Keep picking your nose and blaming teachers… it becomes you.

Comments

16 responses to “Keep picking your nose and blaming teachers… it becomes you.”

1. 

   J.M. Prince

   March 15, 2010

   Shhh,(2), Bill Maher evidently agrees with me too (well almost):

   [Via Huff Post]:

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-dont-fire-the-te_b_497554.html

   Bill Maher

   Host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher”

   Posted: March 12, 2010 06:44 PM

   “New Rule: Let’s Not Fire the Teachers When Students Don’t Learn — Let’s Fire the Parents”.

   JMP

2. 

   J.M. Prince

   March 12, 2010

   Shhh, more stuff on my comment way up there on 2/24:

   “We’ve got quite the impressive crop of undisciplined underachievers there too. But they typically have better & deeper social supports”.

   Also from the CBC.ca:

   CHILD PSYCHOLOGY

   Melanie Barwick

   Underachieving kids: no quick fix.

   Last Updated: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 | 4:31 PM

   By Melanie Barwick, Special to CBC News

   http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/03/10/f-barwick-underachievers.html

   Begins:

   Melanie Barwick is a registered psychologist with a primary role as a health systems scientist in the Community Health Systems Resource Group at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

   “If my friends and colleagues are anything to go by, underachievement is rampant. Kids who have the intellectual wherewithal to succeed in school, but who seem bent on bypassing homework and assignments in favour of more interesting pastimes, whether they be computer games or, well, computer games.

   I have observed their frustration as they grasp at any solution, trick, or manipulation that might motivate their “lazy and unmotivated” children and put them on course for school success. This situation is far too common, and it isn’t new. An arsenal of strategies has been thrown at the problem. Parents have rewarded, punished, entertained, pep-talked, tutored, threatened, role modeled, changed schools, changed programs, and so on, often with discouraging results. Upfront, I can tell you there is no quick fix ‚Äî sorry folks ‚Äî but we do understand some things about underachievement that may help you and your kid get to a better place.

   Underachievement defined

   ‘The problem often appears in middle school, when kids start getting homework that requires planning, disciplined work and follow-through’

   Underachievement is defined as performance that is below what is expected given normal intellectual potential. These are kids with high IQs and low school marks. The problem often appears in middle school, when kids start getting homework that requires planning, disciplined work and follow-through. This is also when kids begin to assert themselves more and make more of their own decisions. These are normally bright kids, and it is not uncommon to see underachievement among the gifted.

   Much of what we know about underachievement, its causes and potential solutions, comes from the work of the late psychologist and renowned expert Dr. Harvey Mandel. Mandel studied underachievers for more than 20 years and concluded that, contrary to popular belief, underachievers are highly motivated. They just happen to be motivated about things other than getting good grades. Knowing this is the first step to turning things around”.

   And Ends thusly:

   “As I said, there are no easy solutions for underachievement. We know some things about why kids underachieve, and that does help in figuring out what approaches may work best. However, in the words of one parent who has struggled with an underachiever for several years, “Sometimes, you have to let your kid learn his lessons the hard way. After failing three out of four courses last term, (Tom) is now on probation. The principal told him that if he wants to go back to (this school) in the fall, he’s going to have to bring his marks way up and take three summer courses. It was a huge rude awakening for him. He admits he put himself in this position and can’t blame anyone but himself. In one course, he aced the final exam but he handed in none of the assignments so he ended up with a 30 per cent, which really showed him that the assignments are really important. ”

   Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/03/10/f-barwick-underachievers.html#ixzz0hw9r4buR

   Just another data point. And no, the political winds never look especially all that favorable to directly or adequately address many of these issues. But hope dies last.

   JMP

3. 

   J.M. Prince

   March 4, 2010

   More fresh commentary from Dr. Ravitch @ Huff Post on this issue:

   Diane Ravitch

   Historian, NYU professor

   Posted: March 2, 2010 05:45 PM

   “First, Let’s Fire All the Teachers!”

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/first-lets-fire-all-the-t_b_483074.html

   Ends thusly:

   “It would be good if our nation’s education leaders recognized that teachers are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other influences matter, including the students’ effort, the family’s encouragement, the effects of popular culture, and the influence of poverty. A blogger called “Mrs. Mimi” wrote the other day that we fire teachers because “we can’t fire poverty.” Since we can’t fire poverty, we can’t fire students, and we can’t fire families, all that is left is to fire teachers.

   This strategy of closing schools and firing the teachers is mean and punitive. And it is ultimately pointless. It solves no problem. It opens up a host of new problems. It satisfies the urge to purge. But it does nothing at all for the students”.

   Diane Ravitch is the author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books).

   [End Cite]

   It’s a good solid read with much sense, and hence will most likely disappear w/o a trace into the political maelstrom.

   JMP

4. 

   J.M. Prince

   March 2, 2010

   Still more from the NYT on Diane Ravitch ‘getting off the train’:

   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/education/03ravitch.html?ref=us

   “March 2, 2010

   Leading Scholar’s U-Turn on School Reform Shakes Up Debate

   By SAM DILLON

   Diane Ravitch, the education historian who built her intellectual reputation battling progressive educators and served in the first Bush administration’s Education Department, is in the final stages of an astonishing, slow-motion about-face on almost every stand she once took on American schooling.

   Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education. She resigned last year from the boards of two conservative research groups.

   ‚ÄúSchool reform today is like a freight train, and I‚Äôm out on the tracks saying, ‚ÄòYou‚Äôre going the wrong way!‚Äô ‚Äù Dr. Ravitch said in an interview.” [More @ Link]

   She also had an interview with NPR.org in recent days. But that train keeps moving along…

   JMP

5. 

   J.M. Prince

   March 1, 2010

   I was waiting for someone to question what economic treason looked like. It’s mostly about this stuff:

   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/business/economy/28gret.html?pagewanted=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

   “February 28, 2010

   Fair Game

   It’s Time for Swaps to Lose Their Swagger

   By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

   “USING these instruments in a way that intentionally destabilizes a company or a country is — is counterproductive, and I’m sure the S.E.C. will be looking into that.”

   That’s what Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said last week when lawmakers asked him about credit default swaps during his Congressional testimony. Concerns are growing about such swaps — securities that offer insurance-like protection and helped tip over the American International Group in 2008 when it couldn’t pay mounting claims on the contracts.

   Now, there are fears that the use of these swaps may also help propel entire countries — think Greece — to the precipice.

   First, Greece employed swaps to mask its true debt picture, with the help of Wall Street bankers, of course. And now it appears that some traders are using swaps to bet that Greece won’t be able to meet its debt payments and will face a possible default.

   Mr. Bernanke is undoubtedly an intelligent man. But his view that it‚Äôs ‚Äúcounterproductive‚Äù to use credit default swaps to crash an institution or a nation exhibits a certain na√Øvet√© about how the titans of finance operate now. ” [More @ link].

   Still more thoughts on education there too:

   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28lipman.html?em

   A tribute to a famously cranky & very demanding teacher with impeccably high standards, still recalled fondly by most decades later:

   “Op-Ed Contributor

   And the Orchestra Played On

   By JOANNE LIPMAN

   Published: February 27, 2010

   The other day, I found myself rummaging through a closet, searching for my old viola. This wasn‚Äôt how I‚Äôd planned to spend the afternoon. I hadn‚Äôt given a thought to the instrument in years. I barely remembered where it was, much less how to play it. But I had just gotten word that my childhood music teacher, Jerry Kupchynsky ‚Äî ‚ÄúMr. K.‚Äù to his students ‚Äî had died.”

   [More @ link]

   JMP

6. 

   J.M. Prince

   February 26, 2010

   Yes a glutton for nose picking, actually: Also noted by the AJC & HuffPost here:

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trish-williams/cracking-the-code-to-rais_b_476535.html

   “The No. 1 finding — and it came out on top regardless of whether the analysis focused on one-year or longitudinal data or the predominant demographics of the student population served by the school — is that higher performing middle grade schools demonstrate an intense focus on improving student academic outcomes and preparing their students for a rigorous high school curriculum. They set measurable objectives and hold everyone in the system responsible for student learning. That includes superintendents, principals, teachers, students, and parents.

   Indeed, the findings reveal that educators at every level play a crucial role. Led by the superintendent, districts are essential to providing user-friendly student data and emphasizing improvement of all students. The principal is a hands-on leader who orchestrates every aspect of school improvement. Teachers work collectively to identify school needs for instructional improvement and students who need extra help.

   Not only are these practices consistent through a variety of lenses, but the report shows that the highest-performing low-income schools are performing at the same levels as high-income middle grades schools when these practices are commonplace. “This helps us crack the code about what works at the middle school level,” said Robert Balfanz, advising consultant to the study and principal research scientist of Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. ”

   http://www.edsource.org/middle-grades-study.html

   Something Mrs. Crabapple from a million years back would agree with, right? Sounds almost sensible. Who are these fools? They all look like commies I bet.

   JMP

7. 

   J.M. Prince

   February 26, 2010

   Still more nose picking, but with a few more facts: via the NYT:

   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/education/25central.html?em

   High transient population, 70% Hispanic, “41 percent of children live in poverty and 63 percent of the high school‚Äôs students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch”. And :”This former mill town of about 19,000, where unemployment is 13.8 percent”, with the requisite kicker: “Teachers acknowledge that change is needed ‚Äî the school‚Äôs graduation rate is 48 percent, and only 7 percent of students are proficient in mathematics by 11th grade ‚Äî but they say they are struggling against difficult odds.”

   Yeah. Adrift. At sea. Waiting for deliverance or destruction. As ever.

   JMP

8. 

   J.M. Prince

   February 26, 2010

   All good & fine points from Graham & Page. I’ll apologize for the length with a small obscure joke at the end.

   Following along almost as long as Page, you get used to the various serial waves of reform, but if you examine the history (as Page did) you can try and learn from these past efforts going back decades & current ‘interdisplinary’ research. In a perfect world, we might be actually gaining on the problem. Throw some of the usual politics into it, and you’ve got a recipe for unacceptable stasis, deep frustration & anger, and gaming to see who might be able to better mobilize said anger to their own short term political benefit.

   The Rethugs as always seek to break the system (whatever it is) to then turn around and declare triumphantly ‘See! It’s Broken & Government can’t help!’ Rinse & repeat. In every sector of American life. They seek to privatize the schools for fun & profit, but after more than a generation, the stats just don’t support the contention that ‘vouchers’ or other privatized ventures will consistently or regularly produce the results claimed for it.

   Still that’s the meta game being played here. Education & schooling is a central function of government affecting nearly everyone’s life, and hence of paramount importance to most & having a high symbolic value in public life. Hence the need for sacrificial scape goats. It makes for better TV. It ‘fits the narrative’ better, people come to expect it. Hence the nasty politics surrounding it all. Are all or even ‘most’ of our kids failing? No, just certain lots of them mainly in deeply deprived communities.

   Me? I think we’re ‘all in this together’, but the bottom line? Teachers can not raise your kids, nor be expected to. Yes, I understand how silly this distinction may be in real life in many circumstances. But again? The main responsibility lies with the parents. Yes they’re stressed & harried as never before, and probably have less family & social supports than ever before. But there are limits to the educational enterprise. This is one of them.

   Ergo we get the doubly strange moral configuration that the banksters are yes, now being held to lower standards than most grade school kids, and certainly most of their teachers too. Worse they know it too. Every banker over the age of 20 knew that ‘no doc’ loans were a disaster waiting to happen. Ditto for the infamous ‘NIJA’ loans. But don’t get me started there. For the record though, I wanted the top banksters taken out tried & possibly shot for treason, grand theft & spectacular malfeasance. You don’t lose Trillions of dollars in semi-transparent scams w/o any accountability or consequences. At least to my mind, so far of course I’ve been proven wrong. And the banks should have been shuttered & reorganized if they were bankrupt, which most of them (the largest) happened to be at the time of Obama’s inaugural. Many still are to this day.

   But I really do come to expect “[politicos who] chose to use NCLB as a blunt instrument to smack the teachers down with. It is deeply troubling that the school board believes that this kind of disruption and chaos could possibly be in the best interest of reforming that school”. Again, SSDD. What part of the Shock Doctrine (writ small) do we not understand? These ‘crises’ manufactured or not will always be looked upon as presenting an opportunity for political theater, for whatever crass advantage. It was probably part & parcel behind the unique ‘design’ of the entire district as a political entity too.

   So I agree with every thing being said against NCLB. It was the perfect Bush tool lying around in wait to blow up at some ill defined later date. And it was designed to do this.

   But at the end of the day we still have to contend with the heavy weight of politics. Poor districts need more resources. Naturally. For many myriad reasons. Rich districts (sometimes next door) refuse or are greatly reluctant to pay for this. Many will continue to cite the ‘failure of the schools’ as they do this, as if perpetuating failure would be an acceptable option for upwards of 30% of our future citizens & neighbors. Hence the unusual 21st century race between the fiscal needs to build ever more prisons or properly fund schools. Me, I think there needs to be 100’s of reform experiments to suit the needs of the unique communities & kids we have today. Many are doing fine with the tremendously difficult yeoman’s work of demonstrably improving the lot of kids in their districts.

   But for all too many of the ‘opposition’ it now sometimes comes back to a deeply if covertly racist cast of biologically determined IQ & ‘intelligence’ as the ‘new’ [old] ‘conservative’ critique. We can’t or won’t spend our good money & tax dollars on those horrible, undisciplined, strange [insert ethnic minority/racial epithet here], it’s just no use, they’re failures at birth. Again, this really does take us back to days of the old reformers like John Dewey who were battling the same kind of ‘social Darwinist’ [Actually Spencerian, after Herbert Spencer] social sentiments in the early 1900’s.

   OK now for the obscure joke. My ‘hometown’ library, before they rebuilt, it was a smallish place, filled with kids after school doing school work & yes running around. They might occasionally wonder about the only statue [actually a bust] in the place, which had a prominent place on the reference shelves, right next to the check out counter. It was clearly a near 19th century creation, it’s old plaster painted to look bronze, of some ancient military figure. Lee? Jackson? Hood? Gordon? No. He was indeed a 19th century figure, as his dress & naval cap suggested. With one word adorned the bottom of the bust, it proudly proclaimed the gent famously as ‘Dewey’. To my knowledge I was the only person to ever inquire after why our library was honoring yes the famous VT born Admiral George Dewey instead of the now obscure librarian, Melvil Dewey, for whom the then used Dewey decimal system was named. Our librarian knew not. And the bust soon disappeared into storage and did not make the transition to the new library.

   We don’t need our kids to all be geniuses, just hopefully marginally more competent than the prior generation. This should not be such a horribly difficult prospect, right?

   JMP

9. 

   TimC

   February 25, 2010

   I’m just going to go REALLY generic and say “What Page said”

   I make it a point never to argue with Ladies of Passion

10. 

    Graham Balch

    February 25, 2010

    As a teacher, I can share a few insights from the classroom. First, as Jason says it is a LOT harder to work in schools in low-income communities, but not because of the students. When I ask teachers from our high need schools who have left teaching why they left, the answer I always hear is: “I am sick of working as hard as I do and achieving great results while getting yelled at by the administration, disrespected by teachers who have been there forever and had my time I need to grade and lesson plan sucked up by useless meetings where nothing gets done.”

    Organizational management in education is poor because we have set up a failed certification process that keeps talented people from being educational leaders. Additionally, those who work incredibly hard to help the students most in need are significantly under compensated for what they do. Together, they create an environment in which high performers leave education. Attrition of teachers is not necessarily bad, but attrition of our best teachers is alarming.

    The quality of our education is an early indicator of so many facets of our society such as voting participation as Jules pointed out above or economic opportunity or safety of our neighborhoods. Prison construction in Georgia is based on 3rd grade test scores and if we are smart enough to figure this out, we should be smart enough to fix the problem.

    Everyone says that good teaching and good school leadership are the most important factors that impact a child’s education. However, for years we have tried to do everything but address this 800 lb gorilla in the room. Worse, NCLB created accountability for improved performance, but no real changes in education and as Einstein said “insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.”

    If we want to change education, we need to have accountability for results, but we also have to make the changes that allow us to achieve these results. To do this, we need to have a certification, evaluation and compensation system in education that attracts, retains, rewards and promotes our highest performing teachers and leaders. To do this we need to evaluate educational leaders and teachers based on results. And, we have to do it in a way that includes state tests but goes well beyond state tests to create a holistic evaluation that is not susceptible to cheating.

    Personally, I think we need educational reformers and teachers unions to do a whole lot less complaining about each other and a whole lot more working together to create this solution that the 1.75 million children in Georgia public schools are waiting for.

11. 

    Page Gleason

    February 25, 2010

    I was beside myself when I saw the RI article yesterday and have feared for a long time that NCLB would lead to some very rash decisions, such as this. There are many things I would like to say about all of this, but will do my best to stay focused on just a few. I did my masters work in Educational Policy, focusing on a few key points: 1. girls and education/gender equity in education/sexuality education. 2. School reform, especially urban educaiton. 3. the travesty that is NCLB.

    First, and this is a bit off the trend of the article and this discussion, but it is something I find deeply troubling. Let’s compare the failure of the banking industry to the “failures” of public education. We had (have) top execs and other employees at these financial institutions who got greedy, preyed on consumers, made unsound decisions, and ultimately tanked our entire economy. Not in an attempt to do good, but for the sole motivation of greed and greed alone. How did we solve that problem? By flooding them with taxpayer money and requiring nearly no accountability. And what did they do with that money? Very little of what they were supposed to – and in some cases, gave themselves outrageous bonuses and funded extravagant corporate meetings. Did the government go in to individual branches and fire everyone, including tellers and secretaries? Of course not. We were told these industries were “too big to fail” so must be saved without too much burdensom government oversight. We all know this story so I won’t dwell on it too long, but wanted to bring up the point.

    With education, on the other hand, the government’s wholesale approach to education reform has been laughable at the very least and tragic, in fact. NCLB is rediculous and deeply harmful. The punishing “failing schools” approach has always seemed to me to be a completely backwards way to approach fixing education. Which, of course, I do not think NCLB is designed to do in any real way. Again, don’t want to rant too long on NCLB, most of y’all who’ve talked to me about this know my thoughts on the real goals behind NCLB. The federal government gives very little actual money to states and school districts across the country, yet has these rediculous testing and accountability requirements that it imposes on said districts. Enter the “unfunded mandate” rant we’ve heard so much about when it comes to NCLB. So, here we have the exact opposite approach by our government in dealing with schooling as we did in the approach to the financial institutions. One was free money with no strings, the other is almost no money and an entire spider web worth of strings. Apparently, public education, in the eyes of the federal government, is not too big, or too important to fail. And that is dsiturbing.

    The whole “school reform” push by the Republicans can be said to have started with the publishing of “A Nation at Risk” which blames America’s failures (back when Japan was kicking our asses and buying up the entire country, including Rockefeller Center) squarely on the shoulders of American public education. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so. And when you’re done, read “A Manufactured Crisis”, a wonderful rebuttal to the rediculous arguements set out in “A Nation at Risk”.

    What it all boils down to is the fact that institutionalized education, public or otherwise, is extremely complex. If the problems were as easy as most Americans would like them to be (just test the kids more and blame the teachers, for example) we would have fixed public education years ago.

    When examining education, one cannot ignore a whole trove of societal issues/problems that deeply impact so many aspects of school performance and student performance. To Joe’s point, parental involvement is important, but blaming the parents alone suffers from the same shortsighted problems of blaming the teachers. There are many factors that go in to parental involvement. One brief example is a law we have been trying to get passed in Georgia that would allow parents to take off 24 hours from work in a given school year to do such things as attend parent/teacher conferences other child/school related activities. Many parents work jobs that do not allow for them to take this time during the work day to be a part of their child’s education. The Republicans have blocked this bill every time it has come up. And will continue to do so. Many children live in single parent households where the parent works more than one job in order to provide for her/his family. This often leaves precious little time to oversee homework, pick the kid up from extra-curricular activities (another influencer of student achievement – in schools that have not completely decimated their extra-curricular programs because they provide “no value”). Lack of parental ecuation and the resulting lack of appreciation for the importance of education is another factor…and on and on and on.

    To RI in particular: I am curious to know why this RI school “district” is separate from the Providence school district and is a district of one school. Seems troubling to me. With such a small district, where do they intend to find a whole crop of exceedingly competent teachers, who have so far aluded their grasp? Do they really think that removing the workers will make the operation run more smoothly? I have news for them, it won’t.

    And of course, at the end of the day, this situation in RI boils down to one thing, it seems, fair pay for teachers. The article states that all of the reforms were agreed to by tachers and the school board. The one point of contention was compensation for the extra work. When teachers wanted fair compensation, the board switched tactics and chose to use NCLB as a blunt instrument to smack the teachers down with. It is deeply troubling that the school board believes that this kind of disruption and chaos could possibly be in the best interest of reforming that school.

    I am deeply disturbed by the Administration’s response to this situation and hope they change their stance on this in the future. The RI piece is getting a fair amount of new coverage, let’s hope that coverage leads to real discussion about fixing failing schools and doesn’t form a larger bandwagon of “blame the teachers”.

12. 

    J.M. Prince

    February 25, 2010

    I’m not going to do a screen capture, as the site’s updating but here was the CBC’s take on the ‘hero math teacher story from CO’. They played it up big & adding more details than CNN will ever get around to:

    http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/24/us-school-shooting-hero.html

    “U.S. teacher ‘a hero’ for subduing gunman

    Last Updated: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 | 2:00 PM ET Comments48Recommend60

    The Associated Press”

    It was the top 6-7 ‘World story’ on the day.

    Going for the Big pic and the non sequitur prize:

    The day’s reporting @ CBC.ca also brought a reminder of what the prior generations ‘liberal imagination’ held for the education of poor & disadvantaged kids from the UK:

    “British PM apologizes to ‘home children’

    Children from London’s slums sent to work in colonies from late 1800s to 1939

    Last Updated: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 | 12:31 PM ET”

    Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/24/britain-home-children-apology.html#ixzz0gWiIeH3Q

    “British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized Wednesday for a government program instituted in the 19th century that sent poor children from London’s slums overseas to do hard labour in British colonies, including Canada.

    [Pic] ‘Home child’ Marjorie Skidmore, left, with her daughter Patricia Skidmore, talks with reporters on her way to Britain’s Houses of Parliament, in London, on Wednesday. (CBC)

    “To all those former child migrants and their families, to those here with us today and those across the world, to each and every one, I say we are truly sorry,” Brown said in Parliament.

    “We are sorry that instead of caring for them, this country turned its back. And, we’re sorry that the voices of these children were not always heard, their cries for help not always heeded. And we’re sorry that it’s taken so long for this important day to come and for the full and unconditional apology that is justly deserved.”

    “It’s an apology, it’s a beginning, and I think it’s a beginning to put together the missing stories that are not there,” she continued. “Theyr’e not in the history books and they need to be there.”

    Marjorie Skidmore, née Arnison, is one of the more than 100,000 juvenile migrants sent to Canada from Britain between the 1860s and 1939, when the program officially ended.

    Many of those migrants ended up in rural communities, where families “welcomed them as a source of cheap farm labour and domestic help,” according to the Canadian Genealogy Centre.

    The churches and philanthropic organizations that sent the orphaned, abandoned and pauper children, usually between the ages of nine and 14, to Canada were “motivated by social and economic forces,” the centre’s website says.

    [Pic] More than 100,000 children were sent from London to rural areas in Canada between the 1860s and 1939, when the program ended. [CBC]

    But the working and living conditions for the migrants could be atrocious, some former home children have said, and many of the children were exploited or abused.

    “They told us we were going to the land of milk and honey,” Elsie Hathaway, who was six when she was put on a ship after being given a Bible and a vaccination shot, told CBC News in 2001. “But I never saw it.” [End Cite]

    Bottom line? Governments have been dealing with these vital issues of poverty & the education & ‘moral enlightenment’ of the children of the ‘lower classes’ for a very long time. Way back in the ‘good old days’? They were sent out on ‘orphan trains’ from the big overcrowded cities in the east to provide cheaper farm labor to the sparsely populated West & Mid-west. Or overseas colonies if you were in the UK. And more than 100 years on, we’re still not getting it quite right, but now we’d mostly like to ignore & deny the problem. SSDD.

    JMP

13. 

    Zaid

    February 24, 2010

    Funny story.

    Arne Duncan was at my workplace and one of our interns was a chicago school teacher. He said he knew arne duncan and he’s protested arne duncan …

    Duncan praised the RI firings today or yesterday. Obama’s put the target pretty squarely over teacher’s unions with the charter school push. They’re pretty convinced on the charters, let’s hope they’re right because they’re being very right wing on this.

14. 

    Bernita

    February 24, 2010

    I have been watching the RI school debate on CNN and both sides are doing poorly at informing the average viewer about their opinions.

    Where were all the business and nonprofit leaders in this community been at? How could they allow the children to be swept under the carpet for so long…oh yeah that’s right we are talking about children who are living in poverty. America is just so darn awesome to those without money to choose their own schools.

15. 

    JerryT

    February 24, 2010

    It seems like people WANT to be pissed off.

    You know how there’s a period during adolescence when you begin to understand some things enough to be able to be critical? Before that you just accept everything because it’s all new. Well we seem to be collectively at that adolescent stage as a society. People in general feel like they are supposed to be critical of stuff, but they don’t pay attention enough to do it for themselves, so they respond to others who ARE critical of whatever.

    Supporting anything is so immature.

16. 

    Jules

    February 24, 2010

    Great post Jason.

    I’ll never forget when I made the logical connection that GA has about the same ranking for voting participation as we do school rating.. upper 40’s.

    In other words, we suck at both, no surprise that for some folks both must be demonized.

    While I have no one to send to school, it certainly behooves me to care what is going on in the schools, and pay attention to the folks we elect who ultimately call the shots in them.

    Keep us posted on your thoughts on the folks running for State School Super, really would like some more perspective on this.