Our education system could get a boost by copying Finland

Right. Americans are fundamentally flawed, compared to Canadians and such.

Whew

 

Middle School and high school is mainly giving political lies. Our country will be better off if kids do a trade and learn it after middle school, maybe even sooner.

 

what merit pay? Merit pay only gets paid to teachers who have the best kids who are pretty much writing their own lesson plans (thanks in large part to parental participation)


Another issue I have with merit pay and how everyone has a "fire all the teachers at failing schools and hire in ones that can get the job done" attitude is teachers for stuff like PE, Band, even Social studies in my state, are not state tested. So if a school's scores are F's, how is that the fault of the band director? or Chorus teacher? or Spanish teacher.

I have NEVER been against grading a teacher's performance.... I don't support grading my class' achievement against the norm and then grading me down because my kids learn slower than other classes.... BY DESIGN

 

your bitterness towards an ex is pretty transparent. you are judging a person's work effort based on their personalities after hour parties. People seem to forget teachers are real people outside of work with lives their own.

as far as the rest of your comment... I agree. Parents are a huge factor that nothing can be done about from the educator's perspective.


look back at my class breakdown. I've had a kid absent for 6 weeks. Here's why

boy lives with just mother. Her mother lives about 45 minutes away in another county and had a stroke. So mom and her kids went to grandmother's house to help until she passes away (things don't look good for her). But mother is too poor to drive 45 minutes to get kids to school, then drive back to her mother, and then repeat that process in the afternoon. 4 hours on the road a day until grandmother passes, which could be tomorrow, or could be this summer, or could be in December.... who knows.

But, instead of enrolling her kids in a school a county over, and then coming back after grandmother passes, re-enrolling back in this school then, she just hasn't sent them to school. Noone knows how to get ahold of mother because she has no phone minutes (or no phone listed that we know) Our truancy officer does his best, but his hands are tied for his own issues.

so meanwhile, this kid has been absent for 5 weeks, came for a week, then absent for another week and a day after that. And the times we've actually got in touch with her, she thinks it's justified to keep them out "because their grandmother is on her death bed" While that issue is tragic, and I feel for her, she obviously does not value education for her kids.... and it shows.

 

Why does failure have to inherent?

It really matters not why so many contemporary blacks cannot keep up but only that they do not.

I think they are inherently capable of succeeding but due to bad advice from libs and bad decisions of their own fail to do so.

But libs argue that blacks cannot keep up because they are too traumatized by events that happened 400 years ago.

So you are calling them inferior to whites even if you don't think the cause is genetic.

 

exceptional student education. Every state/country has their own jargon.

This label can include the most gifted, or the lowest.

I teach a class of specific learning disabilities. I have also taught an ESE class of behavior issues that affect their learning.

and yes, I'm sure Finland has their share of them..... but due to facctors we've discussed here (lower socio-economic class, demographics, poor parenting) kids are qualifying more and more for ESE.


the director of ESE services in my county got onto the principal of my school because my ESE class had more kids in it than the regular classes had in them. But in my principal's defense, in February, we had 5 kids show up to enroll in our school that required, by law, a class like mine, that was already at capacity. Since public schools aren't allowed to turn down kids like private schools can, they put them in my class.

 

Americans are exactly as human as anyone else on the planet. Your brains and hearts work in the exact same way - talk of zoos is nonsense.
Finland is not a zoo, and it makes its people very well educated. Start being serious.

 

I'm not calling them inferior to whites. You are. What I'm saying is that if someone wants to start pointing fingers over test scores, there's quite a bit of history that needs to be discussed to understand the complete picture.

 

Perhaps you need a refresher course in US history

You can run, but you can't hide.

Obama is half white. And even that is too much for some here.

 

First you say that you are not calling black people inferior then you make excuses for their low test scores.

I think it is the black student's fault for not doing better but you seem to feel they are doing the best that they are capable of.

Do you even realize what you are saying or do you just parrot the crap that the lib public teachers fed you in school?

 

I'm reminded of a scene in Apocalypse Now where Chef sez "Never get off the boat, man".

Never override the ignore list, man.

 

Kinda relative. Generally we do not ask a person's parentage; we just look. Thus, the President is black.

 

This post is completely devoid of serious analysis. Both the work of academic study and acheivement are derived from expectations and confidence. Blacks have less of a tradition of this than other peoples due to their heritage.

Individually blacks can succeed and succeed well, but on mass, as part of their afro american tradition, for the general black population education is not their strong suit.

Given a different heritage, culture and resultant self expectation, a black person is equally capable, and precision is precisely correct.

But please..... continue some half hearted monologue about the above are just excuses for the black man's lack of moral fibre/ innat laziness born of the welfare state etc etc yada yada yada.

 

You can juggle words up and down, and all around, but what I said is clear. Arrogant, insecure, white people who want black people to feel that they are inferior are the problem.

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If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

 

Obama self identifies as black.

On the 2010 Census he could have selected mixed race but choose to call himself black only.

Just one more indication that he rejects his white half and only sees himself as a bro.

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You are delusional.

Just another of the perks for being a lib I guess.

You can say one thing and later claim you said something entirely different.

 

What I said is clear and there in black and white for all to see. Putting words in others mouths must be a perk for being white.

 

It sure is.

You claim it is not black people's fault that they cannot measure up because whites have traumatized them for 400 years.

That is an admission on your part that you think black people are inferior even if you don't believe it's their fault.

 

If he said he was white, would you buy it? And the truth is, he's half black racially, and pure white culturally .. having been raised by whites. He's actually more white than black, if you think about it.

But he looks black, and thus when he says, "I'm black," we accept it in a heartbeat. But if he said "I'm white," folks would think him totally nuts.

Looks trump all else.

 

property tax - the main tool to oppress blacks in the US

and as usual: disgusting racism in here

 

That's bull(*)(*)(*)(*), I'm sorry. A country with slightly more top performers and a whole lot of (*)(*)(*)(*)ing morons is a hell of a lot worse off than a country that has less top performers but averages out better. Especially in the case of a democracy, where (*)(*)(*)(*)ing morons still get to vote, cocking it up for everyone else.

Per capita?

Translation: "I have no idea what I'm talking about but I'll take every opportunity I can find to slander the left baselessly." We're looking for an actual policy thing that the left did which you claim changed the outcome of our educational systems. I won't hold my breath.

Bull(*)(*)(*)(*). We no longer allow school-sponsored prayer; non-sponsored, non-disruptive prayer is still totally okay in any school, at least by law.

You mean beating the kids? Yeah, because it was shown to do the opposite of what it was supposed to.

Funny, this is one of the things Finland unarguably does right. It turns out that putting a huge focus on personal achievement and competition in high school actually distracts from little things like actually learning. And with that in mind, you're completely wrong - the US has some of the toughest competition and focus on personal achievement in school. Is it any wonder we're so (*)(*)(*)(*)ed?

You haven't qualified any of this, and up until now virtually everything has been pretty much right on track.

Funny you mention that - Finland does that too. I think a lot of people would be in favor of a school voucher system.

Wait, did I just agree with JavisBeason, completely and wholeheartedly?

...

Someone check to make sure the sky isn't falling.

Why not? The isolated factors in Finland apply regardless of what the culture is like - things like a low focus on competition, charter schools, late starts, and the like.

I welcome you to provide one single paper that has not been widely discredited demonstrating the genetic differences between blacks and whites. Hell, I welcome you to provide one single paper that has not been widely discredited demonstrating that there IS such a thing as "blacks" and "whites". You won't find them, because they don't exist, because the idea of "race" the way you describe it has been completely and utterly discarded by geneticists because it isn't real.

 

Way to move the goal posts...Per capita, who the heck cares. Please list Finland's accomplishments of the last 50 yrs. Now list the US's. Case closed. If Finland disappeared tomorrow, would the world even miss a beat? Nope. Our best are creating companies that lead the world. Creating tech that others use to make themselves better.

 

If money makes the man then you'll need to explain the spectacular failure in DC, America's most expensive school system.

 

Schools are being privatized. There's a huge effort in washington and state rep. to push for private and charter schools system.

Say good bye to public schools, because they're being phased out en mass nation wide.

The public school system is a failure and we likely will never go back to a public school system.

 

There is something to this. That said, I really don't see why we shouldn't improve our school systems.

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Do you support this? Do I have to explain why this is a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing terrible idea?

 

Take it up with Obama. You might be surprised to learn that Obama is pushing to privatize schools believe it or not and it's about the only thing I agree with him on, so I'll give credit where credit is due. So good job Obama on that.

See everything going on in Chicago? They're closing down public schools and transitioning into a private and charter school system.

Besides. The numbers don't lie. Charter and Private schools perform galactically higher than public schools. That fact is very enticing for the government. The ball is already rolling down the hill collecting more and more snow. We've past the point of no return the govt wants private schools to replace public schools.