Dept of Education - Epic Fail

DOE makes no sense. The states pay their taxes and the gov't doles it back out to them for education along with a lot of rules and regulations that if they don't obey their own money will be withheld from them! Curriculum has changed so much. When my kids were in school in the 90's and 2000's I was surprised how little they were taught, especially history. I spent a lot of time supplementing my kids' educations and correcting outright lies the school told them that were told because of political correctness that was just coming into vogue. Plus, some of their methods of teaching math were completely incomprehensible. DOE needs to go, as does the DO Energy and so many other departments.

The situation with your child is completely silly in my opinion. I agree, send them to the doctor and get it over with. As far as the staffing goes... well living in a district where schools are way over crowded, extra staffing is a good thing. Another point of view also is that back in my day they did have fewer staff but the staff could discipline the children... all of the kids were afraid of getting their behind spanked by the principle or their hands popped by the teacher with the ruler. These days if a kid is looked at wrong it is an automatic lawsuit. It is hard to judge the elementary level teachings because I do not have any children in that grade level right now. I am speaking with knowledge of junior high and high school. I know that the funding in our state is going to drop quite a bit for next year. My 17 year old come home talking about their latest assembly. They are now selling candy bars and they will have several more fundraisers this year due to the lack of funding.

It seems to me that every other year a new method of teaching comes out and it must be tried. The schools need to stick to the tried and true methods. They clam that the old way is out dated but as I see it we are falling further and further behind. More money isn't going to change the fact that kids are not really being taught to read write and do basic math. My granddaughter were doing their home work last night and we were visiting about how one of them got almost straight A's. Her teachers give a test then has the kids go back and correct their answers and that is the grade the get. This child admitted that she often had f's and d's. She is a freshman to. I was told that this went on in all her grades. I'm reading all over the net about students cheating as well as teachers helping them to cheat. Since Bushes no child left behind education has gotten worse. Schools look for funding based test scores so teach for the tests. Parents and grandparents Event hose people with out children in school need to start attending board meeting and make the board realize we want our kids to be really educated before they are sent on to the next level.

Throwing bad money after good is NOT the answer. They need to stop trying to be parents and try being educators. I think every person that does not have direct contact with kids should be cut. Administration should be the principal - only. No school district admin, that is just crap. Dept of Ed should be dismantled and I agree, they need to stop trying to indoctrinate our kids and start teaching the basics. How is it that somebody can graduate form high school and not know how to read, or count back change or understand that we are not a democracy?

I think way too much time is spent on trying to pass the achievement tests than achievement. I remember when I was in a not-so-good school we would spend days taking practice tests, learning how to guess properly - ridiculous things. Passing those tests were more important than learning. That was time that could and should have been spent better. Which is better to actually learn or to pass a test? We could argue about whether tests actually measure learning (I do well on tests in general - I even tested into MENSA, but some intelligent people just can't do tests). The money is not distributed equally - I've been at schools with money to burn that had televisions in each room and schools that seemed to be held together with spit and pure will. My daughters are currently in a good quality school with art and music programs. (music and art programs, by the way, have been proven to increase math skills because they give the children a real life situation in which math is needed as opposed to the abstract concepts currently taught as one of the "three r's") I'm scared of the time when we might have to move to a lower quality school that doesn't have those things. The most ridiculous thing I've seen at a public school is a thing called RAZKids. My daughters are both voracious and excellent readers and this horrible horrible reading program forced them to - look at a story while the narrator slowly read it, read it, read it again and finally take a test about the story. If I were a kid I would have been reading my college level book while flipping through the screens. While there are some slower readers who probably benefited from this program forcing ALL kids to use it certainly turned more readers off than on. I think the example you give with your son is a little silly - and I do think that where the money is going needs to be looked at carefully. I'm sure there is fat that could be cut without cutting vital programs. But... $150,000 a student - is that over the entire time in school or just one year? Based on the phrasing (the graduating class of 2009), I would guess over the entire time at school. That's actually fairly inexpensive when you consider the cost of 4 years at a university. Finally, I don't fully agree with you about not teaching children about global warming. After all, a kid reading a book about global warming is reading isn't he? Isn't that one of the three R's? Perhaps your son's school is different but I've never noticed what I would consider unnecessarily large amount of attention to global warming and saving the earth. Some, yes but nothing that seemed to interfere with normal basic learning.

Skipping? Are you serious? I understand when an individual has a psychiatric disorder of some sort but skipping? That's totally preposterous. I'd rather we spend money on grade A teachers then silly tests. And anyway, having plenty of teachers aides to help with different students would be a big plus. If the teacher cannot articulate the point accurately enough then someone else may.

I agree with you one hundred percent. The problem is in a nutshell is there are a lot of wasted time on things that are really not going to help anyone. There is a rigid plan and it is more about mindlessly shunting students from level to level, teaching them things, that ninety percent of them won't even remember months from now, never mind from now. I think that there is too much value on knowledge and not enough on proper study skills and time management. If proper time management and study skills were taught, and then they could move onto teaching valuable knowledge. Hammer it into them at a young age, because I'll tell you this much. They're not going to learn them come High school or college if they have not already. There is too much money wasted on rubbish. And teachers are thrown out there without the proper support a lot of time, its no wonder a lot of them become paycheck zombies over time.