Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

im curious what she meant when she was afraid of Obama because she "doesn't want everything totally altered" Did she say specifically?

Because if she didn't know what she meant by saying it, then we have a problem here.

My friend is in an inner city High School in Washington DC. Her school has failed the No Child Left Behind tests every year since the bill was introduced and it has now been put in special measures. It is destroying the school with many of the best teachers leaving. As a bright pupil with a 5.0 average 'special measures' are failing her and making her miserable. The bill needs scrapping or at least needs to be radically overhauled. My vote goes to Obama.

Remarkable Kelly -- or is it Gilligan?

You cited an Obama supporter, one undecided, but couldn't find one McCain supporter to mention, much less quote. With polls tight nationwide and likely tighter in Midwestern Missouri, it's good to see you carrying on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ impartiality. You'd think your last name would heighten your awareness of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ integrity. No relation to David I take it.

Kayla's mother makes an excellent point, and one I've also found true in my state of Missouri---the teaching process in public school only moves as fast as the classroom's slowest student. I've had 3 children in MO's public school systems (now teenagers and beyond), so I know that this problem was here long before No child left Behind became policy.

Bright, Gifted, Accelerated students (whatever you want to call them) have no opportunity to be challenged. Even children who are "above average" grow bored in a classroom that modifies its daily lessons to the lowest performing student. One of my dearest friends is a fantastic elementary school teacher, and she is frustrated to death by this because in her school it's unspoken yet expected policy not to move the class along until the slowest student catches on to the subject concept.

These children grow bored and frustrated. Learning is essentially stifled with no impetus to looking ahead and no new challenges in curriculum subjects. Like I said, I have 3 children who've been in MO public schools; this situation is very real.

It would be interesting to know how many "medicated" children (such as Ritalyn) are actually the bright, gifted or above average students who are bored out of their freaking minds being taught 2+2=4 when their minds are already comprehending 8x8=64.

Is this situation true in other states? Or is it just MO's problem? Just wondering.

#3, for God's sake, man, lighten up.

Have you read any of Jon's other entries? He's talked to lots of McCain supporters all across America! Has it occurred to you that perhaps this one day he simply didn't encounter one?

As for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Impartiality... ahem.

It's a blog. It's not supposed to be impartial. According to Webster.com, a blog is "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer."

This always grates on me when it comes up, so just one more time: A *blog* is not supposed to be impartial.


Cheers,
Johnny

#3 - this comes after numerous posts (notably in Arizona) where the views were entirely from Republican supporters.

If you want balance, overall Jon has to put it several more Obama supporters to even it up.

If you want impartiality, each place and each state will have different opinions. While he should put the case for both sides from a neutral point of view (and is), his journey might simply take in more Republicans than Democrats, or vice versa.

I think you're doing a fine job with interviews like these, Jon. Of course, the views of a single voter never make much sense. It's impossible to generalize from a small sample, but interesting nonetheless.

What's particularly odd about complainers like #3 going after Jon, is that what Mr. Kelly has been doing in this blog is straight reporting, not advocacy. Where do people get the idea that reporters can be intimidated into being flacks for one side or the other?

re. 4. tiptoplisamich:

Although No Child Left Behind may be making the problem you describe worse, it's existed in schools for decades. I remember grade school classes almost 50 years ago as being boring tests of endurance while waiting for the slow kids to learn the lesson. In part, there was and still is an unexplainable reluctance to group kids in classes by ability. Even with NCLB, you would think that the slow kids could progress faster if they were all in one classroom with a teacher trained to deal with them.

I've mentioned this in another Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ blog, but you would think that a society would want to encourage and accelerate the bright kids so they could go on to create the companies and technologies providing jobs in the future. And to do it in a way that would keep the kids engaged in the larger society and grow up with a sense of inclusion. Very bright kids who are trapped and ignored in boring educational situations don't necessarily move along on their own. They can stagnate or become discipline problems. You can end up creating very intelligent criminals.

I don't think, however, that you can say that the kids being medicated are just smart kids bored by bad schools. I'm sure there is some of that, but there are estimates that up to 20 percent of the population has some level of attention deficit problems. And kids who have been carefully tested and shown to have ADD or ADHD are often quite bright. So it's not an either/or situation.

#4 tiptop,

My Mum and I moved from Scotland to America just after my 7th birthday. I was kept back a year and had to repeat 2nd grade which I had just completed in Scotland, not based on my performance, but my age. Even after I was kept back in America, I graduated high school a month before my 18th birthday so I would have been 16 when I graduated if I wasn't kept back.

I became very bored with school because I was repeating a year's worth of basic education that I had already done. It's true I was a bit of a hyper kid anyway, but my behavior changed the day we started fractions. This was something new, and I went from being analyzed by social workers and tested for ADD to the top of the class almost overnight.

It all came down to boredom. I think my story shows that the last thing you want to do is let a bright, but overly enegetic, kid get bored.

In Zimbabwe we inherited a system of moving children into different classes depending on their ability.
The main disadvantage that I saw from my friends was that they had less self confidence in most situations. And of coz the main advantage for the high achievers was that you kept on being pushed to do your best against other bright kids. And also some kids from the less achieving classes would put effort to get in the high achieving classes

AArdvark808 (#10), that's a sad story, but it's important to note that it wouldn't have happened everywhere in the US. Each state has a separate system of education, and within each state, many districts with a lot of individual responsibility. My daughter had no difficulty entering the school system earlier than the standard age cutoff prescribed, and I am sure that there are many school districts where this would be possible.

Even so, I admit that the school systems in Europe are, for the most part, better than those in the US.

Meh, it wasn't that sad. I can't say there's been any adverse effects in my later life, and it may have actually been the best thing for me to mature a bit. My point was just that, in my personal experience, not intellectualy stimulating a hyper kid, reguardless of intelligence level, can lead to actions similar to what some would describe as ADD. This all took place circa 1986-7ish so it can't really be seen as criticism of the current education system.

re. 12. Gary_A_Hill:

It's interesting that your daughter entered school earlier than the standard age. I've heard of many cases where parents have held their kids back so that they would have a competitive advantage from the extra year's maturity. My son was right at the birthday cutoff point for entering school and could have been held back, but we thought that he would have gone nuts from boredom in another year of kindergarten.

re. AArdvark808 and sibantubanye:

Because each individual school district in the US is funded largely by property taxes within that district, there can be quite a difference between schools in poor areas and those in affluent areas. In poor areas there will be less good facilities, much larger class sizes and less well-trained teachers. Good teachers get hired away by rich schools. Plus, families under economic stress will have a harder time supervising homework, meeting with teachers, and providing a basic supportive environment for their children. So it will be harder for a poor but bright kid to excel academically.

To Timohio, Aardvark808 and Garyahill

You have all made some excellent points about education in the US. I would like to add a few more thoughts. I have observed the system for more that 70 years, through my own experience as a child here, through raising my own children in a variety of different states and now I am raising a young grandchild.

First, I will say that I despise the "No Child Left Behind Act" because it is not doing what it purported to do. Many children are being left behind because adequate funding was not provided. It truly was a case of not putting money where your mouth is, but it did sound good to voters. The onus is on testing, and not on teaching. I will give you an example of this. My granddaughter got terrible grades last year because she did not work and had a difficult teacher but scored high in the state testing. I asked for her to repeat the grade or be sent to summer school. This was denied because she had PASSED THE TEST. She is now struggling because some basis skills were not mastered. Some children are very good at taking tests and the teaching focuses on this. Is this learning?

Next, as has been pointed out here, education depends on where you live, what the tax base is and whether taxpayers are willing to PAY. Where I live the needs of children and education are at a low priority.
I am not in a position to move so I am stuck with what I can get. We supplement as best we can at home for our grandchild.

When I went to school, children were informally grouped by how quickly they could learn. I see nothing wrong with this. As the child of immigrants, my English was way less that perfect. I was in a lower group until I could speak, read and write at a better level. I worked very, very hard because that was expected of me both at home and at school.

I feel that education in the US has been slowly deteriorating for many years. There is no discipline in schools, teachers get little respect. Parents will not take responsibility, much less require their children to do so.

So often emphasis is on the superficial, rather than the important work required to gain learning. Children are obsessed with electronics and fashion rather than on knowledge and working hard in school.

I know am probably a fossil and that this is a new century but this can not be good for our children.

My daughter has been attending public schools in Philadelphia since kindergarten and I really wish that we as a Nation would make education a priority and revamp how we fund it, what our priorities are, and ensure that there is equality in opportunity in the educational system.

NCLB forces schools to spend vast amounts of time just teaching to the test. Add to this the amount of time that each student, at least here in Philadelphia, spends taking standardized tests. There are the PSSA, Terra Nova, and Benchmark testing.

I'm lucky that my daughter was able to get into a magnet program where the school's administration has made it the mission of the school to provide every child attending is taught from the Mentally Gifted program curriculum. Even if the student hasn't been "labeled" as Mentally Gifted. This has created an environment where each child is pushed to excel and meet the higher standards. The principal has also gone to great lengths to ensure that the school has a vibrant creative arts program. In this age where music and art are the first programs cut her school has weekly art classes and a full music program, with an orchestra, band, choir, etc.

aquarizonagal-

Thank you for your post; it perfectly illustrates the problems in our system. I think everyone here has made some excellent posts and I agree that there are many problems in the US education system. I went to public schools and got a good education, but I lived in a wealthy suburb in Washington State and I know that had a lot to do with it.

I am in graduate school now, and I have mentored several classes of students who have just begun their undergraduate education. It is disheartening to see that students who all graduated from the US public school system finish high school at vastly different levels of education. One of the biggest problems, I feel, (besides lack of funding and teaching to a test) is the fact that students' education in the same system varies so greatly. In one of my classes, the students were all bright and hard working, but the ones from rural Oregon or inner cities were majorly disadvantaged to the kids who had gone to schools in the wealthy areas outside of Portland and Seattle. I don't have all the answers, but I know that something needs to be done. The place a person lives shouldn't predetermine their educational fate.

#3 should becareful before he assumes things. I attended the meeting at the Poplar Bluff 5th and 6th Grade Center and they had as many people speak up for McCain as Obama. There were several people in attendance that chose not to voice who they were going to vote for myself included. As far as all the complaints concerning the advanced/gifted students not being challenged - those parents have valid concerns and if you were present in the meeting you would have also heard the parents bragging on how this year their children were being challenged more than ever. However, if these parents are so concerned about their child being challenged maybe they should do what parents do that have students that are struggling with academics - hire a tutor. Someone in the audience Tuesday mentioned that it is not the schools job to raise the children. The parents need to be challenging these students at home with academics and extra-curricular activities. I have observed many times that students that are that far advanced of their peers have a great deal of difficulty with social skills. Maybe getting them involved in outside activities would help with this problem. Don't get me wrong I am not saying we should not try to do more to challenge these students however, if you would listen to a parent of a child with learning problems you would probably hear the same complaints "the schools do not do enough for my child". I volunteer at school a lot and you all have no idea how hard these teachers work. They deserve much more respect and pay than what they will ever receive.

I heard Kayla on the radio this morning, and I just wanted to say what a bright, thoughtful, well-spoken girl she is. Never said well..., um..., or like... She was most impressive!

In the U.S. lack of funding is often touted as the root cause of poor academic performance. It simply isn't true. I spent my elementary school years in Canada (many decades ago, it's true). There were no fancy classrooms or supplies or equipment, sports facilities or free lunches. Everything was very low-budget and very basic. Yet we learned Phonics, Mathematics, Latin, Physics, Chemistry, World History and a foreign language (which most of us could use at a rudimentary level at least by the time we left the 6th grade). Aside from modern technology, I know I was vastly more educated at that time than most children of a similar age are in this country today. It isn't the funding holding them back, any more than it's the funding that is producing some of the brightest young minds in India, China and any number of less affluent nations around the world. You can throw as much money as you like into an education system, but if the teachers don't teach, the students don't cherish and use their opportunities to learn, and the parents don't raise their children to respect a culture of learning, it won't make a whit of difference.

To#18Superhardly

I support your comment that teachers are under paid and not respected. Teachers have to deal with discipline problems and are not supported by their administrations or by the parents. Teachers are blamed if all children do not excel in state testing.

Parents often do not want to take adult responsibility, making excuses for their children and sometimes even doing the child's school work. How can teachers' deal with this?

Teachers have a very hard job. We are willing to pay bankers and investment people millions while many teachers can barely pay their living expenses.

There is something very wrong with our priorities in this country.

My father was a brilliant teacher and he used to say that he would have made much better money if he'd been a plumber. He did however help thousands of students see through the 'sewage' in generic, conservative USA mainstream education. When he died his former students came from all across the country and out of the country, so that his wake at home was packed wall-to-wall with grieving, grateful and expressive people all telling stories about Dad's very special effect in their lives. He was passionate about creative and progressive education. He took phonecalls at all hours from troubled students; I've met several who say he saved them from suicide. What a disgrace it is that our country thinks SO little of its most gifted teachers - while greedy bigoted filthy rich gazillionaires are lionized.

Once your children have mastered the basics , the best way to ensure that they are truly educated is to ask yourself this: are they being taught to believe--or to think? Groupthink is the enemy of progress.

Why the big surprise on a bible belt's student comments that "well, I don't want everything totally altered?" It doesn't take much to notice the hidden biased she was raised on. She could have said the typical ignorant and arrogant statement those in the Southern states say: "I don't dislike people of color, I have some friends that are black."

The fact is, our school, just like the judicial, jury, police and penal systems, practice it's systems along Neo-conservative right wing nationalist socialist lines. Except for the propaganda lines of communication that the USA is superior to all other nations is drilled into the education of our schools children. There is no definition or feed back of what the world thinks of them. The truth is hidden by own it's brand of history books. World History, geography, languages, social studies, inter-culturalism (this dreadful horrible word does not appear in USA dictionaries) are not taught in schools. This along makes the USA educational system is one of the most ignorant in the entire world.

Again, what is so surprising about school children, especially in the bible belt's region being ignorant of the world around them?

The fact the Obama (a half white, half black) has superior in knowledge of what the world is around him, makes him a target of racism, racist, and every Neo-conservative nationalist socialist Tom Dick and Harry in the USA!

The fact that blacks and Hispanics lead in drop outs of secondary schools attests to the fact that the educational system fails in every which way. And until the education system begin to identify with them, than perhaps we can say we have more of a "educated" America. Hispanics, especially cannot identify with their "only English" Anglos teachers simply because Hispanics are able to speak two languages and their Anglo teachers can only speak one. Where does the USA's educational system measures that type of intelligence?

The truth is, it doesn't want to!

re. 20. nwcanadian

I don't think you can use India and China as models for what can be achieved in bare-bones educational systems. I doubt that the Indian doctors and engineers who emigrate to the US grew up poor on the streets of Calcutta, and I would assume that China identifies and supports promising students the way they identify and support promising athletes. If you think back to the so-called "tofu schools" that collapsed there during the recent earthquake, you get a picture of neglect of educational resources in poor rural areas.

I certainly agree that throwing money at our schools won't fix our educational system, but the current level of funding in many urban and rural school districts is very low. I'm not talking about fancy classrooms or sports facilities here, I'm talking about roofs that don't leak, heating systems that work in the winter, wiring that isn't a safety hazard, adequate fire-suppression systems, up-to-date books for students. Things like that. And then there is the funding to pay enough teachers for an appropriate student/teacher ratio. One teacher isn't going to be able to adequately teach 40 students of varying abilities.

The southeastern part of Ohio is part of Appalachia, and until a major lawsuit forced the state to step in and assist the local districts, the condition of the schools there was a scandal. I'm sure the same could be said for many inner-city urban schools.

In Ohio, state politicians have gotten elected for decades by promising to lower taxes. One of the things that got cut as a result was state support for higher education. It's one of those things that doesn't have an obvious short-term negative impact. Ohio now ranks 48th in the nation on a per-capita basis for funding of its state universities. And Ohio is not a poor state. Some state colleges now refer to themselves as state-assisted rather than state-supported. Tuition at state colleges and universities has gone up sharply as a result, shutting out students from working-class families or forcing them to take out enormous loans.

Education in the US is a multi-layered problem. Parental involvement and support is important; so is a culture that values accomplishment in education at least as highly as athletic accomplishment. We have to stop expecting our schools to make up for all of society's shortcomings between 8 am and 3 pm. We have to let go of an educational model that focuses on teaching facts and start emphasizing concepts and critical thinking. But proper funding levels for all schools would help.

#25 timohio
Perhaps it is a generational difference (I'm a senior citizen, female), perhaps it is just coming from a completely different frame of reference. But I, and most of the people I grew up with, came from what would now be considered poverty. Many of our parents were new immigrants to Canada, had no safety net, no money, not even a knowledge of English yet we, their children, achieved fantastic success. There has to be an attitude geared towards that goal, as well as a willingness to sacrifice and persevere and to seek out opportunity. If schools are as uninhabitable as you describe, then the people of those communities should get involved in cleaning and repairing them. Poverty does not imply ignorance or helplessness. It shouldn't paralyze one into doing nothing or, worse, waiting for others (usually government) to do something.

My problem with all this testing is that teachers spend so much time 'teaching for the tests' and the actual testing itself that there's no time left for REAL LEARNING.
When I was in school we would spend about two weeks on various standardized tests. Now that time is doubled if not tripled. What has that accomplished?
There's way too much emphasis placed on standardized tests.
As for knowledge, when I was 11 I knew all about electric bills, loans, taxes and so on.
As for PAYING those bills, there's going to a a whole lot of people who can't pay their bills or buy food in the future unless something is done about the economy. I don't think a McCain administration would be able to cope with it. Obama is more visionary. McCain will just continue Bush policies and this country can't afford another 4 years of that.
But what do I know? I'm a POOR person. Only the RICH matter in this country.

I didn't take her comment about not wanting things to be totally altered as a racist comment. I took it as she was talking specifically about the NCLB legislation. Not everything about it is bad. Most teachers expect and are comfortable with reasonable accountability. If funding was in place to help ALL kids, NCLB would be an ideal provision. I agree with her..........tweaks are all that is needed....not a complete overhaul. That's how I took it anyway...not racist at all.

To tiptoplisomiches point, yes, the dumming down of education is going on in other states-I live in Minnesota. As a society we really don't groom our best and brightest. To the readers question about Ritalin, a VERY high percentage of ADD/ADHD kids tend to be high IQ. There is a disproportionate number of boys on this medication. Boys are over represented in their numbers in special education, on medications and under-represented in going to college. It has gotten to the point where many colleges are resorting to quotas on female students-in other words, higher qualified female applicants are being turned down, so boys with lower scores can be admitted-and this is ALL boys, not just black or latino.

My kids went to Lutheran schools from kindergarten to 8th grade. (until they were 14) The interesting thing comparing King of Grace to the local schools, was that they had a smaller library, limited computer access, teachers were paid less than the public school teachers, yet these kids scored really, really well. The difference? I think that the parents were more involved in their kids' education. You can spend up to 20,000 dollars a year per student in a school system, but if the kid does not hae support at home, food on the table, or an involved parent, all of that money won't to a thing.

re: 29. nursedude:

I think that one reason why boys are more likely to be medicated with Ritalin than girls is that boys are more likely to have the hyperactivity component to ADHD. Girls are more likely to be simply attention deficit. I've never actually seen a hyperactive girl or woman, although I've seen a number of hyperactive boys and men. Gender stereotyping of women means that adults may not see attention deficit behavior in girls as abnormal or even undesirable. They're just labeled as what used to be called "spacey chicks." So the girls fall off a teacher's radar screen. The ADHD boys, on the other hand, are more likely to be disruptive in a classroom and be identified as problems that need to be dealt with.

It's interesting that society considers under-representation by boys in colleges to be a problem. For decades no one thought it was a problem that girls were under-represented in colleges. I say if the boys don't want to study, tough--they don't get into college. They've come from the same families and gone to the same secondary schools as the girls, why should they be treated differently? It will make it easier for the nerdy guys to get dates :-)

I went to Catholic schools in the 50s and 60s and I remember that those schools (which didn't usually have terribly good facilities) out-performed the local public schools. My little high school had three National Merit finalists out of a graduating class of 135. The local public high school with a graduating class larger than my entire school had 1 National Merit finalist.

However (and this is still true today), parents who put a high value on education and were concerned about the disruptions and the poor academic reputations of public schools were more likely to put their kids in a parochial school, sometimes even if they didn't belong to that particular religion. So the parochial schools not only got more involved parents, they probably also got the better and more focused students. And the parochial schools weren't obligated to keep problem students; they just kicked them out and sent them back to the public system.

So it's kind of shaky to compare the results of parochial and public schools.

I was homeschooled for 7 years because of the low standards of the small town public school, and the even worse standard of the private school. After 5 years (when I was in 11th grade) I took classes at a private university (3 classes /semester) for two years, and I got 2 Bs, a few A/Bs, and the rest were As. I could do better than almost all of the students there when I was 2 years younger. Now I am in a great school, harder than most undergrad schools in the world, because I was homeschooled and was able to work at my own pace.