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Originally posted by 4thTimeLucky
I agree that so much is down to the parents, but what do you think the answer is?
Do we punish or fine bad parents?
Make parents attend night school?
Make parents do a compulsory week helping in a school just as they have to do jury service?
Make parents pay some sort of bond that is repaid if and when their child graduates?
Threaten to take children away from incompetent parents or send in a social worker?
Make welfare benefirs dependent upon a certain minimum standard of parental support for their child?
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If you can prove it to be neglect or endangering the welfare of a minor child, then there are all sorts of things that can be done. We've brought parents up on charges just for their child missing more than 9 days of school in a row. Anything is possible, but it doesn't work. There just seems to be this element of society that will forever be doomed unless we can educate it (vicious circle).
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Originally posted by Bill O'Rights
Regarding the 18 year old girl in your example...why was she allowed to have progressed so far through the system as to be a senior on a 3rd and 5th grade level? Shouldn't this have been identified long before now? And if it was, why weren't corrective measures put into place at that time? What broke down here?
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What broke down is that the mother refused to let the system help her daughter. Her daughter had been brought up for review by the child study team on numerous occasions, and every time the mother refused the assistance. Her mother was in denial. So, yes, it was identified long before now, and corrective measures could not be put into place without the parent's consent. The law can suck sometimes.
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Originally posted by Bill O'Rights
What are your feelings on the "No Child Left Behind" theory of education? Or is that just a Nebraska thing? I don't know. I have seen entire classrooms stagnating for weeks because one or two of the kids need extra help with (or just don't give a rats ass about) the subject matter.
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"No Child Left Behind" is a national program started by the Bush administration, not a state by state issue. I have seen good and bad come from this so far. Good is that poorer school districts (like mine) are receiving the assistance they need to be able to compete with other school districts. They are getting the funding for technology, text books, new facilities that they normally would not be able to afford. Bad is that we are loosing some great people and much needed departments because the money has to come from somewhere. Certain programs had to cease so the money could be reallocated.
But back to the topic at hand.
These standardized tests are used all over the country to determine whether or not students are capable of the basic skills. They recently rewrote the state test in my state, and I was a bit confused. When did it become necessary for anyone to have a working knowledge of right triangle trigonometry as a basic skill? How many people can survive not knowing how to find the measure of an angle if its csc = 1.071145? (Not trying to make an excuse)
But why is this news all of a sudden? How many people failed this same test last year? If the number was much lower, what difference did a year make? Is it a new exam? Were these children part of some horrible experiment? How many students passed? I'd actually like percentages rather than raw numbers. That 30,000 that failed could be less than 5% of the total number of graduating seniors. The numbers are always misleading.