Is the public school system in the United states fundamentally broken?

This thread is about commenting on the state of the United States public school system, this includes but is not limited to grades, drop out rates, bullying and drug use. Does it just need more money or is it fundamentally flawed and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up?

How do we or should we make the system work better for kids to really learn not only what they need to know in life to become a responsible adult but how to independently think is what It comes down to in this thread.

As for what I think:

I think it's fundamentally flawed to the core and needs to be rebuilt brick by brick. Why you ask, because our schools are full of bully's, our schools are full of drugs and our schools are failing nearly 1 out of 4 that drop out before getting a high school diploma. To top this all off our teachers in most cases can't maintain order in the classroom to provide for a consistent sound learning environment. This wasn't so much an issue back in the 1950's where teachers could spank the daylight's out of a disruptive student.

In Japan they have one of the better public school systems partly because they fear the teachers there and have a respect for there elders. I think we need to return to that as a first step, but also we must weigh the option of going from 5 days a week to a 6 day week to keep up with what other nations do in there schools.

While I think many of the teachers try there best, I also think there needs to be a mass firing of the bad apples because we need teachers that are driven and will instruct with order but also love teaching kids how to think for themselves. I do think teachers should be paid more than they currently are in most places. The issue always is getting more money to pay them with as it comes with higher taxes or letting the debt get out of control. The other issue is if it should be left up to local government or if the federal government should step in.

Some I am sure will bring up the parent's and what I say to that is that in most cases they have become what is wrong instead of what is going right with the public school system. From the trash parent's that don't care one bit to the ones suing the school for punishing there bully of a child it's gone broken and this part can't easily be fixed. It would likely be best to just protect the teachers power to punish kids that bully others and get the courts to drop stupid cases. Oh and if the parents are really abusive the kids need to be taken. Don't know if the law is too weak on this or if it's just hard to enforce but I think we need to work harder on dealing with really bad parent's.

Also the established government leadership in the public school system is corrupt and wasteful. I mean who needs a 1 billion dollar high school with marble floor's in it. Not only that but they really love the special ed money form the federal government. It's actually much easier for the parent with the bully of a kid to complain about the fact they were punished than it is for the mother with a child with autism to get her child into a normal class room and that's because it's all a money game to the sick corrupt school board's. We need a purge in the local school's admiration official's extra large to remove people from the system of it's top level corruption so we can hire caring people to make those choices instead.

As for bully's that hit or beat up other kids they need to visit a jail cell downtown for the rest of the day and be put on the record as a felon for the crime of assault. I am sure this will scare the living skin off of most of them. For the bully's that say verbally abusive stuff and won't leave the kid(s) alone they need to be suspended for a week until they learn to become civilized. Because harassment needs to be cracked down on, it isn't allowed for adult's so we need to set better standard's in our schools.

Anyways that is my rant on the subject.

 

Well its more than a lack of corporal punishment. The schools aren't full of bullies. That's an over-used and misused term. We are trivializing bullying by putting almost anything negative that kids do into the category of bullying.

Germany has gone away from 6 day schools, and it hasn't seemed to hurt them. I hate when Japan is used for an example of what we should do. They have a stagnant pressure cooker society that leads more people to want to commit suicide. It's nothing we want.

The problem with a "mass firing" of teachers is that there is nobody to take their place--bad qualified teachers are better than bad unqualified substitutes, and a mass firing would just lead to a disaster. Schools of education are having less and less undergraduate students every year. A local university used to provide several hundred education majors a year to local schools, now they are producing less than 100 new teachers.

The problem is ignorance and neglect. Many parents are ignorant of what they should be doing with their babies/toddlers/children. My wife's students weren't read to at night by their parents. This is a middle/upper class thing that is easy and almost free, but the poorer folks just don't do it, and don't realize that they should be doing it.

The problem is that there are so many regulations that people need to oversee the schools. Most of the people in those offices are caring people. The problem is that they have not been in the classrooms as teachers in so long that they don't have an idea about what the schools need.

 

We need the Feds out of K-12 education. Only on diplomatic or military posts should the Feds have any input.

Aside from that, School should be taxed and administered primarily by local citizens and local governments. Even states should have a very limited role.

If Chicago or Frisco wants to overpay teacher's unions to run Marxist training camps---no taxpayer should fund that. If Dearborn Mich want to teach Sharia Law to their kids---that should not be tolerated by any taxpayer.

The only real way to change this is for Congress to eliminate all federal funding for non-gov K-12 schools, and pass laws to abolish the right of federal courts to make rulings on how any public school is ran. Of course Brown vs Board of Ed should be abolished. This is what started the whole mess.

 

I opted for throwing the illegals out, but that's really only a stop-gap first step. MUCH, MUCH more needs to be done!

I KNOW some school teachers in different parts of the metro areas in Colorado, active, and recently retired. They'll tell you that the whole system needs to be pulled up by the roots, thrown out, and replaced! They'll tell you that liberal politics and iron-fisted teacher union rule has made a complete mockery out of nearly everything in the education process in Colorado. And the truly pathetic thing is that Colorado actually has some of the finer public schools in the nation! If the "education industry" is good at one thing (besides taking care of itself), it's organizing the "faithful" to relentlessly go after every possibility to increase the tax burden on property owners in a city so that the school systems will have even MORE money to squander on themselves and their agendas....

The corruption and cronyism in public education districts often starts at the highest levels of school district administrations nearly everywhere, where big-wigs get drunk together and BRAG (a little too loudly) about their extravagant trips, meetings, banquets, and amazing amounts of "favors" to their friends, and, astounding amounts money blown in sheer waste! Then this corruption disrupts and ruins everything beneath them, enveloping the lower level administrative staff, the teachers, and everyone else right on down.

Overall, the impression is that everyone, from high to low, just wants to hang on to their jobs long enough to retire on the very, very generous state retirement system (in Colorado it's called "PERA"). That's the "golden ring" they all go round and round, hoping to capture. Then it's easy street for the rest of their lives, after having had careers of comparatively good pay, excellent benefits, and unparalleled amounts of time off from work!

The students? Yes, there are some well-intentioned teachers who want to do right by them, but everything these teachers do is weighted-down by having to go through all the political 'dances' required by different levels of liberal bureaucracy and government. Students end up just being like livestock in a barnyard. Get 'em in, and get 'em out. And DON'T MAKE WAVES, or you'll drown under them!

 

One thing I know is that DeVos will make things worse, as she did in Michigan.
She wants to steer tax dollars to private hands.
All part of the GOP hoax - take tax money and route it to private hands...
Blackwater
Prisons
Homophobe Rick Santorum proposed privatizing the weather service.

They hate government, except when it can "feed" their friends.

 

Unless your willing to Track Students Pre-K through say 8th Grade and channel them into pre-college (top 20% of students the most intelligent and most motivated to go), pre-trade or skilled work and well lets be frank aren't good enough for that so give them what education you can and job skills to try to help them (for them I would go to two more years of getting skilled up and at get them out of the system) then why bother. The rich will send their kids to school and they will go to college because they can afford to pay tuition and it will be for connections over a degree they could take basket weaving and have a good life. Some will just be unable to be educated properly so why bother?

And then you need technical education that employers want and will respect and for that courses outside that might need to be more limited but how much American History does a student need by 8th grade they should have enough basic knowledge to be a good citizen.

 

So do you think the school system is currently fine and the GOP is coming to break it or is it in need of fixing?

If you think the public school system needs improvement could you say in what way(s) you think it needs to be improved?

 

The public school system needs improvement. I think there should be nation-wide standard textbooks and curricula, determined by teacher voting. The fact that local control of schools allows such travesties as re-writing history in goober states so that the civil war is the "war of Northern Aggression" or stupidity such as creationism being taught as an alternative to evolution, are among the reasons we trail in comparisons with other nations.
I spent 6 years on a local school board - it was very frustrating.
Teachers unions need to get real - they defend bad teachers - and there ARE bad teachers. I tried to bring in merit raises for teachers - WOW. I heard from the union "That is so hard to do". I countered with "I bet if we each prepared a list of the 10 best and 10 worst teachers, our lists would be the same" - but they wouldn't even discuss it.

I believe that you cannot pay a good teacher too much, but whatever you pay a bad teacher is too much.

 

I don't think the biggest issue in our school system is about what label the civil war is given but then again I have never heard of anyone teaching that it was a war of northern aggression as it was the south that rebelled.

Would you agree with me that local school boards need a purge in leadership and that Teachers unions are counter productive at this point?

I guess it's interesting to hear someone who has been part of the system so to speak comment on this issue. My parents had to fight the whole local school system to get me in a normal class room due to the democrat's running the school wanting to shove me into special ed for having Autism. Yes I am still kind of bitter about that to put it mildly.

There was a lot of pressure on me to do well as every time I got a bad grade there came the risk the school system would point to it and throw me into special ed. That and I had to learn to make examples out of people that picked on me. Why because the school wasn't going to punish them at all and believe me I tried to let them handle it many times before getting sick of it. In fact I was known as a tale tail for it before I choose to make due with my own devices. I didn't want to take my parent's advice on the whole making examples out of people thing but it sure did make my life easier once I did and everyone left me alone.

 

I'm not a liberal by any means. But one of the biggest problems with public school and the issues that you stated above stem from the fact that poor neighborhoods get crappy education systems whereas rich ones do not. Because we left public schooling up to local government, the curriculum, facilities, and teachers differ by region. If you have a poor urban area, they aren't going to get good teachers, have the best facilities, and will have a worse off curriculum.

But not the government is trying to standardize...by giving standardized tests. Which is honestly one of the stupidest things our government has done. All you see from that is rich districts score higher, and actually have the facilities to take the tests, and poor districts score lower. And their response? Punish the poor districts by withholding funding. If anything, we need to federalize and standardize public schooling. Because right now, we have federal, state, and local standards as far as schooling goes. West Virginia is outperformed by Connecticut, and a county in New York fares better than another. This is a big problem.

If we were to give a national standard and national funding to schools, you'd see the other issues start to fade away, kinda like what Giuliani did with New York and crime. Also, we need to de-unionize schools. Like, NOW. Teachers at an elementary school do not need tenure and they do not need unions protecting them. Furthermore, the unions have waaay to much power and will basically defend any bad teacher regardless of how good they are.

 

It just seems to me that there isn't a problem with education at all, once you have good teachers in place. Any problem that then arises from kids not receiving an education lies outside of the school, in the society itself. The culture that is brought into the school by the students is the problem. If that culture is not in line with learning, you can throw all of the money in the world at this problem and nothing gets solved.

I went to a school long ago that had nothing but books, paper, pencils, a blackboard and a good teacher. And a no nonsense atmosphere where misbehavior was not tolerated. The kids that stayed got educated, the kids that could not handle the discipline did not get an education. The trouble today is the kids who do not want an education are kept in school, creating chaos, hurting those who would put forth the effort. It is no surprise that the schools that are seen to be failing are not schools filled with middle class kids, coming from educated, stable homes. So we blame the schools for the culture. And throw money at the schools while the culture remains the same.

 

In the US, I think compliance with federal regulations, specifically No Child Left Behind, has a lot to do with it. Part of it my area also has to do with funding. We have one of the lowest tax rates in my state but anytime someone suggests raising them, people go ballistic. I assume that is true in a lot of other places as well. The end result is more school consolidations which, in turn, raises discipline problems. I strongly believe that we need to go back to much smaller schools. If your schools consists of a few closely located neighborhoods, then those students with grudges can fight it out after school instead of in the hallways. When the only place people see the people with whom they have grudges is at school, then those will play out in the schools.

 

Not yet.

Be patient, DeVos is just getting started...

 

Wish it were a multi-choice option poll.

Anyway, not fundamentally broken. Flawed perhaps, but not broken.

It IS reaching a breaking point though I think, & my thoughts seem to always see home schooling & smaller districts being created, creating more schools, able to more specifically target areas where more indepth scholastic help is needed.

 

Why is corruption tolerated!

 

It goes largely unreported.

Well, until people start to realize their child can't form a sentence @ 17.

 

Why? It seems to be public knowledge? I suppose it's naive to think that "people will do something" with situations like this. It's very sad that scumbags enrich themselves at the expense of school kids.

 

why what?

Why can't the kids read?

Well, aside from most of your urban areas being jam packed with students number one, #2, many of those children don't receive proper nutrition, usually come from single parent homes, likely feeling some effect of the drug trade. In the 'Burbs, well, large distractions including drug abuse, Internet interface time, & sadly bussing in urban students, & expecting positive results.

There are a whole host of problems with our education system, associated with corruption in a way or other.

 

No, why is the corruption tolerated? I wonder if the first world is destined to destroy itself under the weight of social problems?

 

I didn't like my vote choices so I voted "nothing needs to be done", the education system has worked for me and my family very well, all that was expected was that we apply ourselves and voila' we learned stuff.

There are changes i'd like to see made but honestly I blame the breakdown of the family unit / kids & parents more than the system itself if you can't read and you are in high school. As harsh as it sounds my opinion is that unless you are special needs then you have the opportunity and for 10+ years went out of your way to not learn and your parents didn't give a dam.

Sure i'd like to see more control over removing bad teachers, but that's proving just as difficult as removing bad cops, bad postal workers, etc and I hold the unions largely responsible for not being willing to weed out their own substandard employees for the greater good. Secondly I'd like to see more control over removing bad students, if they are a disruption then they need to be moved out of regular classrooms where their presence causes the willing students to suffer.

School choice would help the proactive parents to put kids in schools that show results w/o having to move.

There are about 9 other bullet points to add but w/o figuring out a way to get rid of bad teachers and bad students I don't see any reason to bother.

 

They're not so much tolerated, but under reported.

When the corruption's exposed, at least the local news is all over it.... Since it's usually local (city/state) corruption being exposed.

As far as the First World self imploding.... Yeah, I can see that eventually happening.

Especially with the New Left having such a strong foothold in academics.

 

Seems there's a lot of "jumping in" with solutions without actually considering the root of the problems.

Student Behavior: Lots of "let's let the teachers beat the crap out of kids" without any consideration as to why kids act the way they do. Perhaps this problem isn't teachers and kids but parents. Perhaps this problem has to do with the many parents that use the schools as "free babysitters" and the lack of real discipline at home? Maybe force parents to become more involved in the day-to-day education of their kids.?

Drugs and stuff: Same problem. Same solution.

Bad Teachers: Good and bad teachers have been around since the beginning of public schools. Teachers have not, in my opinion gotten worse but the schools have gotten the teachers teaching less and instructing more. This problem, I believe, has two sources. First, the "standardized test" and tying teacher performance to student performance on those tests. This forces the teachers to "teach to the test," rather than educating. That's not a teacher problem. Second, "mainstreaming." Mainstreaming forces students of different capabilities into the same classroom where the teacher is then forced to teach to the lowest common denominator, that is, the slowest student. I understand the theory behind "mainstreaming" but in practice it damages the better students without significantly improving the performance of slower students. Again, not a teacher issue.

The root of the issues are identifiable and correctable unless, of course, you're looking for an "ideological" solution which, no matter where you are on the spectrum, is doomed to failure.

 

What is the new left? Is it different from the usual progressive presence in academics?

 

The New Left, from my understanding, gained through watching the birth pains in the 70's, through the explosion helped along when Video Killed the Radio Star in the 80's, right up through seeing where & what they're doing, regarding some of the people I had mentioned in another thread, associated with the SDS, & Weather Underground folks.

"BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY", is the rally cry of this breed.

They care little to nothing about human life, outside of those dedicated to being part of their ideology..... And even then, it's very little.

This is a mighty far leap, from the peaceful, treehugger, free love beatnik the Left had been.

 

The problem with threads like this is that the "public school system" is actually thousands of individual school districts, spread across 50 states that all have their own rules. So it's impossible to talk about the "public school system" as if it is one big thing with one coherent set of assets and liabilities.

Some school districts are troubled. Some aren't. Some have bullying issues. Some don't. Districts have different teaching methods, required classes, facilities, textbooks, demographics, etc.

It almost never makes sense to try to criticize or praise "public education" as a whole, except in the most general sense, because it is really so many individual organizations.