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[damam]

QUOTE (pegasys @ Nov 15 2004, 11:51 PM)

Taking away money from schools when their students don't do well is just wrong, and the whole voucher system is just stupid.  It's on the road to privatising education which is just un-American.  I'm gonna have to live with it for another 4 years regardles so w/e.

first - the money doesnt get taken away immediately, they are given several years to get there acts together.
second - each state determines what a good school means as far as test scores.  So its not like GWB is up there telling your state what a good school is.

in education there is a saying:
when the horse dies,  get off of it

this horse died a long time ago, history has proven that throwing more money at it does not work.  History has also shown that reducing class sizes does not work.  And the list goes on.

The teachers Union will try to tell you that financial incentives dont work.  The truth is that that really has never been studied and tested.  The one study that they always quote is riddled with problems.  THe most obvious of which was the duration of the study (1 semester).  And, I might add, the study was funded by the teachers union.    No conflict of interests there  

In the county I live in we have an open enrollment program, which is basically the same as a voucher system only you must choose between public schools only.  It forces our public schools to compete against each other for students, and consequently money, since the Fed Gov give money according to attendance.   This has worked really well here.  We have seen consistent improvement in test scores for the entire duration of the project (abt 4 yrs).  

Freedom of choice is always American, voucher's would only increase freedom of choice and the responsibility of the parents.  Which is the way it should be.

[Baner]

Here, it's the same, your school gets x amount of money depending on it's number of students. Sadly, you don't have much of a choice of which school to pick, and if you did, the parent would go with the closest and best free transportation, cause most of them are too lazy to research the school and take their kids everyday.

I don't understand how you can complain about our education. I was thought in suburban schools, most in small towns with a high school class of 2,200 students, 300 Seniors when I graduated. The school i've been to have taught me everything I needed to know, and I graduated with a 3.4. I've said this before, it's no ones but the students problem. They are the reason why they aren't exceling in school... that and the problem with prescription drugs... ridilin... it's a drug for a fake disease.

[pegasys]

I like our educational system the way it was a few years ago back in the sequential 1 2 and 3 days which they are going back to in NY anyway.  Ijust don't like how people vote for Bush based on this stupid plan.  In my shool if you attend you pass, because you are tought, the onlu kids who don't learn, and i doun't think school should be penalised for that because there is no way for the school to control that.

[damam]

QUOTE (Baner @ Nov 16 2004, 09:09 PM)

parent would go with the closest and best free transportation, cause most of them are too lazy to research the school and take their kids everyday.

were actually finding that many parents do take the initiative to get their kids to the best schools or get their kids the help that they need . . . of course there are exceptions, but the exceptions are no worse off then they were before

QUOTE

I don't understand how you can complain about our education. I was thought in suburban schools, most in small towns with a high school class of 2,200 students, 300 Seniors when I graduated. The school i've been to have taught me everything I needed to know, and I graduated with a 3.4. I've said this before, it's no ones but the students problem. They are the reason why they aren't exceling in school... that and the problem with prescription drugs... ridilin... it's a drug for a fake disease.

I complain because are educational system is falling drastically behind the rest of the worlds.  The computer industry is one of the best examples because foreigners have really dominated programming for a long time.  Long before outsourcing was a problem, people complained about how companies were bringing in foreigners for these positions.  Well, maybe we should really be asking why wasnt our labour pool skilled enough to fill these jobs?  I dont think I have it any longer, but if you can read the TIMSS report on how the US stacks up against the rest of the world.  Herse a link
http://nces.ed.gov/timss/

I dont think our educational system is irredemable.  But it definitely needs to be shaken up.  Heres an example.  Why does a first grade teacher need tenor?  Tenor is for the academic freedom to teach unpopular ideas, not to protect teachers for incompetance.  What does that mean to a first grade teacher?  That the teacher should have the freedom to teach 2+2=9?  Yet after just 10 years of teaching a k-12 teachers automatically get tenor, after which time it is nearly impossible to fire them.  There are teachers who do need tenor, primarily AP govt and litirature classes, but really the rest dont.  No system can work when it is impossible to get rid of bad employees.  If you never had a bad teacher then you were very lucky.

[damam]

QUOTE (pegasys @ Nov 16 2004, 09:36 PM)

I like our educational system the way it was a few years ago back in the sequential 1 2 and 3 days which they are going back to in NY anyway.  Ijust don't like how people vote for Bush based on this stupid plan.  In my shool if you attend you pass, because you are tought, the onlu kids who don't learn, and i doun't think school should be penalised for that because there is no way for the school to control that.

its the job of the teacher to find ways to engage you so that you want to learn.  Few kids want to do work.  Thats a given, and its also the challenge every teacher takes on when they go into this profession.  There will always be students who simply dont have the desire to even come to school, but statistically they should not effect your rolling 5 year average if you are a good teacher.

There was a study done a couple years ago, I cant remember the name, but it showed that if you took a student who was in the 90% of his grade level and gave him to three bad teachers in a row, that student at the end of three years would be at the 40%.  When they took a student who was at the 30% of there grade level and gave them to three good teachers in a row, they were at the 70% after three years.  
Moral of the story:  teachers do matter, good teachers do get results, and bad teachers should be gotten rid of

[pug_ster]

True that we should have better teachers.  Some teachers should get paid more too.

But one thing bad about this NCLB is that it mandates a certain standard of a student to pass a test otherwise he/she will be left behind.  So the lesser funded schools have no choice but to cut funding for other things but to teach them how to pass this test and nothing else.

[damam]

QUOTE (pug_ster @ Nov 16 2004, 09:56 PM)

True that we should have better teachers.  Some teachers should get paid more too.

I have no problem rewarding good teachers monitarily.  Its the teachers union that has a problem with it.

One thing to keep in mind, a teachers salery, generally speaking is for 9 months worth of work.  In my state the average teacher after 5 years of working without a MS or PHD, makes about 40,000 a year (abt 1000 more than I make a year).  If you convert that to 12 months that same teacher is making just over 53,000 a year.  That is roughly 26,000 more than the average person made in my state in the year 2000.  The idea that teachers are over worked and underpaid may have been true at some point, but its not true today.  (yes i live in a poor state)

Of course, I know nothing of the teacher situation in other states as far as income goes.  But when your figuring things out its something to keep in mind.

QUOTE

But one thing bad about this NCLB is that it mandates a certain standard of a student to pass a test otherwise he/she will be left behind.  So the lesser funded schools have no choice but to cut funding for other things but to teach them how to pass this test and nothing else.

Thats partially true, the test in my state has over 40,000 questions with more coming every year so it is sort of hard to teach for the tests.  The best you can do is focus on general topic areas like reading comprehensions, math/logic, etc.  The tests are concept oriented.

Also mentally retarded students and other ADA qualified students (like autism) are given a pass.  Another thing that helps out in this area is the expected improvement.  In other words the student has a track record that it must keep up with.  For example if the student improves by 10% a year, it is almost always expected to improve by 10% give or take a little.  So it basically nullifies any worries about students with IQ's between 70 and 90.  On the other hand, and this is where the teachers get really annoid, high IQ students are expected to advance at the same rate too.  In the past, teachers always relied on high IQ students to pull up there averages and at the same time basically ignored them.  Now they cant do that.  Ignoring them will actually bring down there averages.

I also want to stress that it is a rolling average (ie a repeated track record of under achievement by teachers) that leads to cut funding.  So it is very hard for a single student to effect a school or teachers track record.  And the funding does not get cut right away either - they are given ample opportunity to get things working right well before funding gets cut.  Also, most schools now recognise synergies between topics and realize that cutting some programs hurts them even more in the long run - but you are right the cuts will have to come from somewhere.