Bill Gates has some harsh and deserved words for U.S. high schools. The Seattle Times reports:
Bill Gates blasted the state of U.S. high schools yesterday in a speech before the National Governors Association education summit in the nation's capital. Using words such as "ashamed" and "appalled" to describe his reaction to the failure rates for students, Microsoft's co-founder called America's high schools broken, flawed and underfunded, and said the system itself is obsolete.Though Gates' philanthropic funds have had an impact on education issues for several years, his personal appearance at such a venue suggests an even stronger move by Gates to fix public education by working directly with key political leaders. "When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow," he said.
"The key problem is political will," he said, discussing resistance to change. He said it was "morally wrong" to offer more advanced levels of coursework to high-income students compared with that offered many minority and low-income scholars. And he trumpeted the goal of preparing every high-school student for either two- or four-year college programs.
....Washington state schools Superintendent Terry Bergeson applauded the tough-love talk. "He did not pull any punches," she said. She added that it was important that Bill Gates himself came to the governors' conference, saying, "He is making a statement, and his voice will be heard."
Gates grants support changes in 1,500 high schools, about 8 percent of America's secondary public schools, including several in Washington state. The program aims to reduce high-school populations to no more than about 500 students per school.
Gates' Foundation has funded important research on college preparedness, which showed, among other things, that Washington state ranks near the bottom nationally. Whether or not one agrees with his small school initiative, Gates is increasingly a player in the education sphere. I hope he will continue to speak out, and fund research and special initiatives dedicated to improving public education in the U.S.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 27, 2005 01:04 PM | Email ThisBill wants everyone to take the curriculum currently known as "college prep." Although not everyone need attend college, everyone does need the logic skills acquired in Algebra II, everyone does need the writing skills from 4 years of english, and everyone does need the ability of a second language.
Bill's idea is not new - its been around before as Cultural literacy, tech prep, and several other monikers. Then, there are cries of "elitism" and then nothing changes. America gets more of the same for years to come.
Personally, the focus on high school only is a bit short. I suggest that the entire school system from pre-K to college be redesigned from the ground floor up. Incrementalism (Changing high school curriculum) is not innovation.
Posted by: Timothy Lee on February 27, 2005 01:38 PM.
You should maybe read that again.
Posted by: South County on February 27, 2005 01:42 PMOther than sex ed or cultural indoctrination, can anyone name something the Seattle Public Schools, for example, do well?
Posted by: South County on February 27, 2005 01:54 PMOther than sex ed or cultural indoctrination, can anyone name something the Seattle Public Schools, for example, do well?
Answer: Spending more money than they have.
Posted by: Micajah on February 27, 2005 02:14 PMI have found that it's not just throwing more money at the problem that fixes things. When we went to private school we found a place that breathed freely from not having excessive regulation. The academics are solid and REAL; there is no time wasted bowing down at the phoney altars of 'diversity' and politcal correctness. They just teach truth and teach the kids to think and leave most of the parenting to the parents.
The teachers model a sound worldview and model love for the kids. They insist on and expect a high behaviour standard in and out of school.
And it works. Beautifully.
You can't buy some of these things with money. Will the education bureaucracy listen?
Posted by: Michele on February 27, 2005 02:19 PMThis couldn't have anything to do with the fact that what we call teachers in this state are (1) allowed to systematically abuse students and taxpayers by striking, (2) work about an hour less a day than what teachers in my home state of Wisconsin do, and (3) dump onerous amounts of homework on students of all ages so as to enable #2 and to allow plenty of movie and party time in the classrooms. Sorry Billy Bob Gates, but as long as this kind of behavior is going on in Washington State no one can credibly claim that our schools are underfunded.
Posted by: Bill on February 27, 2005 02:34 PManything is up from where we are now, is it wrong to do something good and get a reward in the end? I don't think so. I say that we do the school vouchers and tell the government to butt out other than issuing them to parents and educators.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” - Ronald Reagan
Posted by: Adriel on February 27, 2005 02:39 PMVisit http://honestedu.org/ for more on this solution, 25,626 have signed their proclamation proposing the separation of school and state.
There is plenty of material there about helping the poor get better education. They, by the way, are the worse served under the current system -- visit their web site to learn more.
I feel so strongly about this, that their web site is the only org I auto-donate to monthly.
Last, vouchers are not the solution, they'd only make it worse for they'd run out of business all truly private schools. In a voucher system, all schools become funded by the government through the vouchers for those that resist the vouchers would go bankrupt.
Roleigh Martin, M.A. (Sociology, 1977, UNI)
First -- American schools are not underfunded by any stretch of the imagination - they are in fact severally overfunded -- the evidence is VERY CLEARLY STUFFED IN YOUR FACE EVERY MORNING IN THE FORM OF THOSE YELLOW THINGS CALLED SCHOOL BUSES -- THE KIDS ON THEM ARE BEING SCREWED INTO THINKING THAT THEY HAVE TO SPEND UP TO 2 HOURS A DAY RIDING ALL OVER TOWN TO MEET SOME BOLSHEVIK SOCIAL ENGINEER's BS IDEA OF A SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM WHEN IN FACT THEY ARE SMOOSHING AROUND THE PROBLEM TO LOWER EVERYONE'S REALITY TO SOME MANDATED LOWERED ABILITY BUT HIGHER EXPECTATION OF OUTCOME. HEY!! - YOU KIDS!! - YA CAN'T GET ANYWHERE SPENDING THOSE TWO EXTRA HRS ON A BUS INSTEAD OF IN YOUR OWN NEIGHBORHOOD OR HOUSE OR LOCAL SCHOOL -- UNTIL SCHOOL BUSING IS ELIMINATED THERE IS NO WAY PUBIC (SOCIALIST) EDUCATION CAN SUCCEED
Posted by: Bill on February 27, 2005 03:01 PMAccording to the U.S. Census, just about 90% of all students end up with a high school degree. (Fewer than that actually finish in 4 years). We actually have the highest high school graduation rates ever at this time.
29% of all adults now have a 4 year degree, up from about 12 to 13% in the mid-1970s. We are educating far more students than ever before.
All the metrics have shown sharply rising graduation rates and sharply rising 4-year college degree attainment all the way up to the present. The growth in college graduation rates is doing better than Microsoft's stock price the past 8 years.
Neither students nor schools are failing - we just keep moving the goal line further out so that we can then say everyone is falling behind. So that we can then have more government programs funding more unionized teachers. This Education Summit is mostly a lot of hype designed to spend more taxpayer money. Maybe even on Microsoft software.
I have more on this, including charts that show what I am talking about in graphic terms, online at
my web site. The charts make clear that we are improving our graduation rates at the college level - way beyond the recent past. High school graduation rates grew steadily until topping out at about 90%. The marginal cost of of the next percentage point of high school graduates above this level may be more than the value obtained.
He said it was "morally wrong" to offer more advanced levels of coursework to high-income students compared with that offered many minority and low-income scholars.
I have a problem with this statement. I think any school should educate each of its individual students to the maximum extent of that student's readiness, ability and desire, regardless of income or race. It's a pretty simple and fair concept.
It would be easy for someone to misinterpret (I hope it would be misinterpreting) what Mr. Gates said as a recommmendation that ready learners should get less than their fair share of funding and attention in an effort to get everyone up (or down) to the same common-denominator level of attainment. That, in my opinion, would be immoral.
Posted by: Boonie on February 27, 2005 04:29 PMFor more information, including the charts specified in my previous post, please see:
US Census chart of graduation rates:
http://mitchellconsulting.net/commonsense/images/Census022705.gif
Weblog entry with discussion on the above:
http://mitchellconsulting.net/commonsense/2005/02/why-johnny-and-jessica-must-go-to.html
We need simultaneous change---a complete overhaul, all at once--- of what we teach and how we teach.
Many folks have come up with worthy changes (dress code, vouchers, how we tax and otherwise fund, teacher pay, teaching boys separate from girls, test prep, parental involvement, ..)
But these are all band-ids on an already dead system.
For example, new radio ads about the WASL test explain supportively that you can take the test FIVE times and FLUNK four times before you really don't pass.
That's not lack of parental involvement. That's lack of education. And if a nation wants to succeed, that's crazy. That's simply unacceptable.
Posted by: singer on February 27, 2005 04:42 PMDon't get me wrong, I am a HUGE support of NCLB. I was sick and tired of kids being passed along without regard because there was no penalty for it. However, now the curriculum has been reduced to Reading and Math in the elementary school. There is no energy or enthusiasm in the schools anymore (the kids or the teachers). Nothing is learned deeply and nothing captures the imagination of the kids.
I go to Europe yearly. I am thrilled and excited by what is happening in the schools in England and elsewhere. Go to the national museum in any country in Europe and you will see groups of children learning about art and culture. I was amazed to see 3rd and 4th graders having in depth discussions about symbolism and history. I went to a bookstore in London and there was a family there with elementary aged children and they were getting books together. The mother asked the 9 year old whether he had read the book on the Crimean War, he had and he had a solid understanding of the events and their importance. I would love to have the opportunity to teach history and science again.
The feeling in the educational community in Washington is that we need to teach the children to be able to do research and they will be able to do it themselves, but how many kids are motivated to do that ???? Give the kids a computer and they will learn on their own. Unfortunately, our kids are not able to determine fact from fiction on the web because they have NO knowledge base. They believe that there ARE Pacific Tree Octopi. It is NOT an urbane myth that high school students routinely do reports on these bogus sites.
As for Mr. Gates, his small schools plans are a potential nightmare for students enrolled in them. In one such small school, the kids are tracked in one family (house) for the full time they are in high school. Sounds great, they will get personal attention, but unfortunately the families have differing offerings. If you are in the school with band you can't take Spanish. If you are in choir you can't take French (the problem is deeper than this, it is just an illustration). The kids are placed in these schools...no options. Other schools have kids from 11 years old to 18 years old in them...not generally a good idea. Kids need to have some more choices in HS, but they need to be meaningful and meaty choices. I remember hitting college and being thrilled with the ability to choose from lots of different disciplines and studying things in depth.
I can't wait to be able to collect enough to quit the public education system and begin a fulfilling career in private schools.
I had a professor in college who did NOT want me to be a teacher. She said that public education was an experiment that had failed (that was 20 years ago) and she is still right.
Posted by: Kini on February 27, 2005 04:51 PMNope, vouchers would destroy any semblance of private education. Vouchers exist in Ontario for church schools and the government has made the church schools there so secular it's hard to call what's taught there anything in common with the church schools in America.
I sent my own kids to Catholic K-8 schools and while the cost was $1,700 a year, the liberal GOP advocated a $3,000 voucher for kids to go to school but only for lower class parents--we knew if the vouchers got accepted, the tuition was going to go up to $3,000 immediately. Such a suicidal voucher plan was killed quickly, thank God.
See what vouchers have done to colleges, they have distorted the normal pricing mechanism and college tuition costs rise twice the rate of inflation. Better we never had the GI bill, it would have been better to just have the Vets get bonus for doing anything regardless if going to school as targeting the money only for school ended up ruining colleges. This has been well documented -- only one college has refused federal funding assistance to preserve their intellectual independence -- Hillsdale College in Michigan.
Posted by: Roleigh Martin on February 27, 2005 04:58 PMDo you have some kind of psychic gift, or is that a guess (or projection?)
Posted by: South County on February 27, 2005 04:59 PMBill Gates attended a private school. I suspect that if he is involved with schools long enough, he'll get it.
Posted by: South County on February 27, 2005 05:02 PMSchools no longer teach children to develope their own thinking and learning process.
Posted by: Pete R. on February 27, 2005 05:13 PMMy second grader is in a WA public school. His homework is reading, writing, and math reasoning. I'd be a little more comfortable if there was more "math facts" as they call arithmetic these days, but I can fill in for that easily. So I would say that there is a strong emphasis on getting the kids to articulate their "math strageties." My only concern is whether there is still enough of right vs. wrong answers in math.
Attacking his ideas is okay - most of them are uninformed and half-baked. "Underfunded" indeed! Posters here have debunked this notion quite well, so I won't repeat their excellent arguments.
Yes, small schools are better, but that is yet another band-aid.
Vouchers and charter schools, like the other 'solutions,' don't address the real overspending problem - the part that forces people to pay.
As a former school board member and survivor of a teacher union strike, I can say that one topic that helps explain the problem w/government schooling these days has been left untouched. That is collective bargaining.
Also, do people proposing solutions to the 'funding problem' realize that HALF of the certificated staff (school jargon for teachers) in ANY school district are NOT classroom teachers?
Terrified school boards give in at a moment's notice of a possible strike and the unions know it. As a consequence, school districts pay in the neighborhood of $67,000 for a teacher who actually takes home about $48,000. How can this be? Alleged benefits - taxes, medical, dental, eye insurance, pension funding, workers comp, and many other 'benefits' are paid, but the teacher doesn't see the money.
After serving several years on the board and covering about six school districts as a news reporter, I have to agree with the stronger suggestions that have been made above: just abolish the system!
Posted by: Mac on February 27, 2005 05:46 PMMaybe time to jettison some unfunded mandates.
Posted by: Sandy P on February 27, 2005 07:02 PMKini, start reading Samizdata and Freedom and Whisky.
It's worse.
Posted by: Sandy P on February 27, 2005 07:10 PMAs a high school teacher, I'd also like to point out that if I am staying an hour late every night to tutor kids in basic pre-algebra that they should have learned in middle school, it is very difficult for me to be teaching them algebra.
Posted by: Calvin A on February 27, 2005 07:59 PMBill's right. Other countries do make it more of a priority, now even India, the center of white collar outsourcing.
I just discovered that the comments do not allow me to incorporate links or graphics.
Yes they do.
Posted by: Erik on February 27, 2005 09:05 PMRoleigh
Posted by: Roleigh Martin on February 27, 2005 09:06 PM2 out of 3 isn't bad. King counties' 99.98% is better, though.
Posted by: Dogbert on February 27, 2005 09:24 PMSchool simply needs to be a completely private enterprise with tax credits if the government wants anything to do with it financially. The only thing the government should do is require some level of basic aptitude to keep the US competitive, but how the individual achieves that aptitude should be entirely private. If we had true competion among all schools, we would see the price of schooling drop, the quality level go up, the class size go down and the admistrations and teachers unions would be obliterated which is where a large part of the waste is now going.
Take a look at your local private religious school if you want to see a much more operative model. It's typical for these schools to get most of their money through fundraising and donations from parents and alumni. Thus the administrations are quite small and the quality of the teachers is very high. Teachers don't have to have a ridiculous credential from the state that gives them the qualification to indoctrinate students with whatever is the ju jour leftist curriculum. Instead, administrators simply look for people who can teach, and want to teach.
Hillsdale is the best college in the country when it comes to producing students that are free from the tenure led nightmare of far left indoctrination that is standard at almost all universities and colleges today. Look no further than Ward Churchill to see the kind of crap that is being dumped into the average college student's mind.
Personally I will be homeschooling and sending my children to private schools. A public school education is the death knell for motivation and inspiration. Furthermore, with just a few hours of homeschooling a day it's possible to get kids light years ahead of their public school peers. When it comes to competition for colleges and jobs, a home schooled or private schooled kid will be far ahead of the brain dead public school student.
Gates is right, the future of American competitiveness from a worker perspective is quite bleak. But Gates is wrong to believe that we should approach schooling from a socialist perspective where each child is taught the same thing regardless of aptitude. Gates should use his considerable wealth to pressure the government to get out of the business of schooling altogether.
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 27, 2005 09:45 PMIn between a tax deduction and a tax credit, one could invent a double value tax deduction if not enough deductions spurred enough contributions to help poor kids get an education in a market driven system, in my example, that would be worth 40 cents to the individual and only a 60 cents loss to the government (again, from their angle).
Bottom line, I'm not crazy about tax credits used to spur a privatized educational market for as sure as the sun rises, it'd be heavily regulated quickly due to obviously predictable abuses. With tax deductions or double tax-deductions, I'd think the market would be less, far less, interferred with by the government.
Anyway, it will be a miracle if we see the privatization of education in our lifetime. But then again, I never thought I'd see the fall of Eastern Europe either.
Posted by: Roleigh Martin on February 27, 2005 09:52 PMAnother link to the site is
http://www.sepschool.org
I am not associated with this group other than being an enthusiastic donor and supporter. I make zero money in any manner whatsoever from the site.
The problem with the education system is that somewhere along the way it shifted its emphasis from being a place where kids are educated to being places for people with degrees in education to find career-long, safe and secure employment, with lucrative retirement packages and other such benefits. That being the case, more money is not the solution. Teachers and administrators will just gobble it all up. When they talk about "inadequate funding" of the schools, that's codespeak for "we want more money so we can spend even more on salaries and benefits."
The question is not whether the public schools as we know them will survive, because they won't. They are in the process of imploding. One of the first things that people do when the earn enough money to afford it is put their children in private schools. In fact, the majority of puplic school teachers I know put their own children in private schools. So the real question is: How are we going to restructure education so that the emphasis is on educating the children, allowing all children access to a quality education? For starters, it won't be by creating and maintaining top-heavy, bureaucratic, government-run, labor union dominated school systems. Demonstrably, that paradigm won't hunt.
These are my kids, this is my responsibility. The buck stops here. If I don't like what is going on, it is my duty to fix it. Not the school or the State of Washington.
Bill Gates was a priviledged kid from a privilidged family. He has no clue what the middle class and poor face every single day. All of his philanthropy is nothing but a tax shelter. I do not for one second believe he really cares about AIDS victims in Africa or poor kids in Washington State. He's a rich democratic geek. Nothing more.
When his foundation gave a grant to our local library, he issued strict orders not to tell anyone he was coming. But he had his New York Times poodle with him. We were notified at the local paper 2 hours after he left town and provided with a photo from them. What an arrogant ---.
I despise that arrogant attitude that exudes from democrats daily. Blame, Blame, Blame. But they still have no real solutions.
Posted by: cc on February 27, 2005 10:57 PMPerhaps the Charter School BIll should be revived in Olympia. It should invite all sides involved to the table. I think the fact that three times failure at the polls should have sent a message to Olympia. I think that Charter Schools, more magnet programs like at Cleveland, and regular schools would provide competition, at least in District 1.
Posted by: MASSTRANSITFAN on February 27, 2005 11:36 PMI stand corrected. I meant tax deductions, not credits. So I fully agree with what you say. Bottom line is that tax deductions are way better than vouchers as a means to incentivize families to educate. Maybe they would even have a tax free education spending account like the health care spending accounts of today.
Either way, get the dollars out of the government hands and back in to the hands of the people. Families and local groups and schools know how to educate our children, but like everything else, as the nanny state has grown, many people let go and let the government handle a job that everyone knows is ultimately their own responsibility.
If we let the largely Democrat controlled teachers unions, left leaning textbook writers and Democrat run bureaucracy educate our children, their just going to continue to indoctrinate them as good little Democrat / Party members that buy in to the line.
We are seriously considering enrolling our 16 yr old in one of BG's pilot programs. Looks like it might be the opportunity of a lifetime. I just have to decide if my son can take the onslaught of liberal propoganda that will come with the package. Whatever we decide, I do credit BG for caring enough to do something. BTW, there are far easier ways to get tax shelter.
Posted by: Julie on February 28, 2005 08:27 AMTalk about 'let them eat cake'. This guy was put through Lakeside School - which gave him precisely an advanced level of coursework, including his intro to computers - by his high-income parents.
And now he wishes to deny any high-aptitude public school student a low-budget version of such advanced coursework, by some twisted reference to a wholly different problem. He apparently hopes that the entire high-school cohort be held back to the lowest performance level. Maybe that's some cynical tactic to force vastly increased resources on the schools so that the lowest performance level jumps to equal today's best? Wishful thinking.
Don't hold back the learners to match the performance of the indifferent.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on February 28, 2005 08:51 AMWindward High School just started a couple years ago. Eventually, they'd like to have 400 students in Grades 9-12. My son attended for a semester last year, and didn't like it, although most of his friends that attended last year stayed. It's really limited in what it can offer. Spanish is the only foreign language. There are no music classes. My son was ahead of his classmates in math. I had to provide his transportation back to the main high school so he could take math at his level. For kids that love computers and don't care about a limited choice of courses, it's probably OK. It's also supposed to involve projects working with the community, but it never was clear exactly how that would work. I didn't see it happen while he was there.
As for the Early College program, that is intended for minorities and it's made clear that noone else is welcome (although officially they state that anyone can participate - I suppose they have to do that for legal reasons?) The idea as I understand it is to prepare underserved kids for college so they have a better chance of attending and graduating from college. So far, so good. Supposedly, these kids will graduate from high school and be able to go into college as Juniors. This is where I have a problem. For the kids that can do this, I say good for them. I hope they succeed. But for others, how can they go from being underprepared to being so advanced that they can finish two years of high school and two years of college in two years?
On the other hand, there are some kids that spin their wheels in high school, just completing all the requirements to get their diplomas. Our high school has added a lot of course requirements for graduation and is talking about adding more. For some kids, this just forces them to spend more time in high school when they really should have gone onto college. This extra time is least productive for the kids that are most ready for college. Why isn't something being done for them? I agree with the poster who said all children should be educated to the best of their ability, regardless of income.
My own pet peeve is the mindset of our school system that keeping kids with their agemates is more important than challenging them. They don't really seem to have any evidence for it, and there's a lot of evidence to the contray. As for Bill Gates, people listen to him because he's been very successful. But why do they think he knows anything about education?
Posted by: Kathy on February 28, 2005 09:10 AMWhy, because he doesn't have to. We live in a "free" country, do we not?
If he didn't have the gumption to start his own business but decided to turn to welfare and pay $0 tax dollar, would you say to him "keep quiet until you pay your fair share of taxes?" Be glad that BG (and his employees) is paying the taxes he's currently paying.
Rights are rights (free speech, etc.). Taxes are taxes. Anyone who has to pay taxes will always want to reduce taxation. OK, headless lucy might be an exception and does pay extra taxes to help the government but most of us tax payers are unhappy with taxation without representation. Anyone here remember the Boston Tea Party?
Posted by: DannyHSDad on February 28, 2005 11:28 AMThe thing that really jumped out at me from the article in the paper was Gate's comment:
He said it was "morally wrong" to offer
more advanced levels of coursework to
high-income students compared with that
offered many minority and low-income
scholars.
Is he saying that no one should have any harder classes than anyone else?! That everyone should be taught at the same level? Not everyone is cut out to be an engineer, just like not everyone is cut out to be a pianist. Harder courses prepare students for the harder colleges.
Roleigh, thanks for the info on another solution. Mine had been to have a universal voucher system so that there's more choice and freedom (especially from the public school indoctrination program), but there is the concern about power following money.
Posted by: Shannon K on February 28, 2005 01:17 PMNow, the Teacher's Unions make personnel decisions and the State and Federal bureaucracies make curriculum decisions. The local school board basically exists to lobby for money to fund it all, and the Principals and Superintendents, well, I think they just exist to give people someone to yell at.
Destroy the Teacher’s Unions and the State and Federal Education bureaucracies. The rest will only come after that.
If he gets to make money - by making and marketing a product well, than everyone else who ever made a product and wanted to make a buck should get a piece of his pie, right? BTW, I HATE the entitlement mindset cg.
Posted by: Julie on February 28, 2005 06:04 PMI won't deny that I live in Texas but I do like Bill Gates for starting his company by quiting school. As a home educating father, I LOVE the fact that he was able to build a big company as a college drop out (and Jobs and Dell, too). He sure knew the value of schooling vs real work.
Now why doesn't he challenge more students to walk his footsteps, rather than whining about the need for getting ready for college? Maybe he's more interested in seeing Washington put out future employees rather than future competitors (which is much more expensive to buy out or compete than to hire merely employees)? One really has to wonder what his REAL agendas are....
Posted by: DannyHSDad on February 28, 2005 06:19 PMWhat I find persuasive is to analyze how much one pays in a lifetime for K-12 taxes, which by the way, government does everything to hide from people as they never publish the lifetime cost of K-12 education to lifetime-average earning, average longevity residents. A researcher in MN at the taxpayer's league did a rough guess that for himself personally, he presumed he was going to pay $50,000 in a lifetime for his own tax-enforced K-12 educational costs.
In a free market solution, how far would $50,000 go? A long ways. But only about half as far if we had to split that money with educrats, tax collectors, legislators, who have nothing to do with teaching children.
Posted by: Roleigh Martin on February 28, 2005 06:33 PM
The problem is that most families cannot make it on the salary of just one parent. The historical roots of this problem lie in WWII. Women filled many of the production jobs while the men were off to war. When the men returned they went back to their old jobs. Many women remained in the work-force ,working at a lesser wage than their male counterparts. This was the accepted custom.
Management saw an opportunity to lower production costs by hiring women. The ensuing years have not seen an advance in the equality of the sexes by the wages of each gradually attaining parity so much as the excruciatingly slow rise of women's wages and the stagnation of men's wages. Now, in the US , business can get two workers for the price of one.
The solution to this problem is too complicated to go into here, but there are books out there by both conservative and progressive writers that propose some large possible solution to these societally systemic problems that continue to dog us no matter whether we are "cheerleaders" for the Right or the Left.
I'm glad to learn of the success of Tacoma's School of the Arts. My problem with Windward is not that it won't suit the needs of some kids. It just doesn't suit the needs of my kids. A larger school just has more to offer. Next year, my son plans on taking four languages. Why not? I don't know how long his interest in languages will last, but I think it should be encouraged. He couldn't do that at Windward. A small school can't provide the same opportunities to kids that are "Jacks of all trades, masters of none" like my kids, and probably like a lot of others.
As for the Early College program, I resent the fact that my children are not welcome. I'm also skeptical that it'll work. Gates says high schools are flawed, etc. I agree with him on that. But kids that are struggling in high school were not prepared when they got there. As for "wealthy white students" taking Algebra II, we probably have a couple of those in our district. But, most of the white kids taking Algebra II are nowhere close to wealthy, and some probably come from low-incomes homes. Gates makes a connection between wealth and school performance and decides that's unfair. Well, successful people tend to be smart and hard-working, and have kids that are smart and hard-working. That's not fair either, but it's not something for which they should be resented. Why can't we improve things for underserved kids without bashing white kids that do well? I respect Gates for what he has achieved, but I could care less what he thinks about education.
Headless:
As a stay-at-home mom, I agree that homemaking is honorable and should be encouraged. But not so disruptive kids can be sent home. That's about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! Yes, schools today are set up to teach the average masses, and anyone out of the average doesn't fit. But rather than drugging and suspending our kids, why don't we change education to accommodate the kids? Kids that are disruptive in one environment can do much better in a different environment.
I also disagree with you on wages. In general, women make less because of the choices they make. I have a degree in engineering and worked before we had children. If I went back to work now, I'd make a lot less than if I hadn't quit. And, while I agree some families need two earners, a lot of families just spend too much. New cars, new TVs, vacations, Seahawk games, etc. We see it all the time.
Posted by: Kathy on March 1, 2005 02:29 PMTHanks for your co-operation!
Posted by: headless lucy on March 2, 2005 07:17 AMThanks for the laugh! "Honorable and should be encouraged", huh? You'll find that the men here have more respect for mothers than you do.
Julie:
Interesting. You've checked into it a lot further than I have. What I can tell you is "Early College" was presented as a program for minority kids. They did state that it was open to anyone, but they also made it clear who they were targeting. I would feel uncomfortable having my kids apply for it.
Posted by: Kathy on March 2, 2005 10:15 AM