "Obamacare," but he did call for it.

You see, you are assigning a passive role to Bush, stating that his only contribution was signing a piece of paper, whereas this is in contrast to the facts. That's manipulative if you are aware of the facts, but likely that gives you too much credit for understanding what's going on in the world around you.

The bill was co-authored by Democratic Rep. George Miller of California and Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

You are attempting to revise history. The bill was also coauthored by Republican John Boehner (the current Speaker of the House) and Republican Judd Gregg.

As this suggests, this was a bipartisan law and the vote counts show this -- both sides heavily supported its passing. It was certainly not a liberal bill.

You are arguing against real and verifiable facts, and as such you have no hope of emerging correct.

On the upside, none of her kids have part time jobs as coal miners.

we dont have alot of coal in new hampshire. but we do have a lot of granite. thats why we dont take anything for granite! i do get your point.

Excellent point Jonathon C my kids had 2-3hours of homework nightly in 3rd grade plus reading time. I had to work with them for the whole time because they didn't get the subject matter as it was taught or not taught by their teachers. Those were two of the most heartbreaking years of our lives.

Oh please, NCLB is an excuse. School was boring and easy before it (class of '90 here) ever existed.

One of the most interesting "classes" I had in high school was senior year, when we were allowed to be a teacher assistant for one class if you found a teacher that was willing to have you and you had the credits. I asked my favorite English teacher (unpopular by everyone else, but I liked her, because she didn't dumb down everything and actually expected people to perform and behave - loved her Greek mythology class - did a term paper on how mythology influenced modern fantasy and their roles in society). I assisted her freshman, basic English class and it was eye opening: kids that were disrespectful, didn't think they had to do anything to get a good grade, parents who showed up unannounced (during class!) to argue with the teacher on their kid's behalf when the kid had been disciplined (yeah, the middle of class is not the time to pass around pictures and losing those pictures for a couple of days was a pretty benign punishment imo, but wow, that one mom took the cake! After her scream fest, I completely understood why her daughter was such a horrible little twit). Yep, learned a lot in that class including a better understanding of why teachers dumb stuff down (it would have made that teacher's life easier if she had lowered her standards) and confirming that teaching was not the profession for me.

They make it easy because they are forced to by the school boards, who are forced to by the states, who are trying keep from having their federal funding cut.

I could not agree more! By my sophomore year, I was so mentally detached from the high school "experience" that I begged and pleaded to just get my GED and move on to college. I was only 15 at the time so my counselor refused to allow that and simply placed me in the International Baccalaureate program instead. This was hell. It's tons of unnecessary busy work (albeit on a much higher level) punctuated by discussions. I graduated in the top 1% of my class of 1,100, but by that time, I was so fatigued by the monotony and pointlessness of "school" that I didn't immediately go to college.

Now that I've obtained my bachelor's degree and I'm only a few units away from my Master's I can honestly say high school was a tremendous waste of time. It is inefficient at selecting, training, educating, and promoting students to any given profession.

In the l950's classroom had 40 students: they passed...and there were not all the so-called specialist nor the big superintent structures and support staff.
The TEA NEA, etc support the Communist Manifesto...dumbing down of the USA..or we wouldn't have Connie has two mommmies...etc. or sex in Pre-K or on and on...or Harvard perversion or hispanic studies or womens studies or black studies or race studies...
E X T R E M E s have taken over...and we do not have much more time to survive as a nation--anyone thinks any different doesn't want to take responsibility for their own ignorance...and cannot see a bigger picture than their cell, TV, refrig or big fat behind and mouth or wallet...

I'm so glad you said this! I raised 5 boys and have been appalled at what schools have become. There is no incentive to achieve either. Achievers are looked at like they are abnormal!!! There is something wrong with that picture!!!

We do not encourage achievement. We encourage conformity.

Sad :(

In Colorado public schools, we teach to the lowest common denominator.

I was going to write, essentially, the exact same thing so it's not just Colorado.

My elderly mother is a retired teacher and she retired a few years after NCLB really took hold. Before NCLB there were some standardized testing metrics to supposedly determine school knowledge but those tests were left completely up to the state and local school systems. Some didn't even need to bother with them.

What NCLB did, predominantly, was turn our educational system into a system where every student is forced to prove their intelligence level versus a common denominator set by the Department of Education. This "proof" then translates directly into federal dollars being spent for the school. Students who fail to meet this level of education don't get punished... The teachers do.

The teachers are put in a position where they're given extremely limited amounts of time and a complete list of test objectives, so they have to teach to the test requirements. They're forced to play a numbers game with students in order to get the maximum number of students to pass, leaving the outliers - the smarter students who have no problem with the subject matter and the students who need more personalized instruction - out to fend for themselves. The teachers have to play this game because administrators demand it, and failure to meet NCLB requirements means trickle down job losses... while the woefully uneducated children are pushed along to the next level to repeat the same, sick, process.

Meanwhile, school systems have all but gutted vocational education programs and shove college down the throats of students from 7th grade through graduation.

This is a nation that has the Democrats and a VP
who voted against making E N G L I S H our official language
TWICE
Dial#2 for Spanish Cost to Taxpayers aka Diminishing US Taxpayers iin the TRILLIONS...
And we are the ONLY NATION which is Multi-et all focusing on our foreign invaders while our own children are dumped and receive the least amount of tax dollars...to teach the foreigners in their own language; all the way to college while they receive Special Treatment and are at a 5th grade level in college while we the TAXPAYERS FOOT THE BILL to bankruptcy...and the foreign student get USA LOANS, too. IN-State-TUITION
and right now the DREAM ACT sitting in USA Classroom where our DEAD US MILITARY are not...all rewarded for a VOTE.
NO OTHER NATION WELCOMES its ILLEGALs, ILLEGITIMATES making them their priority over its own...in all respects

Wow, you really have a dislike for teachers, dont you.

For being so critical of schooling. The syntax, grammar, and spelling in your rant is horrible. Just an FYI, teachers only get paid for 9 months of work. If you want them to work 12 months of the year, salaries would have to increase 33%. I know the math is tough, but that means a 50k median salary would become more like 67k. Just to compare, if you hired a sitter for 30 kids for 6 hours a day, at just $5/hr per child, you'd be paying $900 a day. For 261 non-weekend days, and let's take another 31 out for holidays, that would be 270,000 a year...

Nearby school district offered year-round schools from 1974 through 2010, the program was voluntary. The program was ended due to sharply falling property values in the area, program was too expensive to keep up. Parents loved it, they could take family vacations in the off-season.

As for your rant--geez Louise, who peed in your corn flakes!