Gruberize them early

December 2014
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Gruberize them early

22 December 2014

George Rebane

I was chagrined but not surprised reading about Obama’s new implementation of pre-K education through his Early Head Start and Child Care Partnerships. These federally funded programs promise to create a new bureaucracy and enlarge old ones while once again reducing the states’ ability to educate their own young. I’m not sure how many RR readers give a big rat’s ass about this latest, but I do.

The collateral damage from these programs will be huge. You see, the feds will require that to work these programs you will need a bachelor’s degree to teach toddlers. And the monies will arrive with very large stacks of regulations. The obvious purpose here is to create a whole new tranche of teachers union members and reliable Democratic votes while expanding the government as the employer of last resort. Since any BS or BA degree will do, these programs will give those who ‘mastered’ useless fields a place to get a paycheck that doesn’t look like the dole.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that they also will be able to start pouring all those good social values into the empty noggins that show up in their classes. Research has shown that the benefit of pre-K education is nil for mastering real subjects later on, but that’s not the aim here. Every true progressive knows that as the twig is bent … . (more here)

Last but not least, I leave you with a little something from the ongoing catastrophe of Common Core. The photo is of a CC math curriculum workbook wherein the little darlins are (mis)taught how to quickly estimate the sum of two numbers. My math teacher would have slapped me up side my head had I responded with CC’s “estimated sum” of 500, instead of the correct estimate of 650. Common Core graduates would suffer a 22.5% error, while the old school students would be off only 0.8%. And you might note that CC assesses the correct answer of 645 as just being “reasonable”. If any of these kids want to study for a STEM career, they will need a heap of remediation to undo the damage they suffered in their CC coated K-12 education.

Posted in Agenda 21, Critical Thinking & Numeracy, Our Country, We the iSheeple

40 responses to “Gruberize them early”

Walt

22 December 2014

It’s already worse than you think Doc.,,,
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/12/21/second-graders-hold-student-sponsored-ferguson-protest/
And the excuse is ” the children thought this up on their own”..

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George Rebane

22 December 2014

Walt 1253pm – Good catch Walt. And those butt stupid teachers actually think that people believe that second graders watch news with sufficient understanding of the event and the issues to then launch a protest on their own. If ever there was convincing evidence that our government schools teacher corps is scraped together from the bottom of the academic barrel, this has got to be it.

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Walt

22 December 2014

Sorry Doc,, it is only getting worse!!!
http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/22/anti-gun-psa-encourages-kids-to-steal-parents-guns-and-turn-them-in-to-teachers-video/
Now how in hell do people who encourage this outright unlawful move don’t get charged with a crime?
This is ripe for disaster. ” Yes kids,, take your parent’s weapon.. Take it to school.. Show all your friends. Your lucky if you only get arrested.”
Yup,, more of that LIB “forward thinking” we keep hearing about.

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Larry Wirth

22 December 2014

The included example is beyond ridiculous. I would round up the 291 to 300, add it to the 354 to get 654 and then back out the 9 used to round up the original 291 to get 645 (much better than “reasonable” and simpler to boot). Good Grief!

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Paul Emery

22 December 2014

George
Walt’s poats use anecdotal examples to attempt to prove a point. I thought you were opposed to that? I remember very clearly your scolding of me for using real life examplesto illustrate the problems of health care and the dangers of guns. Please clarify.

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Paul Emery

22 December 2014

And really George, using examples from the late famous slimer Breitbart’s website is below any journalistic standards and certainly not worthy of an intelligent conversation. I’ve been blasted for using the Washington Post as a source. You are surely above this. Unfortunately your apparent acceptance of this standard reflects negatively on your stated effort to present an intelligent discussion of issues by all sides.

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Bill Tozer

23 December 2014

Ah, shoot the messenger and play the victim card. Well, Paul, you are in good company. Reverend Al is now playing the victim card as well. Hmmm. Rev Al is James Brown’s former manager. You play music. Is it the artistic side that plays the victim or should I look elsewhere? Concerning CC, should I look over here or over there?

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Bill Tozer

23 December 2014

Back on topic, perhaps Dr. Rebane or Mr. Greg might like this opinion. Teaching education vs teaching students in a historical perspective. Yep, pulling the night shift tonight.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/5141

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driveByPoster

23 December 2014

http://abcnews.go.com/US/graders-ferguson-protest-sparks-controversy/story?id=27634646

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driveByPoster

23 December 2014

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-public-service-announcement-calls-on-kids-to-steal-their-parents-guns-and-hand-them-over-at-school-9941702.html

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driveByPoster

23 December 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFOhBAH3zPA
LOL. Wow, amazing. Check out where the gun is pointed at 1:40 or so.
Hopefully our young hero reports his parents to Miniluv. There’s a lot of work yet to do.

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Scott Obermuller

23 December 2014

“And really George, using examples from the late famous slimer Breitbart’s website is below any journalistic standards and certainly not worthy of an intelligent conversation.”
Translation: This is a real story and puts my position in a very bad light. I can’t refute any of it, so I’ll complain about the source of the story.
Actually the anti-gun PSA was never intended to be run.
It’s just a publicity seeking stunt that has achieved its objective.
If Paul wants any sympathy for his being ‘scolded’ he’ll have to provide the links to his examples so we can get the full picture.
“…..the dangers of guns.” Guns are inanimate objects. They are of no danger to anyone.

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Bill Tozer

23 December 2014

That math equation from CC sure seems like a Herculean task to solve the new government way. I hope solving simple equations like the example above does not discourage too many young minds and make them feel stupid or break their spirits. Probably most will pursue the arts or social sciences after being crushed by Common Bore. I know doing it the new way seemed like just adding needless steps to the process and made me feel like the nitwit I am. Besides, I do most all math in my head which apparently is a big fat Bozo no no. Talk about School Daze and Bored of Education.
Visual aides to the rescue!
https://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience/photos/a.456449604376056.98921.367116489976035/996859393668405/?type=1&theater

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Joe Koyote

23 December 2014

So if our school systems are populated with the “bottom of the academic barrel” how do we improve that situation? Apparently decent pay and good benefits aren’t the answer because the right is always complaining about teacher pay and benefits being too high and quality too low. Charter schools and private schools aren’t’ the answer because they pay way less than public schools and so, according to your theory, must attract even lower quality applicants. Please, if you are going to chastise teachers, tell us how you would improve the situation. How should schools attract higher quality people?

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Scott Obermuller

23 December 2014

Joe doesn’t get it. The left doesn’t want American kids to get a good education. They want them to be indoctrinated into the culture of the left. Clueless kids grow into clueless adults and they can be controlled by the govt much easier. Clueless adults are easy marks for cons. And clueless adults depend far more on the govt to bail them out of their own messes. Conservatives already know how to obtain a good education for their children. Pay scale has nothing to do with it. Home schooled and private schooled kids excel across the board. Lefty elites bad mouth private schools, but make darn sure their own kids attend them. We have the answer to good education, but it doesn’t involve labor unions and the govt. So that’s the wrong answer for the left.

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fish

23 December 2014

Please, if you are going to chastise teachers, tell us how you would improve the situation. How should schools attract higher quality people?
Actually Joe I would pay them more but I wouldn’t recruit Elementary Education majors from teachers colleges. In order to be a teacher you should have probably worked in the real world for ten or so years and you should teach subjects in which you can demonstrate a degree of competency. Additionally I think you would have more success by yanking out 95% of the Dept of Education drivel that burdens teachers and administrators and provides little benefit (condoms on bananas….etc.) to students.

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Bill Tozer

23 December 2014

Mr. Koyote, teacher pay is not the issue of this current post of Dr. Rebane’s. Another strawman bites the dust.
However, Mr. Koyote, there is one solution floating around. Take all the students with failing grades and give them mercy, as in a “mercy semester”. I was traumatized when my brother and his friends went off to Nam in 66 and 67 and I sure could have used a mercy year or two. And myself later. When my folks got divorced, my little sis could have used a mercy semester to avoid being in the bottom of barrel. Yes, that solution is only for students right now, but it is our school system that produces school teachers, thus you correctly pointed our our teachers are at the bottom of the academic barrel. No argument here, just loving agreement.
http://www.inquisitr.com/1699419/black-lives-matter-protests-have-black-students-with-failing-grades-demanding-a-free-pass/
I have a novel idea. Why not raise the standards for obtaining a teaching credential. No need to add more required courses for potential teachers and add to their financial burden of student loan debt. Why not simply tweek the courses to a higher level of learning and difficulty to pass. That would go a long way to get our beloved teachers out of the bottom of the academic barrel and might even raise the teachers’ knowledge about what they are teaching to our young minds stuck in our public school systems. A win-win solution for all involved without costing the underpaid teachers a penny, nor the taxpayers. Our schools win too,

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George Rebane

23 December 2014

PaulE 1044pm – I think the follow on commenters appropriately address your excoriation of breitbart as a news source. And no one here has accused the NYT or Wash Post for lying about the facts they report, only their editorial positions about what they report or not.
I remain opposed to using ONLY anecdotal incidents in the attempt to make the general case about a policy or issue. I consider presenting only anecdotals as an extremely weak form of argumentation. However, if the synoptic case is made (almost always involving some citations of numerical data), then there is no problem in appending anecdotal evidence to ILLUSTRATE the general proposition. But these are my criteria, and aren’t necessarily used by other RR readers.
JoeK 849am – We already pay the bottom of the barrel teachers the highest wage scales in the developed world. Better teaching staffs would be easy to achieve if the unions got out of the way and allowed administrations the freedom to hire and fire teachers based on merit. But as ScottO’s 907am points out, the Left has never made academic performance an objective for public schools. Instead, they have fought tooth and nail over the years to reject merit based metrics for both teachers and students.

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Joe Koyote

23 December 2014

Scott — home schooled only works when parents are themselves educated enough to provide quality. A high school drop-out is probably not going to have enough skills and information to provide their children with a high school diploma or equivalent. Poor people can’t afford private schools. So what do we do with them?
Fish — “you should teach subjects in which you can demonstrate a degree of competency.” This would probably work in high school and college in certain fields, especially technical areas. Many college and university positions now go in that a direction versus pure academic backgrounds. But, what about elementary education where the subject matter is learning how to read, write, history, etc? Does one need a PhD in math and five years of NASA employment to teach addition and subtraction? Of, course not.
George — How does giving administrators more latitude in hiring and firing going to improve the applicant pool? As for merit based metrics, educators tend to dislike it because it doesn’t accurately measure all students abilities only those areas that are being tested. A kid may have exceptional artistic talents but be crappy in math but is only being passed/failed on his abilities in math.
The whole metric based evaluation comes from the corporate drive to discredit public education in order to supplant it with centralized corporate test based private education. They know test based metrics will make teachers and schools look bad because only the kids with aptitudes toward the test subjects will do well, and the rest will fail.

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fish

23 December 2014

Fish — “you should teach subjects in which you can demonstrate a degree of competency.” This would probably work in high school and college in certain fields, especially technical areas.
No it should mandatory at those levels.
Many college and university positions now go in that a direction versus pure academic backgrounds.
Actually I wouldn’t have any real complaints about “Academic Backgrounds” with the caveat that they not be from the grievance studies departments or education majors which are not academic at all. English majors, history majors, chemistry majors….all fine!
But, what about elementary education where the subject matter is learning how to read, write, history, etc? Does one need a PhD in math and five years of NASA employment to teach addition and subtraction? Of, course not.
No but here is where the “Common Core” fad is an example of what should be pulled up by the roots. And it will be….just wait. Teaching at the lower levels isn’t difficult….you ought to know something about boys and their personalities….a huge swath of female elementary school teachers seem to not!

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Joe Koyote

23 December 2014

you ought to know something about boys and their personalities….a huge swath of female elementary school teachers seem to not!
I can’t disagree with that.. Jr. high and high school male teachers ought to know something about females other than POA. Of course given the number of female teachers who are banging 16 year olds, it seems to cut both ways. Blame the porn industry. The average age for porn exposure in America is 12 for both boys and girls.

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Bill Tozer

23 December 2014

Fish, there is one disagreement with you on having teachers work in the private sector for a few years (8-12 years) before entering the classroom. Well, at least in California. I know a retired teacher from the Sacramento area and another from our local schools that did just that. Sad story. They made good money before teaching and paid into Social Security before entering the K-12 education system and working their way up the ladder. Unfortunately for them and their spouses, the money they paid into SS is gone forever since they are not eligible to draw SS income after entering CalStars or whatever it is called. That needs to be changed. Sure, double dipping has been abused, but we are talking two entirely work histories for the two individuals (time in the private sector and time in the public sector) that are miles apart and entirely separate from one another. It is beyond my imagination that the combined work histories would be declared double dipping and now they are both receiving a pension that makes them ineligible to drawn even SS minimum payout. BTW, both supplement their retirement check by tracing stock on a daily basis to make ends meet, which means their retirement is spent glued to the computer. Seems that that particular rule needs to be altered.

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Gregory

23 December 2014

Fish, my pipe dream is for every publicly funded K-12 school to publish the average Scholastic Achievement (nee’ Aptitude) Test results, Math plus Verbal (M+V), for the certificated staff, by school and by district. Separate out teaching faculty from Administration, Special Ed from plain old Ed. Ensure some anonymity by requiring some number (four or more?) before the average comes out.
If there is no SAT on record, or the staffer never took the SAT, no problem. Five years to comply, no cost of living or promotional adjustments until it is taken. I needed my SAT scores once and, when I found the College Board wouldn’t provide them, sent a letter to the Registrar at my alma mater and asked them to send a letter with the scores. Gave them $20 for the office doughnut fund.
The average SAT for teachers is something less than the average ~1000 for college bound high school graduates (it’s 1085 for college graduates), and the Special Education phalanx is even lower, something like a 900. In Nevada County, Special Education is overrepresented in the ranks of administrators, from our elected County Superintendent on down.

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Walt

23 December 2014

Common core should be charged with Microaggression ( a new Progressive term) against simple arithmetic. 5+6 shouldn’t be answered in 12 easy steps.

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Scott Obermuller

23 December 2014

The poor can easily afford private schools. In most states the govt already gives their kids all the money they need for a quality private education. They just don’t give them the choice to go to a private school.
Other states give 80 or 90 percent of the needed money. I love Joe’s dismissal of home schooling – it only works when it works. Tell us, Joe – why does the left try to get it banned even where it does work?
Govt schools seem to keep going with teachers that couldn’t pass a high school exit exam. Plenty of high school drop outs can read and write. They can at least teach their kids to do that. That would put them ahead of a lot govt schools.

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Walt

23 December 2014

Been to RL’s page? At least HE isn’t subscribing to common core.
If he did, no one could get past his security question.

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fish

23 December 2014

Posted by: Gregory | 23 December 2014 at 12:24 PM
I think I’ve posted this before but when I took “Cattle Call Chemistry” (250 cattle herded into the chemistry lecture hall) I sat next to a guy who seemed reasonably bright through most of the semester. Was going into engineering!
There was about a 50% attrition rate between first and second semester and I didn’t see him for the second half. Bumped into him 3 or 4 months later.
“What happened?”
“Flunked…..bad!”
“What are you doing now?”
“El Ed”

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Paul Emery

23 December 2014

George
Since you don’t see education as a function of the Federal Government can I assume that you are in favor of reforms mainly at the State level or should jurisdiction for curriculum and testing be on a local level primarily.
would you be in favor of abolishing the Fed Department of Education?

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Walt

23 December 2014

WOW.. More questions from the guy that answers NONE…

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Walt

23 December 2014

” Common Score” ( all low) is just and excuse to rewrite expensive text books.
The math book my Daddy had,(which I still have) works just as good today as it did 100 years ago. Yet LIBS think they have a better way. The tried and true adage applies today.
” Keep it simple… Don’t make it “Stupid” Or that will be the result.
Yup abolish it. Do away with the teachers union too. Today, there is no way to get rid of the indoctrinaters.

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Gregory

23 December 2014

“Since you don’t see education as a function of the Federal Government…”
Paul, can you cite the clause in the Constitution that makes education a function of the Federal government?
Can you explain what the Federal Dept. of Education does?

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George Rebane

23 December 2014

PaulE 428pm – Absolutely take education down to state levels, primarily for post-secondary schools, and then K-12 down to county or local school districts. I echo Gregory’s 614pm. The Dept of Education has been a double zero since it was established and has NOTHING to recommend its ongoing cost drain and continuing operations whatever they may be.

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Russ Steele

23 December 2014

My brother-and-law worked at the Department of Education for most of his career. For two year we has an ongoing discussion of education in the K-12 schools. He sent me report after blue ribbon report and for two years I studied these reports including internal studies, studies from contract think tanks, other non-government agencies and blue ribbon panels. I ended up with a pile of reports two feet high. At the end of my two years of trying to undestand what needed to be done to improve our education systems, I came to one final conclusion. We need to drive willow stake through heart of our education systems and start fresh. It was a monstrosity the needed to die. It is still a monster that should be killed, funding withdrawn, starving it to death.

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Paul Emery

24 December 2014

George and Gregory
We may be camping pretty close to each other on this one. I don’t see much value in most of the Federal Education programs that the State couldn’t implement. One very basic question is do we have a right to public education? If we do than there is a good case for Federal oversight. If not ? well…….
I’m on the fence on this one. Any thoughts?

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Joe Koyote

24 December 2014

It’s not the teachers, it’s McDonalds that makes kids dumb.
Apparently the more fast food a kid eats the worse they do in school. “Students who reported eating fast food once a day had slower growth in math, reading and science than students who ate no fast food. The more fast food a student reported eating, the lower their rate of academic improvement.”
I once went to a seminar on improving test scores and the only thing all the experts could agree on was “eat a meal of quality food before taking a test.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/23/fast-food-school-effects_n_6369284.html

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George Rebane

24 December 2014

PaulE 1250am – Some time back I published the Rebane National Education Policy 😉 In addition to federalization of education as I described before, I think that the only role that the federal government should have in education is to establish some common educational performance standards that would be measured through testing. These standards and tests could also be farmed out to private sector companies as are done now with SATs etc. The states could then elect to use such standards and tests or not. It would be the job markets that establish the credibility and utility of the metrics and tests. This would put the appropriate pressure on states and local school districts to use them where appropriate. That’s my take on how government should involve itself in education.
Re the ‘right to public education’ – I would approach that differently as not a right but an obligation. Public education should be available to the educable (society benefits greatly from an educated citizenry and electorate), and each person should achieve a minimum level of education to become a franchised citizen. But then, that’s a very conservetarian viewpoint.

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Gregory

24 December 2014

“If we do than there is a good case for Federal oversight.”
Where is that in the Constitution?

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Gregory

24 December 2014

“It’s not the teachers, it’s McDonalds that makes kids dumb.” -JoKe
It’s hard to have a battle of wits with the unarmed.

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Gregory

24 December 2014

“and each person should achieve a minimum level of education to become a franchised citizen. But then, that’s a very conservetarian viewpoint.”
A viewpoint that I thought died with literacy tests for those who couldn’t prove at least a 5th grade education, though the path towards a populist Idiocracy is a possibility without something as a bar to suffrage by the least able to make rational political choices. Personally, I think the “butterfly ballot” developed by Democrats in Florida for the 2000 Presidential election was probably an adequate literacy and intelligence test for the task at hand.

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George Rebane

24 December 2014

Gregory 1210pm – a minimum cognitive level for suffrage is indeed dead in the land of the gruberized voter. It is just my own druthers were I ‘king’. For the life of me, I just can’t imagine how the Founders’ Grand Experiment – which we are failing now – could ever be successfully conducted without such minimal requirements.

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