U.S. slides among world’s top educators - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Blackthorn · 09-15-2004, 03:17 AM

For those of you that are parents of students and/or students yourselves out there take heade: (in the U.S. and elsewhere) Education is the great equalizer. The global economy is a growing and increasingly competitive marketplace. Market forces in my field of technology are reflecting this more every day.

U.S. Education Slides

Quote:

Graduation rates stagnate as other wealthy countries climb ranksBy Kari Huus
Reporter

MSNBC Updated: 12:01 a.m. ET Sept. 14, 2004

Despite spending more money on education than other wealthy nations, the United States has made limited progress raising the rate of Americans who graduate from high school, with many countries now outperforming it according to a report published on Tuesday.

“Other countries have just gone right past it (for high school education) and the numbers suggest the same will happen for college education,” says Barry McGaw, director for education at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which published the study. The United States still ranks second for the rate of college education (31 percent), behind Norway (37 percent) but McGaw says the gap between it and those coming up behind has closed significantly in recent years.

Statistics published in the study, Education at a Glance 2004, generally refer to 2001-2002, looking at the 30 member countries in the OECD, a grouping of wealthy, market-driven countries.

A major factor in the stagnating U.S. graduation rates, says McGaw, appears to be the wide disparity in education in the United States between the rich and the poor.

While top-flight American students are among the most literate in the world, the average reading ability of 15-year-olds in the United States hovers around 17th, says the report’s authors, citing a 2000 literacy study. That average position has not budged for most of a decade.

“The reason it drops so much is because the United States has so many low performers,” says McGaw. “You’ve got some of the best schools in the world and some of the worst schools.”

That in turn creates a large pool of people who do not seek college degrees. A measure of people not in education and without a high school diploma was of particular concern, said the study. The figure for the United States is 12.3 percent of 20- to 24-year-olds, somewhat higher than the average for the OECD as a whole.

Total spending apparently not the problem

Overall spending on education does not appear to be the problem, McGaw says. While the United States does not spend the highest percentage of GDP on education, it does spend more per student than other OECD countries, by a large margin.

At the post-high-school level the difference is especially marked. Combined private and public spending is about $22 per student in post-high-school education, more than double that of the OECD average.

"The problem with the U.S. is the way the schools are funded — with wealthy districts providing fabulous schools for wealthy kids and poor schools providing poor schools and poor education."

McGaw appeared at a press briefing Monday in Washington alongside U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige, who touted the Bush administration's plan to remedy educational disparity in the U.S. school system, a controversial effort encoded in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Other findings:

The OECD report also outlines how education levels affect individual careers, as well as employment rates and overall prosperity. Education and earnings are still closely connected, the report says, and McGaw says they dispel the notion that there are diminishing returns for pursuing higher degrees.

Using an equation that included costs of college education and opportunity costs, as well as higher taxes on top earners, the report concluded that education beyond high school is still a solid investment. Returns for American men with higher degrees was 11 percent, the study said, while American women who had a university or college diploma saw a return of about 8 percent on their investment.

Girls outperformed boys in reading in every country in a study that evaluates fourth graders. Girls were also better readers at age 15, while there was little disparity in science and math.

But the gender gap persisted after leaving school. Across the board, men were still more likely to be employed and earn more than women with similar educational achievement.

Starting salaries for primary teachers in the United States averaged $29,513, fourth among the 29 countries compared, falling behind Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. However, comparing the salary to GDP per capita, American teachers ranked 19th among 29 OECD countries.

In 2002, 1.9 million students were enrolled outside their home country within OECD countries, an increase of 15 percent over the previous year. Five countries — Australia, France, Germany the United Kingdom and the United States — play host to three-quarters of those students.

© 2004 MSNBC Interactive

Stiltzkin · 09-15-2004, 07:20 AM

Quote:

McGaw appeared at a press briefing Monday in Washington alongside U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige, who touted the Bush administration's plan to remedy educational disparity in the U.S. school system, a controversial effort encoded in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

The old principal of of my old highschool received national recognition for his "efforts" to promote this act... or some such nonsense. He was the worst principal that school has ever had, and every teacher I spoke to about it completely agreed. He just fucked with AP (advanced placement) class schedules to make it seem like if more people were signing up for AP classes per year by making each course only a semester long, when they are supposed to be a whole year long. >_< He didn't do a damned good thing in his time there. In fact, he wronged everyone who signed up for AP classes.

The bastard appeared on television and shook hands with GWB... grr.

filtherton · 09-15-2004, 07:42 AM

Who would've thought that more money equals better education. Still, at least in my state, education budgets are suffering from large cuts.

buddle · 09-15-2004, 08:58 AM

Those numbers in that report is misleading since most countries have different educational systems. In norway we do not have anything that resembels college in the american meaning. We start at school at age 6 where we go thru a 7 year "childschool" ( ill translate directly from norwegian ), then a 3 year "youthschool". These 10years to oblicatoric (sp? = you will get arrested if you try to keep your child out from these schools so they have to attend). Then there is the voluntary choices either a commom academic 3year school called "School for the advanced" witch leads to Examen Artium witch is the required exam to start at a university (i remind that these are direct norwegian translation so might sound silly) Or servral different job based schools like chef, eletrician, plumber and so on. When this schools are done most people are around 18 19years old. Then you have the choice to start at the university or "highschool" (norwegian translation, this does not equal to the american highschool). Here you take a higher academic education in what ever field! Bachelor, Master, PhD and so on... in addition many young people take a year at (yet anoher norwegian translation) "Folk highschool" here there are subjects on art, music and lots of stuff. But it just a one year study, and most people do it for the social life

lots and lots of parties there.

So there you have it, norwegian educational system in a box....

now back to the numbers there, the norwegian equivalant of american highschool witch is the "school for the advanced" id say about 50% attends, and 49% attends the jobdirected educations... so the school attendence among 16 - 19years olds are atleast on 90% minimum! (witch is about the same ages as highschool no?)

i have no idea on how many that goes to universities, but on the 3rd largest university in norway where i go there is about 35 000 students... in country with 4,5million innhabbitants and a city with 120 000 innhabbitants... so i would say the percentage of people attending university is pretty high too! I can backup this that from my understanding its not cheap to go to a college or university in america, in norway we pay 400NOK for administrational expences ( that equals about 55$ every half year ) so its pretty cheap! I belive that this is the situation in both norway, sweden, denmark and iceland!

hope that clears things up a bit about the numbers and different educational systems

the rest seems pretty accurate, norwegian teacher have a lousy pay >_<

oberon04 · 09-15-2004, 10:31 PM

buddle: The high school ages are typically 15-18, but I'm not sure about the attendance rate, though I doubt its is above 90%. Many urban schools bring the number way down and they have the larger percentages of the total population.

One thing I have noticed over the years is that the educational quality seems to be dropping where as the cost continues to increase (beyond that of inflation). It seems nowadays high school kids (I speak as though I am old, but I've only been out of college for a couple of yrs.) are no longer required to think on their own. In classes you repeat a bunch of similar problems and that’s good enough to pass. Discussions seem to happen less and less so students don't really have an opportunity to form and defend their own ideas; they are being fed the ideas of the educators and accept them as they are, without giving any thought. This may be a result of poor funding toward the salaries of the teachers and their supplies, you really no longer have the top teachers educating (They will be teaching at a better school or they have joined the rest of the work force).

I know when I attended high school some of the school's money that came from taxes was diverted toward the schools in the urban area, this didn't really effect our school district as it was and still is one of the top in the state and nation. Though my school was not affected I can see how other schools that didn't have the prestige may have lost out tremendously.

In addition our great governor has cut the funding for the colleges and universities. I can see this having a tremendous effect in the next decade, not only for the quality of education (which I hope doesn’t decline), but for the university budgets themselves. The university I attended had to cut its football program (was saved thanks to the financial support of alumni and parents) as a result of the budget cuts. Additionally majors were merged or eliminated to save cost. If another cut like that happens I don’t see how the school will survive (I’m sure they’ll find a way but at what cost, eliminating the higher paid professors and cut all sports), this would eliminated one of the top engineering schools in the nation, as well as many other small universities/colleges. All that will remain would be the larger school, who would obviously see a dramatic increase in applications.

That’s a bit of my thoughts, sorry for the little rant ant the end, but I REALLY do not like what our governor is doing to the entire public school system.

ARTelevision · 09-15-2004, 10:36 PM

Yes.
This is why outsourcing happens at the human-resources level.

metalgeek · 09-16-2004, 08:17 PM

What is the solution though?
I think it's a cultural thing, it's not that we're being told being smart is bad, it's more so were told that everyone's smart, and you know the saying, 50% of people are below average, but if you lok at school marks it definetly doesn't show that.
When you have 80% of a class at a B or above, theres something wrong...
but try marking kids hard and what happens? you hurt there self esteem, the parents yel at you, etc.
(and for how much it's vaunted to a certaine extent the Chinese system isn't much better, I had a teacher tell me that she won't give the studetns low marks, because then maybe the students would be mad at her.)

tspikes51 · 09-16-2004, 10:18 PM

Strange that this is thread is hot right now, teachers in my state (KY) are meeting tomorrow to talk about a possible strike on Monday in order to get better health coverage.

Zeld2.0 · 09-16-2004, 11:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by metalgeek

What is the solution though?
I think it's a cultural thing, it's not that we're being told being smart is bad, it's more so were told that everyone's smart, and you know the saying, 50% of people are below average, but if you lok at school marks it definetly doesn't show that.
When you have 80% of a class at a B or above, theres something wrong...
but try marking kids hard and what happens? you hurt there self esteem, the parents yel at you, etc.
(and for how much it's vaunted to a certaine extent the Chinese system isn't much better, I had a teacher tell me that she won't give the studetns low marks, because then maybe the students would be mad at her.)

There is defenitely a part of it.

I hate to admit it but I can't stand that - people who think they're smart and deserving when they haven't done jack. I usually think most people could be at a comparable level of intelligence given hard work but lets be honest - there are natural geniuses just as there are natural dumbasses. Its just that, no one admits someone is a natural dumbass.

Frowning Budah · 09-18-2004, 01:01 PM

Let me throw my 2 cents in. My wife was a teacher for over 20 years and a good one. She has helped out in some of the local schools since she was forced to retire because of illness. The teachers are being overwhelmed with Government intervention, lack of support from administration and apathy on the parts of Parents and Students. They are under paid and under prepared for handling all the problems they face in American classrooms today. So the really good educators are getting out and finding better jobs leaving us with increasingly less experienced and talented teachers. Is it any wonder our standards are slipping.

pan6467 · 09-18-2004, 01:12 PM

The great thing in Ohio is that all week I've heard that a recent survey says voters want no more state cuts in Education and by a 3-1 margin would consider voting out their own representative if he votes for cuts. I'm sure that can be translated to national. So at least here in Ohio things are on the upswing, hopefully.

Here's the article and link (Highlighted the survey results)
================

Ohioans Value Education, Ranking it Above Other State Spending Priorities
Thursday September 16, 9:30 am ET
KnowledgeWorks Foundation releases fourth Ohio's Education Matters poll

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Ohioans believe that education is essential to a democratic society and healthy economy and want it to be the state's top spending priority, according to results of the statewide Ohio's Education Matters Poll.
"This poll tells us the public in this state values education and sees its connection to the well-being of our state and nation," said Chad P. Wick, president & CEO of KnowledgeWorks Foundation, which conducted the Poll. "Unfortunately, despite good intentions and hard work, we don't yet have the educational system that reflects those values."

KnowledgeWorks Foundation released the poll today in a news conference at the State Capitol. The telephone poll of 800 Ohioans was conducted in June for the Foundation by Triad Research Group of Cleveland. It has a margin of error of +/-3.46 percentage points.

[COLOR=Lime]The value Ohioans place on education comes across through the following poll results:

* Ninety-six percent of Ohioans agree that education is essential for a
democratic society and a healthy economy.
* Nearly 94% of Ohioans agree that they would protect and defend
education as they would freedom.
* Ninety-six percent agree that education is a public good that benefits
everyone, and nearly 89% agree it is important for all children to have
the opportunity to attend college.
* Nearly 80% of Ohioans say the state should spend more on education, far
surpassing other spending areas such as health care for the poor and
elderly, jobs and economic development, courts and prisons, and roads
and bridges.
* Sixty-two percent say they believe state funding for Ohio's public K-12
schools is less than adequate, and while a majority (54%) believes that
state funding for higher education is at least adequate, nearly 70% of
Ohioans think it is unfair that funding has gone down in the past few
years while tuition paid by students has increased.
* More than 89% said the state should spare education from any spending
cuts, and nearly 81% said they would be more likely to vote against
their state legislator in the future if that legislator voted to reduce
state spending on K-12 public education[/COLOR].

"The bottom line for the Ohio public is that education is at the core of our communities and larger society and therefore should be supported properly," said Wick. "This public embrace of education should be viewed as a mandate to support and improve our public education systems. Of course, we still have a long way to go."

Ohio graduates 84% of its high school students, but only 58% of its urban students and only half of its African-American students. Only 59% of high school graduates go directly to college after high school, and only half of those freshmen actually earn a degree within six years. Ohio ranks 39th in the nation in the percentage of adults over 25 with a bachelor's degree, with only 2 of every 10 Ohioans having a bachelor's degree.

The public is not yet satisfied with the public education system, the poll found. Eight of every 10 Ohioans believe it is important to close the achievement gap between white students and black and Hispanic students. And Ohioans most often gave K-12 public schools a grade of C. Nearly half thought K-12 public schools needed major changes or an overhaul.

By comparison, fewer Ohioans thought that the state's public colleges and universities needed major changes or an overhaul, and the public was more likely to give them a grade of B.

Ohioans express support for the federal No Child Left Behind Act, but they are less supportive of testing, with 47% saying there is too much emphasis on testing in the public schools.

As part of statewide education improvement efforts, the Foundation is working with state, federal and local leaders to empower communities in 12 Ohio school districts to improve large urban high schools by transforming them into autonomous small high schools. That improvement effort affects the learning of more than 25,000 Ohio high school students.

KnowledgeWorks Foundation, the state's largest public education philanthropy, looks for ways to offer practical solutions to tough problems in education. A cornerstone of this effort is to understand and engage the public in the problem solving process, which is the foundation for the annual Ohio's Education Matters Poll. For additional details and the full Poll results please visit the Foundation's web site at http://www.kwfdn.org .

KnowledgeWorks Foundation is Ohio's largest public education philanthropy. KnowledgeWorks Foundation provides funding and leadership for education initiatives throughout the state and is focused on creating and improving educational opportunities. The Foundation is committed to sharing knowledge gained and lessons learned with others in Ohio and across the nation to help inform public policy. Learn more about KnowledgeWorks Foundation at http://www.kwfdn.org .
======

LINK: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040916/clth002_1.html

Hopefully this is nation wide thinking.

gcbrowni · 09-18-2004, 02:00 PM

There are two keys to educational success: class size and involved parent. You don't need both. Smaller classes mean more teacher interaction with students.Parent involvement can make up for larger class sizes, but getting the parents to be involved is another thing alltogether.

The kids don't need air-conditioning, computers, expansive libraries, new carpeting, or any of the other things that steal money away from smaller class sizes. All of those things are nice, but more teachers trump all of them. If your child is "#6 of 30" then all you need to do it get involved in their education and they'll turn out fine.

Math, English, and Science thought in schools hasn't changed that much in the last 100 years.

09-15-2004, 08:58 AM	#4 (permalink)
buddle Upright Location: Norway	Those numbers in that report is misleading since most countries have different educational systems. In norway we do not have anything that resembels college in the american meaning. We start at school at age 6 where we go thru a 7 year "childschool" ( ill translate directly from norwegian ), then a 3 year "youthschool". These 10years to oblicatoric (sp? = you will get arrested if you try to keep your child out from these schools so they have to attend). Then there is the voluntary choices either a commom academic 3year school called "School for the advanced" witch leads to Examen Artium witch is the required exam to start at a university (i remind that these are direct norwegian translation so might sound silly) Or servral different job based schools like chef, eletrician, plumber and so on. When this schools are done most people are around 18 19years old. Then you have the choice to start at the university or "highschool" (norwegian translation, this does not equal to the american highschool). Here you take a higher academic education in what ever field! Bachelor, Master, PhD and so on... in addition many young people take a year at (yet anoher norwegian translation) "Folk highschool" here there are subjects on art, music and lots of stuff. But it just a one year study, and most people do it for the social life lots and lots of parties there. So there you have it, norwegian educational system in a box.... now back to the numbers there, the norwegian equivalant of american highschool witch is the "school for the advanced" id say about 50% attends, and 49% attends the jobdirected educations... so the school attendence among 16 - 19years olds are atleast on 90% minimum! (witch is about the same ages as highschool no?) i have no idea on how many that goes to universities, but on the 3rd largest university in norway where i go there is about 35 000 students... in country with 4,5million innhabbitants and a city with 120 000 innhabbitants... so i would say the percentage of people attending university is pretty high too! I can backup this that from my understanding its not cheap to go to a college or university in america, in norway we pay 400NOK for administrational expences ( that equals about 55$ every half year ) so its pretty cheap! I belive that this is the situation in both norway, sweden, denmark and iceland! hope that clears things up a bit about the numbers and different educational systems the rest seems pretty accurate, norwegian teacher have a lousy pay >_< __________________ im in love

09-15-2004, 10:36 PM	#6 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	Yes. This is why outsourcing happens at the human-resources level. __________________ create evolution

09-16-2004, 10:18 PM	#8 (permalink)
tspikes51 Fuckin' A Location: Lex Vegas	Strange that this is thread is hot right now, teachers in my state (KY) are meeting tomorrow to talk about a possible strike on Monday in order to get better health coverage. __________________ "I'm telling you, we need to get rid of a few people or a million." -Maddox

09-18-2004, 01:12 PM	#11 (permalink)
pan6467 Lennonite Priest Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA	The great thing in Ohio is that all week I've heard that a recent survey says voters want no more state cuts in Education and by a 3-1 margin would consider voting out their own representative if he votes for cuts. I'm sure that can be translated to national. So at least here in Ohio things are on the upswing, hopefully. Here's the article and link (Highlighted the survey results) ================ Ohioans Value Education, Ranking it Above Other State Spending Priorities Thursday September 16, 9:30 am ET KnowledgeWorks Foundation releases fourth Ohio's Education Matters poll COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Ohioans believe that education is essential to a democratic society and healthy economy and want it to be the state's top spending priority, according to results of the statewide Ohio's Education Matters Poll. "This poll tells us the public in this state values education and sees its connection to the well-being of our state and nation," said Chad P. Wick, president & CEO of KnowledgeWorks Foundation, which conducted the Poll. "Unfortunately, despite good intentions and hard work, we don't yet have the educational system that reflects those values." KnowledgeWorks Foundation released the poll today in a news conference at the State Capitol. The telephone poll of 800 Ohioans was conducted in June for the Foundation by Triad Research Group of Cleveland. It has a margin of error of +/-3.46 percentage points. [COLOR=Lime]The value Ohioans place on education comes across through the following poll results: * Ninety-six percent of Ohioans agree that education is essential for a democratic society and a healthy economy. * Nearly 94% of Ohioans agree that they would protect and defend education as they would freedom. * Ninety-six percent agree that education is a public good that benefits everyone, and nearly 89% agree it is important for all children to have the opportunity to attend college. * Nearly 80% of Ohioans say the state should spend more on education, far surpassing other spending areas such as health care for the poor and elderly, jobs and economic development, courts and prisons, and roads and bridges. * Sixty-two percent say they believe state funding for Ohio's public K-12 schools is less than adequate, and while a majority (54%) believes that state funding for higher education is at least adequate, nearly 70% of Ohioans think it is unfair that funding has gone down in the past few years while tuition paid by students has increased. * More than 89% said the state should spare education from any spending cuts, and nearly 81% said they would be more likely to vote against their state legislator in the future if that legislator voted to reduce state spending on K-12 public education[/COLOR]. "The bottom line for the Ohio public is that education is at the core of our communities and larger society and therefore should be supported properly," said Wick. "This public embrace of education should be viewed as a mandate to support and improve our public education systems. Of course, we still have a long way to go." Ohio graduates 84% of its high school students, but only 58% of its urban students and only half of its African-American students. Only 59% of high school graduates go directly to college after high school, and only half of those freshmen actually earn a degree within six years. Ohio ranks 39th in the nation in the percentage of adults over 25 with a bachelor's degree, with only 2 of every 10 Ohioans having a bachelor's degree. The public is not yet satisfied with the public education system, the poll found. Eight of every 10 Ohioans believe it is important to close the achievement gap between white students and black and Hispanic students. And Ohioans most often gave K-12 public schools a grade of C. Nearly half thought K-12 public schools needed major changes or an overhaul. By comparison, fewer Ohioans thought that the state's public colleges and universities needed major changes or an overhaul, and the public was more likely to give them a grade of B. Ohioans express support for the federal No Child Left Behind Act, but they are less supportive of testing, with 47% saying there is too much emphasis on testing in the public schools. As part of statewide education improvement efforts, the Foundation is working with state, federal and local leaders to empower communities in 12 Ohio school districts to improve large urban high schools by transforming them into autonomous small high schools. That improvement effort affects the learning of more than 25,000 Ohio high school students. KnowledgeWorks Foundation, the state's largest public education philanthropy, looks for ways to offer practical solutions to tough problems in education. A cornerstone of this effort is to understand and engage the public in the problem solving process, which is the foundation for the annual Ohio's Education Matters Poll. For additional details and the full Poll results please visit the Foundation's web site at http://www.kwfdn.org . KnowledgeWorks Foundation is Ohio's largest public education philanthropy. KnowledgeWorks Foundation provides funding and leadership for education initiatives throughout the state and is focused on creating and improving educational opportunities. The Foundation is committed to sharing knowledge gained and lessons learned with others in Ohio and across the nation to help inform public policy. Learn more about KnowledgeWorks Foundation at http://www.kwfdn.org . ====== LINK: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040916/clth002_1.html Hopefully this is nation wide thinking. __________________ I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?" Last edited by pan6467; 09-18-2004 at 01:31 PM..

09-18-2004, 02:00 PM	#12 (permalink)
gcbrowni Tilted Location: Indianapolis	There are two keys to educational success: class size and involved parent. You don't need both. Smaller classes mean more teacher interaction with students.Parent involvement can make up for larger class sizes, but getting the parents to be involved is another thing alltogether. The kids don't need air-conditioning, computers, expansive libraries, new carpeting, or any of the other things that steal money away from smaller class sizes. All of those things are nice, but more teachers trump all of them. If your child is "#6 of 30" then all you need to do it get involved in their education and they'll turn out fine. Math, English, and Science thought in schools hasn't changed that much in the last 100 years. __________________ From the day of his birth Gilgamesh was called by name.

09-15-2004, 07:42 AM	#3 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	Who would've thought that more money equals better education. Still, at least in my state, education budgets are suffering from large cuts.

09-15-2004, 10:31 PM	#5 (permalink)
oberon04 Upright Location: USA	buddle: The high school ages are typically 15-18, but I'm not sure about the attendance rate, though I doubt its is above 90%. Many urban schools bring the number way down and they have the larger percentages of the total population. One thing I have noticed over the years is that the educational quality seems to be dropping where as the cost continues to increase (beyond that of inflation). It seems nowadays high school kids (I speak as though I am old, but I've only been out of college for a couple of yrs.) are no longer required to think on their own. In classes you repeat a bunch of similar problems and that’s good enough to pass. Discussions seem to happen less and less so students don't really have an opportunity to form and defend their own ideas; they are being fed the ideas of the educators and accept them as they are, without giving any thought. This may be a result of poor funding toward the salaries of the teachers and their supplies, you really no longer have the top teachers educating (They will be teaching at a better school or they have joined the rest of the work force). I know when I attended high school some of the school's money that came from taxes was diverted toward the schools in the urban area, this didn't really effect our school district as it was and still is one of the top in the state and nation. Though my school was not affected I can see how other schools that didn't have the prestige may have lost out tremendously. In addition our great governor has cut the funding for the colleges and universities. I can see this having a tremendous effect in the next decade, not only for the quality of education (which I hope doesn’t decline), but for the university budgets themselves. The university I attended had to cut its football program (was saved thanks to the financial support of alumni and parents) as a result of the budget cuts. Additionally majors were merged or eliminated to save cost. If another cut like that happens I don’t see how the school will survive (I’m sure they’ll find a way but at what cost, eliminating the higher paid professors and cut all sports), this would eliminated one of the top engineering schools in the nation, as well as many other small universities/colleges. All that will remain would be the larger school, who would obviously see a dramatic increase in applications. That’s a bit of my thoughts, sorry for the little rant ant the end, but I REALLY do not like what our governor is doing to the entire public school system.

09-16-2004, 08:17 PM	#7 (permalink)
metalgeek Insane Location: Calgary	What is the solution though? I think it's a cultural thing, it's not that we're being told being smart is bad, it's more so were told that everyone's smart, and you know the saying, 50% of people are below average, but if you lok at school marks it definetly doesn't show that. When you have 80% of a class at a B or above, theres something wrong... but try marking kids hard and what happens? you hurt there self esteem, the parents yel at you, etc. (and for how much it's vaunted to a certaine extent the Chinese system isn't much better, I had a teacher tell me that she won't give the studetns low marks, because then maybe the students would be mad at her.)

09-18-2004, 01:01 PM	#10 (permalink)
Frowning Budah Slave of Fear	Let me throw my 2 cents in. My wife was a teacher for over 20 years and a good one. She has helped out in some of the local schools since she was forced to retire because of illness. The teachers are being overwhelmed with Government intervention, lack of support from administration and apathy on the parts of Parents and Students. They are under paid and under prepared for handling all the problems they face in American classrooms today. So the really good educators are getting out and finding better jobs leaving us with increasingly less experienced and talented teachers. Is it any wonder our standards are slipping.