Posted by: ST on May 19, 2006 at 8:54 am
… but not our official language, of course:
After an emotional debate fraught with symbolism, the Senate yesterday voted to make English the “national language” of the United States, declaring that no one has a right to federal communications or services in a language other than English except for those already guaranteed by law.
The measure, approved 63 to 34, directs the government to “preserve and enhance” the role of English, without altering current laws that require some government documents and services be provided in other languages. Opponents, however, said it could negate executive orders, regulations, civil service guidances and other multilingual ordinances not officially sanctioned by acts of Congress.
This is largely a symbolic vote more than anything (considering how watered down the bill was), but I’m going to look on the positive side and consider it a baby step towards one day making English the *official* language here in the US.
More from the article:
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called the amendment “racist,” and Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) dismissed it as divisive and anti-American.
When all else fails, the Dems throw into the recipe their favorite card: the race card. With a little helping of “anti-American’ accusations on the side.
(Hat tip: Outside The Beltway)
In related news, the Kyl amendment – which would have required guest workers to leave at the end of their (supposed to be) temporary stay – failed.
Kathy wrote, “The “Great Society” was Lyndon Johnson’s baby, and it was scuttled by Johnson’s own escalation of the Vietnam war.”
This is FACTUALLY incorrect. Please do us a favor and give us the budget dollar amounts before and after what you think is true. You will find that aid to the poor has RISEN (the opposite of your statement) at every point in the last 6 decades and including during the escalation of the Vietnam war.
Kathy wrote, “The “liberal, socialist” programs you speak of began to be dismantled under Reagan; and Clinton (nominally a Democrat) finished the job.”
These statements are a product of the liberal media but again are factually incorrect and I ask you to do the due diligence (don’t be negligent) and get the dollar amounts (total dollar amounts spent) which every liberal before you that I’ve discussed this with has FAILED to do. Trust me. I used to be a liberal pre 1991 until I visited the library 3 times a week that year during my conversion to conservativism.
Kathy wrote, “Five out of the seven presidents following Johnson have been Republicans. Even more to the point, Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress since 1994,”
Pre 1994, Essentially there was a 54 year span of Congress being controlled by Democrats. Congress CONTROLS the PURSE STRINGS. Neither during the 54 year span of essential Democrat control nor during the last 12 years has the amount spent on health services, veterans benefits, social services, education, etc been cut This is a true statement and if you want to make the opposite FALSE charge you should give us the amount spent on any category the year prior and the year that followed. You CAN’T do it. The Department of Treasury and the CBO and the White House and all sorts of libraries have this information. Here’s a clue: When Democrats or Bill Clinton or CNN said cuts/slashing/axing any budget what the failed to do is be truthful. For example: Bill Clinton and the media charged for 5 months straight in 1995 that Medicare was being cut by 270 billion dollars by Republicans. That didn’t happen and wasn’t even planned by the Republicans. The bill called for 7% increases for 7 years which is more than 49% compounded which is more than medical inflation plus new participants of the program. .
I didn’t have time to dissect the rest of your post or view what others had to say (I’m sure a lot) because I have to go to another building for a meeting but I hope you do the due diligence required.
Humanities struggle is against confusion as someone once said.
We all “care” and or pretty much “well intentioned” Unfortunately liberals believe that the 50% who are conservatives do not “care” and are “mean”.
Think whatever you want about our “thoughts” but you can’t have your own facts. These are concrete things that are nailed to the wall (unlike jello).
Have a good day and hopefully good year researching!
Said Kathy- We could have the finest public school system in the world, if public education was prioritized as high as national security is. In fact, if Americans thought of a first-class public education system as being an essential component of national security, we would have the best public school system in the world, just as we have the best military in the world.
Yes we could have that if parents really wanted it and demanded that the school systems teach. Yes we could have that if the unions were forced out. Yes we could have that if we actually segreagated students..by segregation, I mean put those that are more proficient with their peers and put the less proficcient with their peers. Stop trying to force diversity and integration as if it is a proven tool that is reflected in test scores. Mixing colors and social classes are fine. Mixing very bright students, with average students is a recipe for failure. It is not the responsibility of the smart ones to lead the less smart to better grades. That is the job of the parents! It is wonderful for children to accept others, but it doesn’t help them solve a calculus problem!
You are just like every other libral socialist, you make excuses for the failures in the world rather than stop and look at your own ideology and realize you and your mantras are poisoning the very people you claim to want to help.
Isn’t this exactly what you are doing when you blame criminals, minorities, school kids, the NEA (which is not a union by the way; it’s a professional association that advocates for the interests of teachers and students — in the same way the AMA does for doctors), teachers, parents, Democrats in Congress, and “liberal socialists” — everyone and everything but YOUR ideology — for the appallingly inferior quality of education our children are getting?
BTW, why do conservative oligarchs (I assume that’s the equivalent of liberal socialists) dismiss the idea of “root causes” when it comes to terrorism and smear those who talk about root causes as being “terrorist sympathizers” — and then suddenly become enamored of “root causes” when it comes to public education, and say things like “All things have root causes, and it does no good to ignore them”? Look at how Republicans have completely ignored the root causes of terrorism (Democrats too, for that matter), and you will begin to understand why the number of terrorist incidents has exploded since we invaded Irag; and why that invasion has utterly failed to reduce terrorism, control it, or prevent it.
BTW Kathy, you want to almost overnight provide an order of magnitude improvement in schools? Abolish the NEA and allow teachers to be disciplined or removed for poor behavior or ability, and allow rewards above the norm for good teachers and administrators. Allow teachers who do little more than preach leftist politics or who are incompetent to be fired, and teachers who actually teach to be rewarded instead of having the union protect the poor performers and tie the hands of the good instructors.
The NEA is a professional association. It is not a union. You want to “abolish” the official professional association for teachers? Would you suggest “abolishing” the American Bar Association? COULD you, even if you wanted to?
You would have to define “poor behavior or ability.” If children are not developing a love for reading, for writing, and for learning in general; and if they are not learning HOW to learn, then they are not being taught well. But before putting ALL the blame for that on the classroom teacher, I would look at all the other factors that might be making it hard for a teacher to be as effective as she might want to be. You think that life is a multiple choice exam, with only one right answer. I say that life is an essay, with no one right or wrong approach — but with some approaches working better than others and with many factors contributing to the essay’s effectiveness.
Also, you keep harping on teachers who preach “leftist” politics. What about teachers who preach right-wing politics, or who push conservative ideology?
You are going to have to attract a better class of people to be teachers, and overcome parents that couldn’t care less or who only care that their precious isn’t disciplined, before you can even begin to improve education, and the NEA is a MAJOR impediment to that. It rewards mediocrity and punished excellence, just like socialism always does.
Teachers are leaving the teaching profession in droves because the salaries are so low and the working conditions so bad. They are leaving to take private industry or corporate jobs that pay double or triple or quadruple what they can make as a teacher. This is especially true for math and science teachers, because corporate and private industry is very, very good to talented math and science professionals. A technology instructor in a high school could jump from $40,000 (after several years of teaching) to $80,000 for a fast-track job in software engineering. So if you want to attract “a better class of people to be teachers,” you will have to be willing to pay them the kind of money that “better classes of professionals” get in private industry.
But conservatives don’t want to do that, because it means their taxes might go up. And also because teaching is for people who can’t do anything better. And if you don’t believe that the preceding attitude is widespread, see what happens when a college senior who is a computer genius, brilliant at writing software, or at networking, or at finding wonderful solutions to all sorts of technological problems, tells a group of people at a party that he is planning to be a high school technology, or a high school mathematics teacher.
“Are you sure you want to limit yourself to teaching high school? You could make a fortune working for Microsoft, you know.”
Capitalism does indeed reward excellence — of a certain kind. Excellence in teaching is not of that kind. Excellence at managing and leading a multinational oil company is of that kind.
Perhaps now you have a clearer idea of what I mean when I say American society does not value education as highly as it values other things.
My daughter just graduated from USC. She graduated high school as a valedictorian and had an SAT of 1550. She accomplished this IN SPITE of a number of LIBERAL, NEA goon teachers. The classes she learned nothing in were taught by LIBERALS spouting their LIBERAL PROPAGANDA instead of teaching.
Your daughter must have taken the SAT under the old scoring system where 1800 was the highest score. My daughter took the SAT a couple of months ago, under the new scoring system where 2400 is the highest score. And her score was 2200.
And oddly enough, my daughter seems to have learned the most from teachers who encouraged her and her classmates to question common assumptions and traditional ways of viewing history and society. You would call that “liberal propaganda,” I suppose. It’s turned her into an original, independent thinker with a truly awesome ability to express herself and formulate her ideas.
Think whatever you want about our “thoughts” but you can’t have your own facts. These are concrete things that are nailed to the wall (unlike jello).
True, but “facts” are tricky things. For example, it was Bill Clinton who ended what you call permanent welfare, not a Republican president. Clinton campaigned on that issue. It helped get him elected. And he kept that promise, unlike most of the promises he made to his liberal constituents.
Another example: Conservatives are very fond of saying that the U.S. spends more money on foreign aid (meaning aid meant to help ameliorate human suffering in other parts of the world) than any other country. That is presented as a fact, but it’s really a misleading distortion of fact. The U.S. spends more in absolute dollar amounts for foreign aid, because the U.S. *has* far more money than any other country in the world. But as a percentage of the U.S. gross national product, the U.S. lags far behind spending for international humanitarian needs than many other countries with far lower GNPs. So in FACT, the U.S. is quite miserly about spending money on nonmilitary foreign aid.
Kathy, seldom have I seen a bigger collection of inane, nonsensical rants put together in one place since steve left. It’s impossible to know where to start with you, you are a perfect, walking, talking liberal talking points clone. I get tired of seeing the same idiotic rants put forth as fact, over and over again, and now you naturally have to get into the “Iraq is causing terrorism” and “we need to understand them” BS. No Kathy, we don’t need to understand them, we need to KILL THEM! The fact is, if we were 100 times as brutal as we are, they would then respect us, and not screw with us. We don’t need to sit down and analyze their childhoods, or take the blame for the fact that their own governments abuse and repress them into poverty and oppression.
And the NEA isn’t a “union?” LOL, what color is the sky in liberal moonbat land today? For your information, I’d eliinate the ABA as well. Two organizations which do nothing to help anything but the narrow minded interests of their members.
And still, you claim I’m blaming all teachers when I complain about liberal socialist policies, and once again you miss the fact that those same policies are in a large part responsible for the attitudes of those parents and school children who don’t love learning or believe in responsibility.
You still nonsensically stick to the idea that throwing more money at the problem is the “cure.” Bull. We already spend plenty of money, we just don’t get any value out of it.
Said Kathy-Teachers are leaving the teaching profession in droves because the salaries are so low and the working conditions so bad. The wages were no secret when they went into the profession. BTW, the teachers make their money in the backend of the deal. It’s called retirement with a pension.
the NEA (which is not a union by the way; it’s a professional association From the USA Today
The 2.8-million-member National Education Association will allow local affiliates to join the AFL-CIO. The hope is that the AFL-CIO will give teachers more muscle when they campaign for political candidates and push legislation.
Also, you keep harping on teachers who preach “leftist” politics. What about teachers who preach right-wing politics, or who push conservative ideology?
That’s a hoot Kathy, got any examples? Say, anything near as numerous and heinous as the examples of leftist drivel we see everyday in the news, and those are only the ones that get national attention? Even one or two?
Yeah, how dare an instructor try and instill Conservative values in students, you know, duty, honor, hard work, responsibility, as opposed to class warfare, victimhood, it’s not your fault it’s all those bad white males that are holding you back.
Said Kathy- True, but “facts” are tricky things. For example, it was Bill Clinton who ended what you call permanent welfare, not a Republican president. Clinton campaigned on that issue. It helped get him elected. And he kept that promise, unlike most of the promises he made to his liberal constituents.
Funny how he got credit for that! Here is a good Dick Morris article on him!
While Clinton Fiddled
A story of fecklessness in the face of terror.
And this Front Page article sheds some light on welfare and Clinton
Said Kathy-Another example: Conservatives are very fond of saying that the U.S. spends more money on foreign aid (meaning aid meant to help ameliorate human suffering in other parts of the world) than any other country. That is presented as a fact, but it’s really a misleading distortion of fact. The U.S. spends more in absolute dollar amounts for foreign aid, because the U.S. *has* far more money than any other country in the world. But as a percentage of the U.S. gross national product, the U.S. lags far behind spending for international humanitarian needs than many other countries with far lower GNPs. So in FACT, the U.S. is quite miserly about spending money on nonmilitary foreign aid.
Yeah, Pam, the “we’re such stingy, money grubbing heartless bastards” meme. Once again, the US is at fault for everything, and if we just threw more money at the world’s problems the world would be gum drop dreamy.
You’ve got that right Severian.
The funny thing is, when money is thrown at a problem, it usually ends up being an abortion!
No Kathy, we don’t need to understand them, we need to KILL THEM!
All things in life have root causes, Severian. It doesn’t do anyone any good to ignore that.
The fact is, if we were 100 times as brutal as we are, they would then respect us, and not screw with us.
You do know, don’t you, that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
You still nonsensically stick to the idea that throwing more money at the problem is the “cure.” Bull. We already spend plenty of money, we just don’t get any value out of it.
The money has to be spent well, not just spent. The policies have to make sense, too. The No Child Left Behind Act, for instance, has done enormous damage to public schools’ ability to teach children how to learn and how to love learning. It’s not even funded well enough for schools to meet the standards imposed by the legislation — never mind whether mindless rote test prep, and drilling children as young as five years old to get high scores on standardized tests, constitutes “education.”
And by the way, we’re not getting any value out of the money we throw at the Pentagon, either — unless you consider tens of thousands of Iraqis and Americans dead and maimed with no improvement to national security at all to be value for your dollar. But that does not keep the White House and Congress from throwing even MORE money at the Pentagon. The less value we get, the more money THEY get. The Pentagon is the biggest permanent welfare scheme ever devised.
That’s a hoot Kathy, got any examples?
Certainly I do. Prayer in public schools. Stickers on biology textbooks that say evolution is “just a theory” (DUH, that’s why it’s called the THEORY of evolution — like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, for example?). The Senate Majority Leader calling for creationism, aka “intelligent design,” to be taught in public schools. The President of the United States announcing that creationism, aka “intelligent design,” should be taught in public schools.
Then again, you state in your next paragraph that you consider all of these examples of neoconservative social ideology to be nonpolitical, totally normal, the default position. In other words, right-wing ideology, in your view, is by definition nonpolitical.
And talk about a sense of victimhood! Look at you, singing the victim blues like Luciano Pavarotti! “Oh, those awful liberal socialist Democrats are destroying the public schools! The evil unions are stealing our money! Those stupid, lazy, irrresponsible minorities are the problem!”
And it’s not just public education where right-wingers refuse to take responsibility for their own failures. Look how rightists have been howling with outrage, pointing their trembling, outraged fingers at “liberals, socialists, Democrats, those rotten no good anti-American traitors,” etc. etc. for the unmitigated disaster we call Iraq. It’s not the Bush administration’s fault for aggressively invading a country that was no threat to us, for venal reasons of their own; manufacturing “evidence” that Iraq had nuclear weapons aimed straight at our shores and ready to be delivered within 45 minutes of Saddam’s order, being arrogant and just plain stupid enough to assume that Iraqis would welcome foreign occupiers with open arms and grateful prayers of adoration, and thus having absolutely NO contingency plan, no postwar management plan, no Plan B whatsoever. Plan A was perfect and would work like a dream. No need for a Plan B. But when the policy fails, do you guys blame Bush and Cheney and Wolfowitz et al. for their colossal presumptuousness and their ignorance of Iraq and their insistence on preemptive invasion of a country that could not harm us against the opposition of most of the world? No, of course not! You blame the liberals and antiwar activists who told you from the very start — from BEFORE the start — that all of these things that have come to pass WOULD come to pass.
Great Smoky Mountains, all you neocons! TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN MISTAKES!
Once again, the US is at fault for everything, and if we just threw more money at the world’s problems the world would be gum drop dreamy.
No, Severian. The US is at fault for NOTHING. The US is PERFECT. Perfect, blameless, perfect. Nothing bad that happens in the world has anything to do with the US. Anything and everything that is good in the world exists because we made it good. When we bomb people, it’s to liberate them. When we occupy other people’s countries, it’s because we want them to be free. When we torture people, it’s to save lives. When we detain people with no charges, no evidence, no sentence, and no hope of seeing the light of day again, it’s to protect human life. Even when we break the law and violate our own beliefs, we still remain a country that respects the law, follows the law, believes in human rights, is spreading freedom and democracy around the world.
In fact, if the US were a person, we would be a saint or an angel, incapable of doing wrong.
How dare those evil liberals hold the U.S. responsible for ANYthing?
You do know, don’t you, that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
You should know Kathy, every single one of your tedious diatribes, and you sure seem to have diarhea of the keyboard, boils down to the same leftist failed ideas and talking points that have been proven again and again to not work.
I’ve seen NO ideas or solutions out of you, only whining and complaints, which is ALL I see out of liberals and socialists and Democrats these days. Whining, complaining, and bitching about how bad the US is, how evil we are, how we don’t put enough money in to this or that. You can use 100 or 10,000 words to say it, but it still is exactly the same rants over and over and over.
You want to help public schools, try vouchers. If there is anything that will save our schools it’s competition. But nooooo, the NEA won’t let that happen, they and you seem to view schools as a government welfare program for incompetent teachers and administrators. This also brings in the subtle racism that is alway associated with the left, since vouchers help the poor and disadvantaged even more than the “evil” rich who can already afford to send their kids to whatever school they want. No, you brown and black people better just let us smart white liberals decide what’s best for you, you really aren’t smart enough to decide for yourselves. Add that to the liberal racism of diminished expectations, making excuses for poor performance for minorities, and it’s no wonder many of the racial problems still exist, and a completely amazing thing that minorities still vote so heavily for Democrats.
You continue living in your little dream world Kathy, and let those of us who are adults, and who have realized how the world operates handle the heavy lifting. The trouble is, you, and the rest of your childlike, immature liberals, insist on trying to force the same failed policies and ideas down everyone’s throats.
BTW Kathy, it’s telling that once again you, in a conversation about education, get back again to the leftist talking points on Iraq. You and your fellow travelers have Iraq on the brain, you are obsessed. I actually have come to the conclusion that liberalism like yours is a form of mental illness similar to obsessive compulsive disorder married with a strong case of projection.
Said Kathy-The money has to be spent well, not just spent. The policies have to make sense, too. The No Child Left Behind Act, for instance, has done enormous damage to public schools’ ability to teach children how to learn and how to love learning. It’s not even funded well enough for schools to meet the standards imposed by the legislation — never mind whether mindless rote test prep, and drilling children as young as five years old to get high scores on standardized tests, constitutes “education.”
I live in MI an the test scores are going up in spite of the teachers that said it wouldn’t work. That being said, here is a bit on the actual law. You will note that the law leaves the amount of testing up to the individual state. Now I am one of those kids that was tested often in the 60′s and 70′s, in fact, I would bet any of you that are 40+, are as well. And what is remarkable to me is how we were able to be eduacted and diciplined by the schools, with class sizes of 24-30 kids, and still managed to test well.
Kathy,
You are wrong again. Your suppositions are not facts. To Wit, you never asked me what the top score for the SAT that year was. For your information it was only 1600. That is right, my daughter only missed 5 questions.
I also got her report card from USC. She got better than a 3.9 for the semester, and better than 3.6 for her career.
There are no liberal “embellishments” here. Just facts and acomplishments, not talk, Kathy.
Pam, you have to understand Kathy’s and her fellow NEA clone’s problems with No Child Left Behind. By suddenly enforcing objective real world metrics for measuring progress on the schools, it’s shining a bright light on them, and exposing the fact that they have been teaching drivel for years. Incompetent people aways fear objective reality. Shine a bright light under a rock, and odds are you won’t like what you see crawling out. It shows the results of years of liberal ideology and “soft” racism at work, years of “don’t fail them, it’ll hurt their self esteem,” “don’t fail them, their parent’s will complain and that’s a hassle,” “don’t fail them, they’re minorities, they can’t help it” and on and on and on. Textbooks that spend more time blaming the US and enforcing multiculturalism instead of teaching math, reading, and historical facts. Hard to properly indoctrinate the proletariat if people are actually paying attention to what you’re doing.
I bet Kathy is just a joy to be around:
Good morning ma’am, would you…
What’s so good about it?! Bush Lied, People Died! The Republican’s are screwing up our schools! The military is actually killing people!
Errr…ma’am, I was just asking what size latte’ you wanted.
I’m surprised she spends so much time online here, surely her Code Pink sisters are missing her, surely there’s an ROTC office somewhere in her hometown that’s gone un-vandalized since she’s spending so much time here.
Sev,
Well said.
Kathy is one of those people who feel that government doesn’t fund them well enough. IE. they can’t live like a Kennedy.
My fiancee has a “Hyper” child. The progressive teachers either say “medicate” him or ignore him. The child is being left behind by the system and the system most emphatically does not want the parent seeing what is being taught and how it is being taught. But the kid knows where to get a condom and that he has rights not to do anything he doesn’t want to, like study.
Severian- I think Kathy doesn’t like the fact that we want to hold teachers accountable..I don’t know if you remember the story from 02′, I believe, but there was a teacher from Brooklyn that needed to be tested to keep her certificate..she failed 14 times in a row. She then sued for discrimination because she was black and obviously the testing was racist!
Kathy omitted the part of NCLB that has just been divulged! Minorities are being omitted from the scoring!
Overall, the AP found that about 1.9 million students — or about 1 in every 14 test scores — aren’t being counted under the law’s racial categories. Minorities are seven times as likely to have their scores excluded as whites, the analysis showed.
Less than 2 percent of white children’s scores aren’t being counted as a separate category. In contrast, Hispanics and blacks have roughly 10 percent of their scores excluded. More than one-third of Asian scores and nearly half of American Indian scores aren’t broken out, AP found.
Well, Pam, it’s once again the evil conservative’s fault for actually requiring results! Of course they have to lie and distort, it’s because they care so much!
Ethics? Morality? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
You are wrong again. Your suppositions are not facts. To Wit, you never asked me what the top score for the SAT that year was. For your information it was only 1600. That is right, my daughter only missed 5 questions.
Why the defensiveness, PCD? I wasn’t trying to correct you or argue that your daughter didn’t do well on the SAT. My intention was to point out that my daughter achieved a very high score on the SATs — not to prove that my daughter did better than your daughter or that your daughter did better than mine. I mentioned the different scoring scales because they ARE different, not to imply anything about your daughter’s score.
I also got her report card from USC. She got better than a 3.9 for the semester, and better than 3.6 for her career.
That’s wonderful, PCD. I’m sure you’re just as proud of her as I am of my daughter, who gets excellent grades, too — but I won’t say what they are, because I don’t want you to think I’m trying to boast or make comparisons.
There are no liberal “embellishments” here. Just facts and acomplishments, not talk, Kathy.
Okay, that’s nice. I’m not sure what your point is. Your daughter did well in her school, which may be liberal or conservative, I have no idea. My daughter has done very well in her school, which has very liberal programming. So they both did well. Great news for both of us as parents, right?
Hey, Kathy’s back. Expect another 4 or 5 page tedious repetition of the same liberal inanities in 5…4…3…2…1…
I live in MI an the test scores are going up in spite of the teachers that said it wouldn’t work.
Most teachers and parents I know who are opposed to NCLB or think it’s done our children a disservice, are not opposed to NCLB because they think it’s impossible to get test scores up. They’re opposed to NCLB because they think that the NCLB’s single-minded focus on standardized test scores to measure educational success is impeding actual classroom learning.
You are assuming that test scores going up means that actual learning is going on in the classroom. Teachers and parents work exhaustively with students all year long to get their test scores to go up enough to meet the requirements of NCLB. But that does not mean the students will remember anything they did on the test, or that they have learned anything substantively. All that can be said for certain is that they have learned how to take that test. Learning how to take tests is important, but it’s not the same as learning in general. Real learning requires understanding of concepts and ideas, and the ability to think and find answers independently. You cannot assume that students have demonstrated this ability by looking at a test score.
Hey, Kathy’s back. Expect another 4 or 5 page tedious repetition of the same liberal inanities in 5…4…3…2…1…
Nah, Severian. I won’t continue the cycle of insults here. There’s no point in doing that. The ultimate truth here is that you and I view the world in completely different ways. I am unlikely to persuade you to share my values and priorities; and you are just as unlikely to persuade me to share your values and priorities. It’s not for me to say that you are wrong and I am right. The only thing I can say is that my values and beliefs are deeply held, have been formed over many years and as the result of my own experiences and the way I was raised to believe and think by my parents — and I am certain that exactly the same is true for your values and beliefs.
We will just have to agree to disagree. It won’t kill us.
- I don’t want schools to be “Liberal” or “conservative”. I want the politics the hell out of our schools.
- But that would mean the Left would lose one of its “back door” tactics, so I’m sure thats the reason they fight like hell to keep schools politisized.
- Bang
said Kathy-Most teachers and parents I know who are opposed to NCLB or think it’s done our children a disservice, are not opposed to NCLB because they think it’s impossible to get test scores up. They’re opposed to NCLB because they think that the NCLB’s single-minded focus on standardized test scores to measure educational success is impeding actual classroom learning.
It’s funny that you say that. The people I speak to are in favor of the program. I guess it depends on who you talk to and what type of school system you have your children in. My friends/family have their kids in school systems that are parent driven for support. College is the goal. Testing is a byproduct of the lessons. Education is the most prescious gift a parent can give a child.
You are assuming that test scores going up means that actual learning is going on in the classroom. Teachers and parents work exhaustively with students all year long to get their test scores to go up enough to meet the requirements of NCLB.
You are presumming to know what I think. Testing is a tool that has been used since teaching began. How do you measure progress in a classroom if not for tests. I believe in testing the teachers and the students. I believe in getting rid of the union and paying teachers based on performance.
Real learning requires understanding of concepts and ideas, and the ability to think and find answers independently.
Some people might call that comprehension. The more a child comprehends, the better they will do.
The people I speak to are in favor of the program. I guess it depends on who you talk to and what type of school system you have your children in. My friends/family have their kids in school systems that are parent driven for support. College is the goal. Testing is a byproduct of the lessons. Education is the most prescious gift a parent can give a child.
Yes, it’s the same in my daughter’s school district, and in the surrounding school districts. In my case, I talk to a lot of parents because for the past two years I’ve worked in the Children’s Dept. at a Barnes & Noble that’s in a middle-class to upper-middle-class location. Parents and teachers come into to buy workbooks for their children and students all the time. I’ve had many conversations with them about how useless at best, and harmful to learning at worst, NCLB is. Children are being test-prepped in the first grade now, test prep in kindergarten is right around the corner. It’s not because the tests are mandated that early; it’s because getting high scores on the tests is so crucial to a school’s funding that test prep has to start that early.
You are presumming to know what I think.
I assumed that you believed high test scores to be an accurate measure of the quality of education a student is getting, because you mentioned, in an approving way, that your school district’s scores have gone up.
Testing is a tool that has been used since teaching began. How do you measure progress in a classroom if not for tests. I believe in testing the teachers and the students. I believe in getting rid of the union and paying teachers based on performance.
I agree that there is a place for testing. However, relying entirely on test scores to measure student learning or the educational standing of a given school is wrong, too. Standardized tests, which rely heavily on rote learning, memorization, and test-taking strategies, do not tell you how much a student has truly learned, in terms of lasting understanding. Doing well on these tests is all about knowing how to get the right answer, or memorizing right answers for commonly asked questions. It does not teach a student anything more than that.
Now, mind you, that’s important, because students will face test-taking situations of many sorts later in life — but it should not be used to determine comprehension, or enjoyment of learning for its own sake, or the ability to think independently.
I wrote: Real learning requires understanding of concepts and ideas, and the ability to think and find answers independently.
Pam responded: Some people might call that comprehension. The more a child comprehends, the better they will do.
Yes, that’s exactly my point. The kind of real learning is what I was describing in my quoted statement. But comprehension cannot be effectively or reliably measured by standardized tests. Standardized tests do not measure comprehension. They measure the degree to which a student has learned how to answer the questions.
That’s what those SAT prep courses are all about. They are almost exclusively test-taking strategies and learning how to get the right answer on the specific questions or problems that are likely to be on the test. You don’t have to understand the problem, or the process used in solving the problem, to do that. You just need to know the correct series of steps to go through to come up with the right answer.
Just to clarify: When i wrote that “it’s the same in my daughter’s school district, and in the surrounding districts,” I was referring to Pam’s comment about the schools in her district being parent-driven, with college as the goal, and an awareness that education is the most precious gift you can give a child. In my experience with parents and students, that’s why so many parents and teachers I know oppose NCLB.
Kathy, there should be NO politics in school. Where I have seen LIBERAL politics in the school, I see functionally illiterate children passed on, learning deficit children ignored, and teachers spoon feeding answers to tests so the children pass with high enough scores to avoid the NCLB sanctions. Botton line, Liberals don’t teach, they preach their religion in school, and I don’t mean Christianity, Judaism or Islam.
Kathy, there should be NO politics in school. Where I have seen LIBERAL politics in the school, I see functionally illiterate children passed on, learning deficit children ignored, and teachers spoon feeding answers to tests so the children pass with high enough scores to avoid the NCLB sanctions. Botton line, Liberals don’t teach, they preach their religion in school, and I don’t mean Christianity, Judaism or Islam.
“There should be no politics in school”: That makes no sense at all. Everything about education is political — from school funding to choice of textbooks to lesson planning. Saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning is political. Teaching a unit on slavery is political. Teaching about the settling of the West by the pioneers is political, because you have to decide whether you are also going to teach about the settling of the West from the Native American point of view — and either choice you make is political. Teaching evolution didn’t used to be political, but is now; and teaching creationism, aka intelligent design, is political. How can you even begin to teach history or American literature without making choices about how to approach the subject or what to discuss that have political implications?
The only way you can keep politics out of the classroom is if you do only math and vocabulary drills all day long, and nothing else. And even THAT would be a political choice.
Re your comment about teachers spoon-feeding answers to tests, if that bothers you, you shouldn’t be supporting NCLB. That’s what NCLB requires teachers to do: They have to get their students to pass the standardized tests, or their schools get failing scores and the teachers get fired.
How would YOU suggest the schools do right by the students with learning deficits when they absolutely HAVE to meet the testing requirements of NCLB? How would YOU suggest functionally illiterate students be actually taught to read fluently and understand what they’re reading and ENJOY reading (now THERE’S a radical notion for you) when every minute of the day has to be devoted to teaching whatever is going to be on those NCLB tests?
You are such a hypocrite, PCB. How DARE you accuse “liberals” of “preaching their religion in school”? NCLB is the neocons’ religion, not the liberals’. How typical of the neocon philosophy to foist a law on schools that has no educational validity at all and then blame others for the mess it creates.
- “How would YOU suggest the schools do right by the students with learning [deficits]sic….”
- How about letting them learn at their own pace, or isn’t that “nuanced” enough for the Liberal social engineers?
- Bang
- I just love it when people spout off about things they have little or no personal experience with. I can’t speak to the situation in the rest of the country, and I wouldn’t even try, although a good guess is there are similiar conditions throughout the country, depending mostly on available facilities.
- My son has aspergers, and was in a program from the age of 6 when I started raising him on my own. There is a very large spectrum of learning obsticles, very few of which are true “deficiencies”, a word I personally abhore, since its so typically a catch-all having little to do with the true facts for most kids. A very small percentage of children have a true “learning deficiency”, and ADD/ADHD are not in that group. Bottom line is my son started in a 100% program, and gradually mainstreamed to only college career planning in the program now. Hes an honors student with a 3.9 average, with close to straight A’s, with a B from time to time, when he gets lazy or bored. Schooling for a child is 90% involvement and interest of the parent, which is one of the core problems, rather than learning disabilities in most cases. Its there if you take part in your childs learning process. Absentee parents is a much greater problem than any learning “deficits”.
- Bang
- I should make one correction. “Most” ADD/ADHD/Aspergers, children do not have a true learning deficit, the numbers I’ve seen being in the less than 5% range, with about 15% having a higher than average learning ability. Just ask Steven Spielburg.
- Bang
How about letting them learn at their own pace, or isn’t that “nuanced” enough for the Liberal social engineers?
ROFL! That sounds absolutely perfect to me, but it doesn’t seem to be compatible with the everyone-march-in-lockstep, numbers-tell-you-everything, philosophy of the No Child Left Behind requirements. An Orwellian moniker if ever there was one. Hey kid, learn at your own pace, that’s fine — just make sure that your pace is stamped with the date of the next standardized test! Talk about “social engineering.”!
We agree on one thing, though: PCD’s decision to use “learning deficit” children, as he or she called them, to make a totally illogical point about NCLB, was laughable.
Kathy said:Re your comment about teachers spoon-feeding answers to tests, if that bothers you, you shouldn’t be supporting NCLB. That’s what NCLB requires teachers to do: They have to get their students to pass the standardized tests, or their schools get failing scores and the teachers get fired.
Has it occured to you that this is the most ridiculous thing? I will again remind you that as a child, I too went through the standardized testing. The only thing the school cared about was that the kids were present on the day of the test. We never were refreshed prior to the test. Why? Because they were teaching the kids all along!
Let me ask you a question Kathy..do you believe kids should receive report cards?
Kathy, you are sophmoric (Literal translation: Wise fool). Teachers should teach like the Jon Voight character in “Conrack”, Or the Olmos character in “Stand and Deliver”, not outcome based education, or other useless pap that teachers use to pass uneducated kids on to the next grade.
Kathy, you are basicly a dishonest person since you condone cheating and side-stepping the requirements of NCLB for the kids to LEARN. Tests measure the learning. Only NEA union goons think that teachers should not be held accountable if the kids learn or not.
Oh, and Kathy, if throwing money at the school system is THE answer, then the DC schools ought to be turning out geniuses being funded at $10,000 per pupil per school year.
Your cultural Icons, Bill and Hillary, sent Chelsea to Siddwell Friends rather than to the DC schools.
That alone was enough to prove your, and the NEA’s, Mantra wrong.
Let me ask you a question Kathy..do you believe kids should receive report cards?
Of course, but they don’t have to have letter (traditional) grades. My daughter went to a public Montessori school from PreK through 5th grade where the students received progress reports. There were no letter grades. Starting with middle school, she started getting letter grades, and she’s been doing just fine.
I had standardized tests as a child, too. But there was no NCLB tying a school’s continued existence to a test score.
Teachers should teach like the Jon Voight character in “Conrack”, Or the Olmos character in “Stand and Deliver”, not outcome based education, or other useless pap that teachers use to pass uneducated kids on to the next grade.
I couldn’t agree more. So then why are teachers being asked to meet the requirements of a totally outcome-based law that ties funding to scores on standardized tests?
Kathy, you are basicly a dishonest person since you condone cheating and side-stepping the requirements of NCLB for the kids to LEARN.
The requirements of NCLB are that schools present the government with specific scores on standardized tests or lose their funding. The consequences of not meeting the testing requirements of NCLB for a school are so draconian that teachers are forced to “teach to the test” if they want to keep their jobs and school administrators are forced to require their teachers to “teach to the test” if they want to keep their schools open.
I don’t condone cheating. I don’t condone what NCLB requires teachers to do. You are getting angry when I tell you what teachers are compelled to do in order to get their students to do well on the tests. I don’t know why you think that test prep is “cheating.” Test prep is test prep. It’s not “cheating.” But it’s also not teaching. It’s test prep. And tests do not measure learning — at least not meaningful learning. Tests (standardized tests) measure the test-taker’s ability to take tests — which is why test-taking strategies are so important. If any of you have ever used one of those test-prep books like Barron’s, or had someone tutor your child for the SATs, or enrolled your child in an SAT prep course, then you have been helping them learn test-taking skills. That’s 95% of what test prep is about.
Tests measure the learning.
If you’re talking about standardized tests, no they do not. They measure the student’s ability to take a standardized test.
Kathy wrote, “But there was no NCLB tying a school’s continued existence to a test score.”
I believe it is a reasonable goal to do something different with schools that are failing children. The only real measurement of that is with tests. The schools aren’t going to be removed from the children. The schools will be taken over from the people who failed it and the children. Is there something wrong with that?
Kathy wrote, “The consequences of not meeting the testing requirements of NCLB for a school are so draconian”
Draconian for who? For the failing administrators? Who cares? It’ll be POSITIVE for the children stuck in the situation. They’ll get more opportunity in life if they are not failed so badly.
Your last paragraph was COMPLETELY false. I have two daughters that do VERY well on those tests. The school here in CA does NOT teach to the test as you keep alleging. I’m sure that happens in some classrooms but your assertion is far from the truth in most situations. Do you recognize that at least? My daughters both place in the top quintile for results and it isn’t due to their “ability to take a test”. It’s because they know the answers because they LEARNED.
Learning is key to whether kids are learning and the only way folks can assess whether or not kids are learning is tests. Not interviews. Not brain scans. Not a guestimate. There are too many areas where schools have been allowed to FAIL THE CHILDREN for far too long. Draconian changes needed? Yes. So that kids aren’t failed in life. They need to be given the opporutunity to learn.
I had posted a message to you a few days ago where I challenged you to learn about the fact that your assertions of what has been spent by the government to help the poor were FAR from true. It sounds like the education system has failed you. Or, if you are old enough that you have failed to verify if the sources of information you are reading are telling the truth. What does misinformation and lack of education do in life? It holds you back. It keeps you a victim. You can break free from that with due diligence.
Kathy,
Giving the kids the answers is cheating just as much as giving them palm notes for during the test. You aren’t teaching them how to reason out a problem to reach the answer.
You may be fine with kids being taught to feel answers or other self-esteem tricks, but then you blame every one else for the teachers doing that. Typical liberal.
Said Kathy- I had standardized tests as a child, too. But there was no NCLB tying a school’s continued existence to a test score. Yes it was Kathy.
Of course, but they don’t have to have letter (traditional) grades. My daughter went to a public Montessori school So you sent your kid to a private school, not public, or did your child attend public schools later on? Yes, unfortunately, the grades do need to be traditional in the public schools. I will take you back to my childhood again..we had special classes for those that were not able to keep up, as well as classes for those that were ahead of their peers and needed a bigger challenge. Making an entire class learn at the slowest kids pace is a disservice to all the kids in the class.
The requirements of NCLB are that schools present the government with specific scores on standardized tests or lose their funding.
Well yes they will lose their funding because they will be shut down. What sense does it make to fund failure.
One thing you have not touched on, or maybe I overlooked it, is the fact that the failing schools are predominately in lower income areas.
Pam,
We have failing schools here in Dubuque. They are the poorest, but the whole school system had been run by Diana Lam who instituted all sorts of touchy-feely, Liberal, avante-guard ideas into these failing schools. Lam has been gone for awhile, but the carnage she left is still ruining kids in the schools.
If you google Diana Lam, you may find where she’s been fired from other school systems.
All classes are homogenized. There is no fast learning class or slow one. Most kids are lost isn the shuffle and learn nothing, hence the low scores.
Kathy, like most arrogant liberals puts her kids in private schools, not the public ones run by NEA teachers and administrators.
Get rid of the NEA and the Administrators’ unions. Cut the fat in the number of paper pushers in school administration. Cut the consultants and other frills, and the kids will have the money for paper and pencils the schools have diverted to admin costs.
PCD this is a good point:but the carnage she left is still ruining kids in the schools.
Amen to that PCD. Our inner city district went through that and within the past 5 years under new management, closing schools and redistricting the district..it is finally turning the corner! And I am happy to report…they passed this year! WhooHoo! They aren’t failing.
Gosh Pam. Sounds so draconian (refering to Kathy’s comment). Who would’ve wanted them to turn the corner….
Don’t you just hate accountability Bak
Want to see how fast the public schools turn around, force politician’s children, and medium to well off kids, all those that go to private schools, to HAVE to attend public schools.
First bully punches their child, you will see some action.
First shooting in the school, you will see action taken.
First ranting and raving teacher that goes on personal opinion rather than teach – you will see action taken.
First time you see a sexual assualt from a teacher on their children, you will see action taken.
All you need to do is put the private schools children in with the public schools.
Because as it stands now, politicans can say they are helping the public schools and make all sorts of appropriate noises of concern, but when it comes down to it – where do they bring their children for education?
Same goes for health care…
Same goes for Retirement….
As soon as we take away the divider that gives one set of things for one group and a completely different set for another, like retirement, health care, ect like our politicians enjoy – as soon as we bring them down to our level, perhaps we will see actual concern from them.
But as long as they enjoy a completely different set of rules, different health care, different retirement, different set of laws that govern them, then we will never have them fully appreciate a problem if they do not know about it.
I agree sanity, except I’d put it a little different.
“as soon as we bring them “UP” to our level, perhaps we will see actual concern from them.”
- The Liberals hate anything that’s goal orientated, has accountability, or is incentivised/competitive. They don’t want it in society, and they don’t want it in schools. When you know that the focus of their main program is homogenization of everything into one big unhappy, but welfare braced community, then you can see where everything they do leads to under achievement and mediocrity, if not outright failure and incompetence. That concept is as anti-American as it gets. Nanny-stateism replacing American individuality and self sufficiency.
- Bang
Kathy, you are basicly a dishonest person…
Well, yeah, by definition. She already told us she was through with her constant, wordy repetition of her touchy, feely, liberal mantras, that is complaints with no solutions offered, but here she is, still at it. And not a solution yet, other than we don’t pay teachers enough, and that history is political, the pledge is political. In other words, traditional values like duty, honor, country, hard work, humility, are all alien concepts to her, how dare we try and indoctrinate kids with such evil ideas.
“You don’t have to use traditional letter grades,” yeah, you also shouldn’t grade papers in that scary red color too, might just hurt junior’s self esteem. He has to feel good about himself, it’s not his fault, even as they march him to the electric chair for whatever crime he committed because no one ever taught him to live in society and exercise any self control. But at least he has his self esteem!
It’s hard to expess in words how little respect I have for people like her, who consistently contribute to a majority of the country’s problems while cloking themselves in a mantle of elitist superiority. You shouldn’t break your arm patting yourself on the back on ho much more caring you are Kathy, contributing and continuing the problems that are destroying so many young lives is hardly something to be proud of, no matter how much you “care.” And it appears that in addition to just holding these deluded ideas, you are actively out there mucking up the system with all your “altruistic” volunteerism and proseletyzing. Doesn’t matter if your ideas don’t work, stroking your feeling of moral superiority and baseless self esteem is the important thing.
When you know that the focus of their main program is homogenization of everything into one big unhappy, but welfare braced community, then you can see where everything they do leads to under achievement and mediocrity, if not outright failure and incompetence.
Of course they do Bang! Liberals in general are the most depressed, miserable, unhappy, constantly complaining people I’ve ever met. Reagan pointed out that Democrats act like every day is April 15th, and Republicans act like every day is the 4th of July. Misery not only loves company, it demands it, and that describes the liberal attitude too well.
sanity, I disagree with you(I think). Why do the politicians need to get involved in school districts? This is the job of the parents working with the police who, together, demand action of the school system. The parents should be the ones that are in the face of the school administrators. Day in and day out. On the phone, and in their offices. Get with local News Channels. You would be amazed at how something like a story on TV, pulls a community together to demand change in the system! The liberals did this and look how they destroyed public education. But they got their way!
As for their kids being in private school..we don’t pay for that. We pay them a salary and they can spend it as they see fit. If they are receiving a free education under suspicious circumstances..that is another story. But if people can afford to send their kids to private schools, that’s their business. They still pay local property taxes that fund public schools.
As for this statement: As soon as we take away the divider that gives one set of things for one group and a completely different set for another, like retirement, health care, ect like our politicians enjoy – as soon as we bring them down to our level, perhaps we will see actual concern from them.
Bring them down? People aspire to go up. Everything you listed are benefits that people recieve from their employers or save for throughout their lifetime. They are benefits not something guaranteed under the COTUS.
If your arguement is with the benefits of Congress..I agree. I don’t think they should have control of deciding their pay and benefits. We the people should and it should be on the Presidential Election Ballot every 4 years.
It disgusts me to think of Byrd’s retirement! Or Kennedy or Levin or Thurmonds!