OT-Houston Moves on Student Promotion Plan

I was in Houston last week and happened to see the same article in the local paper. It is amazing how already low standards go even lower when the idiot masses start complaining about how the standards are unfair. What is unfair is forcing kids who want to learn to share the same facilities with a bunch of slacking losers who go out of there way to disrupt the classroom enviroment. I really love the 8.8 million fed dollars are being thrown at Houston's problem. Of course this fed money is just a drop in the bucket compared to the same monies being wasted in other districts to "solve" a problem that needs to be solved locally.

Ok, we all know that there are problems with my future SS income but is anyone capable of defining the root causes? Is the education system to blame? Is it the demise of the "family"? Working moms? Drugs? Is it that teachers aren't being attracted into the profession and we end up with dregs? Is it that not enough money is spent? Too much?

Enough of stating the obvious problems Gunner!!! We want ANSWERS!!! Now, don't post again until you have a workable plan that is endorsed by your congress person.

Sure, not enough young people are coming into the workforce to pay the retirement benefits of the large number retiring. In other words, it is an issue of demographics at root.

Only peripherally.

That's key. There's a lesser desire to have large families, and more families are "broken", either by divorce or by failing to get married in the first place. So not enough kids are being born, and of those who are born, too few have a caring stay at home mother, and a father pushing them to go out and make something of themselves.

Yep, putting career ahead of having and raising kids.

Low birth weight, miscarriages.

Teachers have never been well paid, but teachers used to be mainly moms whose kids had left the nest. They needed something to do, and they knew how to care for kids. The money they made was mostly "pin money" which only supplemented the household income. Today they are often single and *depending* on teaching for their household income. The smart ones quickly find a better way to earn a buck.

But teachers have never, as a group, been outstanding intellectuals. They don't primarily determine whether a child will excel or fail. It is the motivation of the kids that's key, and that motivation has to come from the home. A motivated kid with a book can learn more than an unmotivated kid with the best classroom teacher in the world.

Basically too much, more than any other industrialized nation. We've come to expect the schools to do what the parents ought to be doing, and no surprise, that's expensive, and not terribly effective.

What we need to be doing is getting young women out of the workforce and back in the home having babies. We need to encourage two parent families, and make it clear that those parents are going to have to depend on their kids when they get old. That'll give them more incentive to have kids, and to push those kids to work hard and be successful. Worked for millennia.

Gary

Very well said! But can changes be made to our social paradigm, or is it too late to save the system without going through some type of apocalyptical collapse. One of the wisest life-lessons that I ever learned is: "Whatever you subsidize, you get more of." So, we as a society are subsidizing the wrong things, mostly because somebody able to manipulate those subsidies is benefiting by those subsidies.

We need to get Gunner to actually DO something about it!

What they're REALLY addressing is their "Failure Rate" that could cause them to be marked as a substandard school district and could cause the State to reduce funding of their "Life Enhancement" courses that make the Yuppie parents feel good.

For years they've ignored the basic "core" subjects in favor of non- essential courses.

For years they've concentrated upon one, and only one, goal: maximize the amount of money collected from the State.

If the State says that it won't pay for students to repeat a grade then there's no way that any student will repeat a grade.

Instead of maintaining the school buildings [that would require either a tax increase or a bond issue - either would have to be publicly voted upon] they've been hiring, and giving large raises to, "Administrators" that, soon, will outnumber the teachers.

The quality of HISD graduates has been a local joke for decades.

Its currently illegal to simply hang the members of the NEA without good cause.

So I opened another Mt. Dew and a bag of chips.

Gunner

"Cosmic upheaval is not so moving as a little child pondering the death of a sparrow in the corner of a barn." -Anouk Aimee, French Actor

Why don't YOU do something about it?

What's to *do*? Basically Texas decided that it's OK to dismantle their public education system. So they have taken steps to do so, and the results are becoming apparent. This is what the folks in TX want and they are getting it.

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Correct me if I'm wrong(its very often the case) but aren't we having a problem right now with overpopulation, so is the problem maybe only not enough people actually motivated enough to get off the couch and go work? What about stay at home fathers, one of the most happy and motivated people I know has a father who is at home, and works only part time, and his mother works most of the time.

whats wrong with having babies and working? two parent families are a good idea, but staying at home is good for Mr. Daddy to try as well, if for no other reason then he will be able to connect and read his kids better, and be in a better position when he wishes to tell them that they need to do something. If he is at work all day, and just tells his children what to do all the time, they are going to leave, and probably do the opposite to spite him. If he spends time at home too, they are more likely to listen.

I have long been of the opinion that everyone should be entitled to a high school education. But I don't think it necessarily needs to be completed by the age of 18. Teachers have a hard enough time helping those who want to learn wend their way through the educational thicket to have to put up with those who have decided that what they most want to get out of school is themselves.

So, rather than waste the money to babysit those whose only contribution is disruption, schools ought not be afraid to fail those who have failed. Criteria need to be established, starting with, perhaps, eighth grade. No person who fails to meet these criteria should be accepted into high school. Likewise, no person who fails to meet the criteria for high school graduation should be permitted to graduate. Let those who don't want to learn simply drop out.

But the other side of this is that a person should then have the opportunity to come back.

School districts should have adult education programs for those who didn't complete high school with their age group. Some people need to learn the hard way that better jobs and better pay comes with better education.

It costs no more to teach an English class if the typical students are fifteen or if they are twenty seven.

And the other angle is that people who don't finish school tend to go to prison. Fine. But teach them in prison. The sixteen year old with no motivation to learn history may find he has plenty of motivation if he is now twenty three and learning it influences his parole date. Study after study has shown that the best way to keep someone from going back to prison is to educate them while they're there the first time.

I'm all for giving a person a second chance. But this doesn't mean that the rest of us need to jump through hoops should he choose to squander his first chance.

What's to do? Texas decided a long time ago to basically abandon its public education system. The voters and taxpayers in texas are getting exactly what they asked for. I don't see this as a real problem, but rather an example of representative democracy in action.

The voters don't want to have any citizens smarter than they are.

However after a few generations things do get a bit out of hand...

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

What's to do? Texas decided a long time ago to basically abandon its public education system. The voters and taxpayers in texas are getting exactly what they asked for. I don't see this as a real problem, but rather an example of representative democracy in action.

The voters don't want to have any citizens smarter than they are.

However after a few generations things do get a bit out of hand...

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

California gives GED classes for free IRRC.

Gunner

Some may decry the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton as a national trauma, but not humorist P.J. O'Rourke, who thinks the proceedings are a win-win situation

-- and grand entertainment to boot. Mr. O'Rourke, writing in the latest issue of the Weekly Standard, acknowledges that "some earnest souls have gone so far as to aver that impeachment has distracted President Clinton from ... raising taxes, destroying health care, appointing 1960s bakeheads to high political office, soliciting felonious campaign contributions, hanging friends out to dry for Arkansas real estate frauds, giving missile secrets to the Chinese, taking credit for the benefits of a free market about which he knows little and cares less, using U.S. military forces as fig leaves for domestic scandals and au pairs for the U.N., leading foreign policy back into the flea circus of Jimmy Carterism, having phone sex, groping patronage seekers, and snapping the elastic on the underpants of psychologically disturbed school-age White House interns entrusted with the task of delivering high-level government pizza." Ouch. Tell us what you really think, P.J. "No matter what, Bill," Mr.O'Rourke concludes, "your girlfriend's ugly, your wife hates you, and your dog can't hunt."

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No, we aren't. Some countries are, but we aren't. If you've driven across the US, you should have noted the vast amount of *empty* space. We have plenty of room, and plenty of resources, to support a much larger population.

Gary

An overpopulation problem with certain cultures (most of them poor). Other cultures (the wealthy ones) are losing population.

Culture has a bit to do with having the attitudes needed for acquiring and keeping wealth.