Seattle Times headline: "State's students not ready for global marketplace, Gregoire says"
Washington schools aren't preparing students adequately to compete in a tough global marketplace, and top-to-bottom overhaul is needed, [Mrs.] Gregoire1 said Monday.This is a refreshing acknowledgement of reality and I do like the idea of blowing up some of the failed government educational institutions. Unfortunately, Mrs. Gregoire only seems to want to replace failed government institutions with bigger and more expensive government institutions which are doomed to fail. She recognizes that too many of the children who go through the state's government school system are unable to compete in the global marketplace. Sadly, she does not seem to also recognize that this is because the government schools aren't forced to compete in any marketplace. The only public education reforms that any of us should concern ourselves with any more are those that empower parents to be customers who get to choose the best schools for their children, and require schools and their employees to compete to earn the parents' business.Gregoire said the state needs to blow up the separate "silos" — the turf-conscious higher education, K-12 and pre-kindergarten establishments — and devise a well-oiled, well-financed, seamless system of cradle-to-the-grave learning.
1 Has never held a job in the private sector.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 14, 2006 10:23 AM | Email ThisTo me, the frightening words were "cradle to grave".
Reading between the lines:
Parents are failing at preparing their children for kindergarten, so the State must intercede.
Parents are failing at teaching kids about sex, so the State must intercede.
Parents are failing at teaching kids about the environment, so the State must intercede.
Etc., etc., etc.
If you can come up with the money (or time to homeschool), you can opt out of the State required, State run, State monopoly schools. Otherwise, you're locked in.
The State. For the good of The State. Sounds like an old cold war movie sometimes.
The State must have control over what it's citizens learn...
Posted by: SouthernRoots on March 14, 2006 10:53 AMSeparate issue, I suppose, but something I thought about when reading this.
Posted by: swatter on March 14, 2006 10:58 AMAs for all the other Children? Well, they can go to the crappy school that can only employ all the worst teachers because it markets to the lower classes.
Posted by: Gerald on March 14, 2006 11:03 AMOf course, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that John Stossel has put out a series of columns on the subject of school competition and that the Evergreen Freedom Foundation is having him at their 15th birthday bash!
Posted by: A Watchdog on March 14, 2006 11:08 AMThere are a whole range of solutions we should consider to give more parents more choices -- vouchers, private school tuition tax credits, financial aid for K-12 (similar to what we have for college), etc.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on March 14, 2006 11:09 AMAnd just an interesting little factoid for you: what profession--as a group-has the highest percentage of their children in PRIVATE schools? You might think doctors, lawyers or maybe engineers... nope: PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS. Perhaps they know something you don't, Gerald?
You are proof that education is much too important to leave to government.
Posted by: libertarianobserver on March 14, 2006 11:10 AMWhy don't ALL kids in the same district have totally equal level of education?
Posted by: SouthernRoots on March 14, 2006 11:12 AMTake the BS out of the curriculum and can the dead weight tenured teachers and get back to basics.
This WON'T happen until the unions loss their influence. Seeing that Gov't & Education are the biggest unions, the prospect of what I propose isn't very likey.
A side "benefit" for moonbats: the dumber the citizenry, the easier it is for corrupt gov't types to get away with agenda driven revisionist syllabi.
Posted by: Jack Burton on March 14, 2006 11:48 AMEven though the WA school district used the
same text book, she was 3 months ahead of
them. The teacher made her her student aide.
Since she told her that she doubted that she
would get that far in the book by the end of the year.
My sister was a B average student and this was
Algerbra IIX/TRIG class.
The only reason Queen Christine is even talking
about doing anything is: she knows how terrible her record is so far as governor actually is. Don't forget her poll numbers are worse than Bush.
Learn.
Posted by: JCM on March 14, 2006 12:31 PMMarch 14 Olympian.
http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060314/NEWS01/60314010/1006
In a speech before the discussion, Gregoire said students had valuable answers for how to
solve issues involving young people in education and health.
“The experts on education really are the students,” she said. “I have never had a problem
for which I went to the students that they weren’t able to step up and solve it.”
Is the Governor of Washington's statement:
A) Cheesy and a case of posturing.
B) A frightening admission of the absence of any meaningful education policy
C) Startling naivety about the difference between "whining" and "policy advice"
D) An admission of the quality of staffing she currently receives, or
E) All of the above.
SouthernRoots:
You have an excellent point. We should change how school districts recieve their funding so it is more equal. Right now some schools are getting twice as much money per student - that's the real problem.
Have you considered that the poor benefit from competition in the grocery industry? Even though only a small fraction comparision shop, all benefit from competition.
The monopoly has been hardest on the poor. Thanks to No Child Left Behind, and the analogous state reforms, we finally have disaggregate data on how poorly-served some populations are. The spotlight has motivated significant changes, but even more would result from information AND choices.
That sure sounds nice, at least until you look at the implementation options, which have their pros and cons. But saying this is the only worthwhile reform, in the absence of evidence that such reform makes a bit of difference, is the sort of simplistic, narrow-minded ideology that appeals to, uh, simplistic, narrow-minded ideologues.
And since your point is about our students' ability to compete in the global marketplace, don't you wonder why the countries that are outcompeting us offer generally less of a free education market than we do?
Your post is valuable, however, as evidence that the WASL needs a section on logical reasoning.
Posted by: Bruce on March 14, 2006 02:07 PMknowsabit-
Gerald, a young, naive Lefty, knows nothing about competition. Also, Gerald doesn't go to grocery stores....he is a DUMPSTER DIVER who also eats weeds outta his yard.
Gregoire's plan is hardly about improvement in education. This is payoff to the WEA. She is spinning everything so fast we can't see what is going on in the center of the vortex!
Gerald have no fear the poor kids will remain screwed by lazy, malcontent, perverted teachers good only at reading the union handbook, checking their pension benefits, carrying picket signs and cashing paychecks that magically appear. School boards will continue to remain stacked in favor of mediocrity. Knowing full well they have monopoly without any accountability not a dang thing will improve but will continue to churn out a generation angry at the country the live in, embolden with precepts of entitlement and little knowledge they can use to improve society. Oh yes there are the few teachers that care. They care so much they do nothing to change this system except to their benefit.
Once the money can follow the kid then excellence will come statewide to K-12 education. Once anyone qualified to teach can teach rather then be subjugated to union tactics and rules then excellent teachers will teach. Once parents don’t think they are facing a principal completely neutered by the WEA building rep but are talking to someone that is accountable to them they will snap out of their fog of who will listen to me and my point of view and truly be responsible for their kids.
So Liberals if they don't kill the kid with an abortion work like hell in this state to kill the life in them with this convoluted unaccountable system pretending to educate kids.
So ya let’s reform the system....with vouchers. Trying to fix a system hell bent on paying teachers all the money and hardly caring about the kids and ignoring the parents is only feasible by strangling the blood flow. Smash the monopoly the commie socialists are already ahead of us!
If your hero Ms. Gregoire really cared about the kids, she would make available vouchers equal to the per student cost in the district the student resides in so that parents can at least have a choice about what schools their children go to. And before you start yapping about how it will take away essential funding for a district, keep in mind there will not be huge exodus from the public schools. Quite frankly a lot of parents won't be bothered by the quality of the local school. For them school is someplace to park their kids for the day. But for those of us who actually expect our kids to learn something, the vouchers would be a huge step in the right direction. That and abolishing the NEA and WEA.
Posted by: Burdabee on March 14, 2006 02:36 PMIf this is true, doesn't that suggest that our focus -- if we really care about making our country globally competitive -- should be on improving those schools, rather than taking money away from them to help the kids lucky enough to have concerned parents?
Posted by: Bruce on March 14, 2006 02:43 PMYou need to get the schools to upgrade their classes so that the ones that want to learn can and let the ones who don't want to learn alone.
Your utopia to make everyone equal is to dumb down the good ones. That, Bruce, is the problem with schools.
Posted by: swatter on March 14, 2006 03:09 PMFred, I don't understand your sentence structure ("The focus has been for a full generation of kids"), so I don't understand your point, nor your objection to my argument ("stale" is not a rational critique). Please clarify.
Posted by: Bruce on March 14, 2006 03:27 PMAnd before you give me the baloney argument that all kids want to learn, get into a classroom in a public school for 3-5 years. I have dealt with 4 school systems over the years and even in the better public school districts there are parents and kids who just aren't concerned about getting an education. We can improve our public schools dramatically over the next 3-5 years by implementing a solid curriculum, have a dress code that is enforced, and dealing with those who break the rules swiftly and firmly. Right now Tacoma and Seattle don't do any of the above and more money won't solve the problem.
Posted by: Burdabee on March 14, 2006 03:59 PMI understand the appeal of competition, but I'm not convinced it would work for education. Isn't our College/University system this way? Is it doing any better than our K-12? I'd argue it's doing even worse. Our regional universities still teach to the stupidest students and noone else learns anything. Poorer students can't afford to go the the better schools (I wanted to go to Whitman, but couldn't afford it). And our Community colleges? Most of them are jokes. Running start was even easier than High School.
I want to see our educational system change in some way, but it's not as easy as competition. There needs to be some sort of cultural change in how teachers teach so they stop lowering standards.
Posted by: Gerald on March 14, 2006 04:08 PMFred, what is your evidence that "kids are falling further behind"? And, even if it's true, you provide no reason whatsoever to attribute that to our nation's policy of publicly funding only public schools, which has remained unchanged throughout our nation's history. Elementary logic: If an outcome is changing, then the condition(s) that cause it must be changing, too. There may be other policies worth changing, but if they've been in place for over a century, you can't blame them for causing an alleged decline.
Posted by: Bruce on March 14, 2006 04:17 PMAnd yes, I thought otherwise. In my opinion Gregoire is going after the kid who can't balance a checkbook and trying to make them software programmers.
Posted by: swatter on March 14, 2006 04:20 PMI don't know what issue you're even referring to, let alone your opinion. Please clarify.
In my opinion Gregoire is going after the kid who can't balance a checkbook and trying to make them software programmers.
Really? How so?
Posted by: Bruce on March 14, 2006 04:27 PMDiscipline is a huge issue and that is something more money is not going to fix. Simply enforcing the current rules would be a good step in the right direction and would not require additional funding. But, no, that isn't going to happen because a bunch of crybabies are unhappy with the "demographics" of who gets disciplined.
As far as the dress code is concerned, just enforcing the one already on the books would suit me, but it's not. When you see kids in pajama pants and hooker wear, something needs to be done. I had more than one discussion on this issue with administrative personnel and I never did get a good answer why it wasn't enforced.
And if you really want to free up money to improve the schools without raising taxes, dump the busing. It doesn't work and is very expensive. The funds could then be used to upgrade the schools in the more economically challenged areas. However, keep in mind that cosmetic fixes are not going to turn around cultural indifference towards education. That is a problem that can only be fixed from within the community and there are no easy answers.
Posted by: Burdabee on March 14, 2006 05:30 PM- I think you'll find that private schools spend more money than public schools on textbooks and other resources and consider the extra money worthwhile.
- The busing question is a tough one. The purpose of busing is to empower families with choice, creating competition among schools. Most people think this is good, especially conservatives. However, if you allow school choice without free busing, it becomes difficult/impossible for some families to avail themselves of choice, and those families tend to be poorer (without transportation). Perhaps it's still wise to eliminate free busing, because it's expensive. You can have some choice without free busing. But we need to recognize the tradeoff.
Posted by: Bruce on March 14, 2006 07:03 PMI do not believe there should be competition between PUBLIC schools in the SAME school district.
Every student should have equal opportunity to the same levels of education regardless of the school they attend - within the SAME district (gotta start somewhere). If this is not possible, then what is the school board good for? Busing just removes resources from the students, especially those that end up staying closer to home. Isn't this the goal of NCLB? To put pressure on the districts to help ALL the students?
Why should elementary A be forced to compete with elementary B for students - in the PUBLIC school system?
It seems to me that a student (someone's child) entering a school district should be guaranteed to receive a quality education to a level of "X" regardless of the public school they attend. Save the high falutin' competition for the private sector.
Posted by: SouthernRoots on March 14, 2006 07:42 PMOn the surface, it had the stated intent of "desegregating" - of artificially shifting the balance of light skinned kids and dark skinned kids in targeted schools. It took kids out of their neighborhoods and trucked them across town. It would have been just as idiotic to force the teachers to bus across town, but at least it wouldn't have been punishing the kids. It was (like nearly everything that liberals attempt) an abysmal failure. One of the ironic side-effects of this lunatic scheme was the busing of black kids from the slightly more affluent north-end to the predominately minority south-end schools!
On your other point, personally, I don't object to a little good, old-fashioned competition everywhere ;'}
Posted by: alphabet soup on March 14, 2006 08:34 PMAs for private schools spending more money on text books and resources, keep in mind not all the the private schools have the funding of Lakeside. The big difference is the private schools usually take a hard look at what they want to offer and design programs accordingly since they do have to compete for students. Marva Collins did great things on a tiny budget.
The one thing the Seattle schools have consistently failed to do is replicate successful programs. For example, the AP program should be available in all the high schools, not just one. Also, parent-teacher conferences should continue on through high school instead of stopping after elementary school. And discontinuing the forced busing would allow schools to offer more after school activities since students will live in the area instead of 2 hours away. There is a lot that can be done without costing an arm and a leg, but it isn't going to happen in our lifetime. If you think I am not being realistic, consider that Detroit is still busing students because desegregation goals haven't been met.
Posted by: Burdabee on March 14, 2006 09:33 PMOne, equality and equity are not the same thing. I think several of you have that mixed up. It is not possible for every school to be "equal" to another given staff, building, population. It is possible for the district to expect equity among schools so that the schools have similiar opportunities. That isn't the case now but the district is striving in that direction. An example is the opening of an International Baccalaureate program at Sealth High school so that students in the south end do not have to trek north to Ingraham where the only other program is located.
About the Advanced Learning program in SPS. You DO have meet a specific score and all the wailing in the world won't get you in. You can have your child privately tested (which is expensive but on appeals, free/reduced lunch students can have it paid for)on appeal. And, for the last time, AP is Advanced Placement, a national program of subject courses for students who want the rigor of a college-level course. It is available at nearly every single high school in SPS with Garfield having the most AP classes. APP (Accelerated Progress Program) is the District's top tier of the Advanced Learning Program. It is available to ANY student who tests in with special outreach to minorities who are underrepresented.
Busing is NOT required in SPS. But if you choose a school far away, yes, your child will have to get on a bus. We don't use it for desegration and haven't for years. We do spend too much on busing and the district has already moved to a pilot program for high school students on Metro with an eye to all of them on Metro. Additionally, busing costs are higher here than in other districts (some because we have scattered all-city draws for alternative schools and some because of scattered special ed programs) but the closure and consolidation committee will make recommendations to streamline those programs to save transportation dollars.
Lastly, I suspect most of you were publicly educated (as was I) and, with the blurred vision of time, we think our public education was just the best and now it has all gone to hell in a handbasket. Kids are getting a better, more well-rounded education than we ever did. I still support public education and it was a gift to us our fore-fathers thought important as a bedrock to our nation.
FYI, Senator Barrack Obama will be speaking about education this Saturday at Garfield High School.
Also, you may want to look into the history of public education in the U.S. It wasn't a "gift to us our fore-fathers thoought important as a bedrock to our nation." That was the way it was sold to some. It partly has it's orgins in the industrial revolution. With strict child labor laws came plenty of children with free time. Crime commited by these formerly employed children became a real problem. Public schools were started, in large part, to get these troublemakers off the street during the day.
I know this is getting long, but one more point. I went to college at WWU, a school that produces a lot of teachers. One of my economics professors repeatedly pointed out this fact about WWU. Of all the degrees offered at WWU, students that went into the teaching program had on average, lower SAT scores than students going after any other degree. They end up graduating as a group with the highest average GPA among all degrees offered. You can draw your own conclusions from this...there are just too many that come to my mind to write about.
Posted by: Mark D on March 15, 2006 08:54 AMAnd yes, you can get into the Advanced Learning program if you whine enough. I was appalled at the number of unqualified students in my son's Spectrum classes (or whatever they are currently called). In one case he was so bored he took it upon himself to work through the next four chapters in two days. I didn't think this was acceptable and after a long discussion with the teacher and school administration it slipped out that several of the kids really were not qualified to be in the class and as a result the teacher had to scale back the pace of teaching. The only fuzzy response I got is that I didn't seem to understand that it was important to look at the whole student and not just the test scores.
Also, Garfield has what I consider to be the only true AP program. Just because AP is slapped on the class title doesn't mean the class lives up those standards. The quality of the AP classes outside of Garfield are all over the map. As for the IB program, I would be very interested if you know of where I can find out how many IB students have sucessfully taken the IB exams for college credit. That is the best indication of how strong the IB program is.
Posted by: Burdabee on March 15, 2006 09:52 AM