re: It's way past time to overhaul our education system

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People either forget or don't believe that for the most part negative/shitty people will drag down their surroundings.

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And it prevents the kids who wish to learn from learning. I'd guess many schools spend 30%+ of their resources on ~1% of their students.

We have schools driven by psychiatrists and lawyers. Neither of whom should be taken seriously on any subject of life for more than 5 minutes.

Consider this:

LINK /

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Because social class inequality is greater in the United States than in any of the countries with which we can reasonably be compared, the relative performance of U.S. adolescents is better than it appears when countries’ national average performance is conventionally compared.

Because in every country, students at the bottom of the social class distribution perform worse than students higher in that distribution, U.S. average performance appears to be relatively low partly because we have so many more test takers from the bottom of the social class distribution.
A sampling error in the U.S. administration of the most recent international (PISA) test resulted in students from the most disadvantaged schools being over-represented in the overall U.S. test-taker sample. This error further depressed the reported average U.S. test score.
If U.S. adolescents had a social class distribution that was similar to the distribution in countries to which the United States is frequently compared, average reading scores in the United States would be higher than average reading scores in the similar post-industrial countries we examined (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), and average math scores in the United States would be about the same as average math scores in similar post-industrial countries.
A re-estimated U.S. average PISA score that adjusted for a student population in the United States that is more disadvantaged than populations in otherwise similar post-industrial countries, and for the over-sampling of students from the most-disadvantaged schools in a recent U.S. international assessment sample, finds that the U.S. average score in both reading and mathematics would be higher than official reports indicate (in the case of mathematics, substantially higher).
This re-estimate would also improve the U.S. place in the international ranking of all OECD countries, bringing the U.S. average score to sixth in reading and 13th in math. Conventional ranking reports based on PISA, which make no adjustments for social class composition or for sampling errors, and which rank countries irrespective of whether score differences are large enough to be meaningful, report that the U.S. average score is 14th in reading and 25th in math.
Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.
At all points in the social class distribution, U.S. students perform worse, and in many cases substantially worse, than students in a group of top-scoring countries (Canada, Finland, and Korea). Although controlling for social class distribution would narrow the difference in average scores between these countries and the United States, it would not eliminate it.
U.S. students from disadvantaged social class backgrounds perform better relative to their social class peers in the three similar post-industrial countries than advantaged U.S. students perform relative to their social class peers. But U.S. students from advantaged social class backgrounds perform better relative to their social class peers in the top-scoring countries of Finland and Canada than disadvantaged U.S. students perform relative to their social class peers.
On average, and for almost every social class group, U.S. students do relatively better in reading than in math, compared to students in both the top-scoring and the similar post-industrial countries.
Because not only educational effectiveness but also countries’ social class composition changes over time, comparisons of test score trends over time by social class group provide more useful information to policymakers than comparisons of total average test scores at one point in time or even of changes in total average test scores over time.

The performance of the lowest social class U.S. students has been improving over time, while the performance of such students in both top-scoring and similar post-industrial countries has been falling.
Over time, in some middle and advantaged social class groups where U.S. performance has not improved, comparable social class groups in some top-scoring and similar post-industrial countries have had declines in performance.

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What's your takeaway there? If we throw out the poor people's scores, we're doing ok?

We're getting away from that with Common Core.

You wouldn't believe it though given the vitriol those opposed to Common Core have been using.

Not that Common Core is perfect, but it's better than what we were doing.

Common Core, at heart, is fine. It's the implementation of Common Core through Big Testing consortiums like PARCC that is where things are going awry.

They're creating the disease and selling you the cure. That's their game, and they're getting rich as hell off of it.

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You realize you're parroting a union argument here, right?

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Absolutely! I hate unions, but some laws (GW Bush's No Child Left Behind) are just fricking stooooopid.


The system will never get fixed until gov't gets serious about the educating our society. If we have to hold parents accountable, then lets start there.

If kids are continuously disrupting class, then lets send them to juvenile detention and their release will be based on conduct and meeting academic goals.

My vision is that students will get to go to schools based on GPA, and if you are in a one school district hick town, then segregate those students in house.

I know this is kind of done by kids taking AP classes or general classes, but lets go full bore with it.

frick peoples feelings, lets educate.

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It's not the fault of the education system. It's the economic system.

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So you can't learn if you poor?

On the contrary:

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The performance of the lowest social class U.S. students has been improving over time, while the performance of such students in both top-scoring and similar post-industrial countries has been falling.

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My point is that our performance isn't as bad as "reformers" try to make it out to be.

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If kids are continuously disrupting class, then lets send them to juvenile detention and their release will be based on conduct and meeting academic goals.

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Agreed, with some tweaking. Your idea is too much like prison for kids. I'd say a kid who is physically violent on an ongoing basis is expelled from public school. We can't save everyone. Trying to save everyone keeps the ones who want to learn from learning.

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My vision is that students will get to go to schools based on GPA, and if you are in a one school district hick town, then segregate those students in house.

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Not a fan of tracking or segregating by intellectual "ability."

And while NCLB is much reviled, it is an attempt to bring accountability to schools and as such, is completely appropriate.

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Indeed. This is one area where I may lose some of my liberal stripes. Get the problem kids out of the classroom and send them to alternative school, lawsuits be damned.

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No child left behind is one of the dumbest things in our education system. Once we get over the belief that everyone is equal great things can be accomplished.

We should not be sacrificing the top of the class to save the bottom. While we try to save the bottom it causes the top to get bored and also hurts the middle level. Problem kids should be sent out right way and to alternative schools, dumb kids should either be held back or get help after school.
This where my ideas for people in Belles' role kick in with pushing kids towards a skill. It stops them from hurting the rest of the class and even provides them with a chance to make something out of themselves.