Obama Next Silly Idea: High School Diploma or Else

Obama: Control College Costs, Raise Dropout Age (education week)

In his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama called directly on universities to hold down costs and urged states to raise the dropout age to 18.• Teacher Beat Blog: Obama Offers Teacher Proposals in State of the Union


Obama'' graduate high school or else is a BAD idea. In the old days. traditionally and biologically, kids are adults by junior high school. It wasn't until WWII that the idea came about that EVERYBODY had to go to high school.

At the turn of the century, most high schools required examinations to get in, high school was only for the elites.

Then came the idea that high school was for everybody whether you trained for a trade or went to a college, and everybody had to go the same comprehensive high school, a model that Europe and Asia did NOT follow - they had DIFFERENT high schools for different tracks and different talents. The "world class" one-high-standard-for-all is strictly an American fantasy.

The next level is that EVERYBODY has to be ready for college and be able write a novel and synthesize new ways to do basic arithmetic at a graduate math student level by 4th grade. Oh wait, we ALREADY have state standards with this ridiculous idea - that was WASL and all the other flavors of "certificate of mastery" characteristic of outcome based education debacle. Then everybody has to have 2 years of tech training or college. Already anyone who doesn't have a 4 year degree is "at risk" and is doomed to a poor paying job, never mind that police and firefighters don't even need a 2 year degree to have a job that can eventually pays from $45,000 up to $80,000 a year with early retirement benefits.

Eventually everybody will have to have a phd, and then "lifelong learning" where you never ever graduate until you die, and are enrolled in government school and daycare the minute you leave the womb. Just because some people are billionares or millionares or pull in $60,000 a year does NOT MEAN EVERYBODY HAS TO MAKE THAT KIND OF MONEY.

If anything, we need to return to the notion that you can be a responsible adult if you chose to marry and have kids as soon as you are able, or chose to work and start a household or leave school at 16 and not be classified as a confirmed high risk failure. School teachers used to be girls that now would go to high school. Now they don't want to declare you grown up until you're ready to retire. 

My saying - government cannot promise or require ANY  level of education or proficiency. Any attempt to do so is evil and doome to fail.

David Sirota on Spending More Money On Schools As Usual

Oregon City School District considers contracting out bus services
(Oregonian)

 COLUMN:
U.S. education: Money remains the deciding factor (David Sirota/Oregonian)

This is the same Sirota who said don't attack my favorite religion, but oh my gosh we're being invaded the real enemy the !@#$% Chinese!!!!

He's got the same old thesis that if only we spent tons of money on schools for poor kids, they would perform just as well as rich kids, but if that's the case, why isn't there a single instance where this strategy as EVER DELIVERED??? IT HAS NEVER HAPPENED.

The day students get the same scores is the day everybody makes the same income, and that's A BAD IDEA.

Now, at year's end, we've learned from two studies just how powerful economics are in education outcomes and how disadvantaged kids are being unduly punished by government policy.



The first report, from Stanford University, showed that with a rising "income achievement gap," a family's economic situation is a bigger determinative force in a child's academic performance than any other major demographic factor. For poor kids, that means the intensifying hardships of poverty are now creating massive obstacles to academic progress.


Because of this reality, schools in destitute areas naturally require more resources than those in rich ones so as to help impoverished kids overcome comparatively steep odds. Yet, according to the second report from the U.S. Department of Education, "many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding." As if purposely embodying the old adage about adding insult to injury, the financing scheme "leav(es) students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers." In practice, that equals less funding to recruit teachers, upgrade classrooms, reduce class sizes and sustain all the other basics of a good education.

Ending Social Promotion Still = Failed Outcomes Based Education

Sorry folks. Any attempt to require or promise everybody will be "proficient" is the same as outcomes-based education. It failed in the 80s. (competency-based) It failed in the 90s (outcomes based) It failed in the 2000s (standards based) And it IS STILL A FAILURE. 

Any compulsory education system based on age / grades IS SEAT TIME BASED.If you eliminate the age base, you'll only get MORE segregation based on ability, not "everyone meets one high standard" nonsense. It's the same problem when they put Chinese high school students into 1st grade to learn english. It has to be appropriate to age AND ability. OBE is simply educational socialism, you can NOT have equality of outcomes. 

KNOCK IF OFF PLEASE!!

Parents and teachers voice cautious support for ending social promotion

Posted by EducationViews.org on December 12, 2011 in Daily | 1 Comment

Parents and some teachers at two public forums today said they could support for Gov. Terry Branstad’s proposal to end social promotion for third-graders with the right mix of literacy programs.

If modeled after Florida’s policies, intensive literacy programs would start in early childhood, and English language learners and students with disabilities could be exempted, said Linda Fandel, the governor’s special assistant for education.

“Retention is their very last resort, and they have a lot of exceptions,” she said.

Teachers, however, said any plan must include a robust funding model, particularly in light of cuts to education in recent years.

Nearly 1 in 3 Iowa fourth-graders last year lacked basic literacy skills and, if the proposal Iowa lawmakers will consider next year had been in place, most may have had to stay in third grade, The Des Moines Register reported today.

About 100 teachers attended a town hall meeting in Des Moines Public Schools Central Campus.

One teacher said the state should follow Florida’s model of providing more intensive assistance for students early in their lives, but reject a ban on social promotion.

Dave O’Connor, a civics teacher at Merrill Middle School in Des Moines, said holding students back a grade can produce extreme anxiety and low self-esteem.

“Why wouldn’t we promote the students while providing the intensive assistance, which would seem to take care of a lot of the emotional and social problems of retention,” he said.

Parents who participated in a roundtable discussion at the West Des Moines Public Library said they supported ending social promotion, because it sends a clear signal to students and parents. However, they said the plan would need to provide better reading instruction than is now provided.

“If you put more expectations on the students, they succeed better,” said Steve McPhillips of Honey Creek.

Malinda Hostetter of Colfax said any move to hold students back should include a coordinated effort between teachers and parents to make summer reading mandatory. Hostetter, who has a child in fourth grade, says too many teachers don’t make clear the importance of reading to maintain skills during summer break.

“Teachers need to work together to require students to read over the summer. Make sure parents know this is official,” she said.

via Parents and teachers voice cautious support for ending social promotion | Des Moines Register Staff Blogs.

hat tip http://educationviews.org/2011/12/12/parents-and-teachers-voice-cautious-support-for-ending-social-promotion/

Same danged problem here:

Literacy plan would have many repeating 3rd grade
Nearly 1 in 3 Iowa fourth-graders last year lacked basic literacy skills and, if a proposal Iowa lawmakers will consider next year had been in place, most may have had...


You put the kids in school and they learn whatever they learn. You set up an elite school with an entrance examination THEN you can start requiring performance, but you can kiss egalitariansm goodbye. 

Marc Tucker, fraud of Standards Based Disaster Is Baaack

see http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/why-innovation-cant-fix-americas-classrooms/249524/

Why Innovation Can't Fix America's Classrooms

By Marc Tucker Dec 6 2011, 9:30 AM ET193

Forget charter schools and grade-by-grade testing. It's time to look at the best-performing countries and pragmatically adapt their solutions.

They develop world-class academic standards for their students, a curriculum to match the standards, and high-quality exams and instructional materials based on that curriculum. In the U.S., most states have recently adopted Common Core State Standards in English and math, which is a good start. But we still have a long way to go to build a coherent, powerful instructional system that all teachers can use throughout the whole curriculum.
The top-performing nations boost the quality of their teaching forces by greatly raising entry standards for teacher education programs. They insist that all teachers have in-depth knowledge of the subjects they will teach, apprenticing new teachers to master teachers and raising teacher pay to that of other high-status professions. They then encourage these highly trained teachers to take the lead in improving classroom practices.
The result is a virtuous cycle: teaching ranks as one of the most attractive professions, which means no teacher shortages and no need to waive high licensing standards

This is total garbage. There is no nation on the planet that produces all "best" students. In the 80s and 90s his NCEE promoted the "standards" movement that brought us awful state tests and standards like the WASL that have all been tossed in trash because the standards were crap and the tests were crap, and they're still giving tests to 10th graders that would flunk most parents or even school board members with masters degrees.

His proposal to Hillary Clinton (who chose instead to go with health insurance reform instead of ed reform) was to model after Germany to have "one high standard for all" when in FACT, in Germany only a small minority was allowed to go to 4 year colleges with one high test score, most others would go into vocational trades with another test score, and the rest would go into menial unskilled jobs like janitor, ditto for Japan and China. The ONLY nation that makes all students go to the same high school for 4 years regardless of ability or track is the US comprehensive high school system.

All this talk about promotion based on ability based on achievement, not seat time is crap when the very definition of "grade" is based on age, NOT any standardized measure of ability set up by some idiotic standards committee of people who don't know what the heck they are doing.  The same sort of thinking went into the Washington Classroom Based Assessments which expected 5th graders to compose and sing sheet music BY SIGHT, a feat that most music majors have trouble with, and to produce a portrait of a friend in impressionist, abstract, or surrealist style.

Tucker's "new standards" project had as 4th grade project building a 3-view of a bike trailer with a parts list down to cotter pins. A fourth grader can't even make a decent pinewood derby racer much less a bike trailer with a steel frame without parents help.

His high school diploma project was building and designing an electric car "with the help from his teacher for welding the chassis frame" and an electric motor and batteries donated by "local electrical utility". It takes Toyota a team of 200 people and a budget of 20 million dollars to engineer and prototype a new electric car. That is insanity.

I would pass a law that would make it ILLEGAL TO

A) Require 100% of all students to meet ANY test of competence for what is an age-based compulsory education system
B) Promise 100% of students WILL meet any test of competence.

Student achievement will always be on a curve. Performance on any activity, whether it be math, reading, violin or football or running will be on a curve.

Tucker is a FRAUD.