Record-Low 35% in US Satisfied With K-12 Education Quality (gallup.com) 119
Gallup: A record-low 35% of Americans are satisfied with the quality of education that K-12 students receive in the U.S. today, marking an eight-percentage-point decline since last year. This is one point below the previous historical low recorded in 2000 and 2023 for this Gallup question that dates back to 1999.
Several other ratings of the U.S. K-12 education system provide a similarly bleak assessment. Only about one-quarter of Americans think K-12 schools are headed in the right direction, while just one in five rate them as "excellent" or "good" at preparing students for today's jobs and one in three say the same for college.
Yet, parents of current K-12 students are nearly twice as satisfied with their own child's education as they are with education in the U.S. K-12 parents are also slightly more likely than U.S. adults in general to rate different aspects of education positively, including the direction of education in the U.S. and schools' preparation of students for the workforce and for college. Still, none of these ratings is near the majority level.
Several other ratings of the U.S. K-12 education system provide a similarly bleak assessment. Only about one-quarter of Americans think K-12 schools are headed in the right direction, while just one in five rate them as "excellent" or "good" at preparing students for today's jobs and one in three say the same for college.
Yet, parents of current K-12 students are nearly twice as satisfied with their own child's education as they are with education in the U.S. K-12 parents are also slightly more likely than U.S. adults in general to rate different aspects of education positively, including the direction of education in the U.S. and schools' preparation of students for the workforce and for college. Still, none of these ratings is near the majority level.
Is the dissatisfaction (Score:1)
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setting aside my many thoughts about what schools could do better,
the US education system on average produces excellent results according to PISA tests.
this is about 2022 results but it's been true at least back to 2009
With the latest PISA results, America has proven once again that it has one of the smartest populations and, perhaps, the best education systems.
American Asians and Whites topped the charts; American Hispanics beat all other Hispanics; American Blacks did well.
https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/... [x.com]
And even the NAEP results that set off this recent panic have been pretty stable since the late 90s both in absolute performance and gaps between groups. Yes there was a bit of a Covid dip but nothing to write home about on the large scale.
So overall... yeah
Data breakdown by family status (Score:2)
Survey data like this needs to include a breakdown by family status:
- Single parent mother
- Single parent father
- Two parent unmarried
- Two parent married
And then breakdown by ethnicity of the parent(s), number of children, highest/lowest grade level of student, age of the parent(s), etc.
Isolating out a known area of discontent with schools, 12-17 year old boys from single parent households would be helpful.
It's spelled PIZZA (Score:2)
You must be American and can't even spell "pizza". And what does it matter how well the students can eat pizzas?
Just joking and lamenting the lack of humor, even though the topic is so serious. Anyway, on Slashdot time it's time for the discussion to die. Also a bit of a complaint about your propagation of the sock puppet's almost vacuous Subject, even though you didn't feed the troll and talked about other aspects of education... (Also funny that the troll sort of raised an interesting aspect of the proble
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Yeah. If I had to send my kid to the local school district, I'd be very unsatisfied. So much so that we would relocate to a place with better schools.
As it is, we use a private school. I am not completely happy about it, as sending my kid to this school violates some of my core beliefs, but it is my best option, as far as I can tell. I don't mind sending him there, tooooo much. If I did, I would spend more to send him elsewhere.
His school is only K-8, so he will have to go elsewhere eventually.
All children (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All children (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. It does pay politically to make the lowest somewhat functional education level the standard. Because then smart people that could cause problems leave, join the oppressors or get disillusioned and never amount to anything. As a result, mediocre (and below) "leaders" do "well". Of course, longer-term it all comes crashing down as the works throws complex challenges at all societies and failure to solve them comes with harsher and harsher problems.
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When all children are left behind, no child is left behind. The system has become too paralyzed in trying (and failing) so hard to never fail a student or even make them feel like they might be, that they're failing all of the students collectively.
There's a lot of good data out there that shows about 10% of adults are not able to navigate the world without some assistance. I could write plenty on the how and why but that's quite a rabbit hole to go down, and gets into the controversy of IQ scores and their ability to test for future success. Maybe I can summarize by pointing to studies out of the US military. While the testing for military service isn't exactly an IQ test it does correlate very well, both are testing for comprehension of much the
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This survey is from 2006, but what it says about education in the US was dreadful. One fifth of US high school graduates couldn't find the Pacific Ocean on a map, two thirds thought that the population of the US was between 750 and 1.5 billion (it was under 300 million at the time), three quarters thought English was the most widely spoken native language in the world, and in spite of the fact that the US military had been in Afghanistan for five years only 12% could find that country on a map.
https://site [unt.edu]
Maybe you could pay teachers enough (Score:4, Insightful)
It's ironic that the people putting the most energy into education in the US are drooling fascist Karens who get a rush forcing school libraries to ban random books. At least school shootings have become so blase loner gunman are turning to assassinating politically charged celebrities instead. You started solving one of the problems by doing absolutely nothing, good job USA!
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Are there legions of better teachers we can hire right now to do a better job, if in fact that's what we need them to do?
When I was a school kid, I had multiple teachers bust down whatever egos we had (especially in math class) by reminding us that various Soviet students could run circles around us in math with an abacus instead of our fancy graphing calculators.
There are school systems past and present that have produced better testing results on less money spent per student.
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Are there legions of better teachers we can hire right now to do a better job, if in fact that's what we need them to do?
I believe so.
Too much of hiring in education is based on having the right papers than their ability and motivations to deal with the children and young adults in the schools. If I were running a school and looking for someone to teach classes like biology, health and nutrition, physical education, or psychology then I'd be temped to go to the local hospitals and look for nurses and other staff for teachers. These are people that have to deal with others daily, have shown they care about others, and shown
Re: Maybe you could pay teachers enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Enough⦠according to who?
Given weâ(TM)ve been throwing more and more money at (public) education for decades and decades and havenâ(TM)t seen the kinds of results desired or promised⦠maybe itâ(TM)s not simply a money issue?
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Depends on location. Teachers in our area make a very good income. $120-150k for a tenured 4th grade teacher, not to mention the state benefits, pension, 2 months off, etc. It serves to not be in a 3rd world state, er I mean Republican ran back-asswards fucktard snowflake state. Same for law enforcement, EMS, fire. They all make very, very good incomes in our Democratic ran state. But move to some place like Louisiana and any of those jobs would be lucky to make even $60k. I'm not sure why anyone take
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The Republican party has been sabotaging education (Score:2, Insightful)
It's the classic right wing trick where you take a government program that's working just fine and maybe needs a few touch ups and then yank all the funding while methodically sabotaging it in devious ways and then tell everybody, see we tried to have public services but she just can't do it like the private sector can.
Then you privatize it and get the skin 10 to 20% off the top for your own profit. They have been dancing that Charles
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The percentage of students enrolled in private schools tends to be slightly higher in blue states as well. The biggest private schools tend to be Catholic (or
Re:The Republican party has been sabotaging educat (Score:4, Informative)
> I can tell that you have no idea what you're talking about because the vast majority of public K-12 school funding is through local taxes, not federal funding.
About 13% of public schools are funded federally. You say "the vast majority" as if to handwave 13% of their funding as unsubstantial. Most importantly, this funding goes to schools that do not have the local tax revenue to fully support them.
> The federal government has almost no control over it so they can't cut funding
The federal Dept. of Education plays a key role in ensuring equitable access to education. You know how they exert control over local schools? By creating and enforcing (or NOT enforcing) policies, because their job is ultimately to implement and enforce laws created by Congress that apply to public education.
> There are also many states that have charter schools that perform better for less money than the public schools, so it's not a money problem.
Charter schools have an abysmal reputation; approximately 1 in 4 charter schools end up out of business within 5 years [k12dive.com], leaving their students in the lurch and those who paid for it with empty wallets.
It's just a scam to funnel public money into private hands and push indoctrination. Look at all the enshittification that's happened and is currently happening in the name of chasing profits - we cannot afford that in education, financially or culturally.
=Smidge=
Re: The Republican party has been sabotaging educa (Score:2)
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Public schools don't fail int he same way that private ones do. They can't, because they aren't businesses.
It's really sad to have to explain, over and over, that operating public services as for-profit businesses - or worse, replacing public services with for-profit businesses - is literally the whole reason shit is falling apart. The peak of American civilization also had the highest tax rates for the wealthy and the most extensive and functional public services. That was not a coincidence.
=Smidge=
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The federal Dept. of Education plays a key role in ensuring equitable access to education.
What? You mean the Department That Doesn't Exist Anymore? What is is this Department of Education you speak of? It was a historical anomaly that has been removed from the discussion.
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Sweden's system isn't considered a success by everyone, including Swedes and their results have trended downward over twenty years. Not that I am saying their system never or can't work but it's also not the only answer. Plenty of nations with all public systems do as well or better.
Sweden’s schools minister declares free school ‘system failure’ [theguardian.com]
Is Sweden proof that school choice doesn’t improve education? [pbs.org]
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PBS and The Guardian are unlikely to endorse school choice, as that’s a top pet peeve of teachers unions and both outlets are notoriously loathe to risk teacher union ire. For a more practical, neutral, and scientific study of the problem, look at NYC’s most common charters as a microcosm:
- Highly favored by local minority politicians (Adams).
- Highly opposed by most white democrat politicians (Hochul).
- Highly favored by minorities in general - per Harvard and the NYT.
- Yielding better results
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Thanks for the handwave dismissal of sources you just don't like. I think the NYT is conservative so that doesn't count. It's so easy!
Also sure if we want to go to for that on charters I can also point out plenty of failures in the US but you've already turned this into an ideological issue so who cares.
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I think the NYT is conservative so that doesn't count.
The NYT is conservative? And Harvard Ed? And Stanford?
Also sure if we want to go to for that on charters I can also point out plenty of failures in the US
I pointed to an extensive and highly researched article in the lead newspaper in NYC, the NYC mayor, and lengthy research from two top tier universities. You pointed to The Guardian and PBS as if they were even close to neutral on this topic.
but you've already turned this into an ideological issue so who cares.
Choosing PBS and The Guardian as primary sources is the very essence of ideological. My pointing this out, narrowing down the problem to a more measurable circumstance (NYC), and using a variety of more rigorous sour
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The NYT comment was to drive a point because it's not (although I would say it's not liberal really either). Also Eric Adams is supposed to carry some weight with me? Why? Will Mamdani's opinion carry weight equal weight with you?
Choosing PBS and The Guardian as primary sources is the very essence of ideological.
If you're going to use the NYT as a primary source but discard these, that's just "I don't like it", these are all reputable establishments. That means you can disagree on their statements of facts or opinions and not on your bias against them but discarding them like that. The W
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Too little too late, and I've made my stance on charters clear.
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For the record I don't really care about charter schools so long as they have to play by the same rules public ones do. No additional funding than the public schools get, they have to take in any student like a public does including special ed, no additional tuition on top of that and they should be non-profits, there are too many perverse incentives if not.
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Sure. Negate the whole reason to send a kid to a charter school.
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I think that's incredibly reasonable otherwise you're just saying "charter schools do better because the system is set in their favor versus public schools" and so welcome to the issue people have with charter schools. If they can't compete on an even playing field then they shouldn't get public funding at the expense of the public schools who have to operate with those rules. We already have private schools if you want to not play with those rules.
For someone with such strong opinions you seem entirely u
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I think that's incredibly reasonable otherwise you're just saying "charter schools do better because the system is set in their favor versus public schools" and so welcome to the issue people have with charter schools. If they can't compete on an even playing field then they shouldn't get public funding at the expense of the public schools who have to operate with those rules. We already have private schools if you want to not play with those rules.
As a parent, I absolutely want my kid to go to a successful school, and definitely want him going to a school with things set in its favour. Why wouldn't I? Fuck the "even playing field". I want my kid to have advantages. The more, the better.
For someone with such strong opinions you seem entirely unaware of the other side of arguments. Not good epistemic reasoning sir.
Oh well.
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Thank you, this the core of the actual argument. You should just be honest next time.
Really solidifying my theory that the worst people to have any say in school policies are parents. Jesus Christ that's bleak.
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What have I been dishonest about? Quote it.
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When I was in high school in the 90s, the top football teams in the state were all patriarchal schools because they could actively recruit and give out scholarships. While these schools may not be very expensive, they are far more expensive than the $50-$100 in fees a family would pay for this child to be in a public school.
When private/charter schools cherry pick from the best appl
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It should be obvious why private/charter schools do better with less funding, they can be selective about who is enrolled.
Not according to Harvard, Stanford, and the NYT. Receipts:
NYT Nov 2022: As NYC Schools Face a Crisis Charter Schools Gain Students
Stanford “National Charter School Study 2023“
Harvard EdNext: Democrats Divided Over School Choice
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Yes it does. And those schools can concentrate on the "leftovers" and make the most of them as possible, while not interfering with the educational rights and opportunities of the cherry-picked ones.
I did some teaching for a while. I was also a student. One of the biggest crimes I ever saw, total educational malpractice, was the fucking over of kids who wanted to be there and learn, for the sake of the dipshits and assholes who could not give two shits about learning ANYTHING, but were hell bent on preventi
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the poster didn't say anything about federal funding. the republican party exists and operates at the state level too, you know
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It is actually a conformist (in this case fascist) approach of making everybody "the same" and a small cog in the machine. It is the desire for ultimate control and elimination of everybody that could rock the boat. Such a society becomes stagnant (the US used to avoid that by importing people educated elsewhere, but it looks like that is over now) and eventually collapses under the load of real problems it is not capable of solving anymore.
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As Grover Norquist told a group of legislators in the '90s, "To convince voters that government is broken you'll have to break it first."
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It's the classic right wing trick where you take a government program that's working just fine and maybe needs a few touch ups and then yank all the funding while methodically sabotaging it in devious ways and then tell everybody, see we tried to have public services but she just can't do it like the private sector can.
The K-12 system in the US has failed. The conservative fix here is absolutely right: institute a voucher system, with the Federally guaranteed funding level, and let parents choose schools. With obvious allowances for students with special needs, rural areas, etc.
It's quite clear that regulation is getting nowhere fast. Even the milquetoast Common Core requirements resulted in a revolt from schools not able to teach even basic literacy.
you guys just can't stop making crap up (Score:3)
There was NO drop in education spending during the Reagan years... in fact the ONLY drop in K-12 spending [statista.com] in the US on a year-to-year basis was under Barack Obama. That drop is even more notable when you look at elementary & secondary education [statista.com], but of course the secondary is not so much what this article is about. Year after year after year, education spending is the thing government has the easiest time raising taxes to fund; parents are often willing to vote for higher taxes even when they're already
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Since reagan. So yeah no shit be born on happy with the situation.
Again with the abuse of the Subject Line. WTF is wrong with you?
But no, I can guarantee this shit was going on long before Reagan. I don't think it had anything to do with political party, but rather, which religion you belonged to. Religious fundamentalists appear to be having the most impact on schooling for the general public. One of the"benefits" of all this meddling is public paying for private schooling, so perhaps it is not even religious in nature, but wealthy vs poor.
Regardless, your spinning on th
Uninformed Opinion (Score:4, Interesting)
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My only basis for evaluating the (public school) US K-12 education system is my own observations on the quality of teaching that was done to my kid when he was in public school, and contrasting to the education I was provided with myself growing up in Europe. The contrast was stark. Most of the 6th and 7th grades were for instance spent on rehashing the exact same subjects as in 5th grade without any significant development.
I was fortunate enough to afford moving him to private education starting in 8th gra
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I do see "kids" when they turn around 20-23 or so and show up in my lectures. The most striking lack I see is inability to prioritize and see and understand larger structures (which is closely related). People sometimes work themselves to death without getting anywhere. People see the details, but not which ones matter and should be remembered and which ones you can look up. People have no clue how to approach a problem that is a bit larger. And there are always some that do wayyy better, and when you talk
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Many parents look at public school as a babysitter.
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Many parents look at public school as a babysitter.
And increasingly the youth are looking at the public schools as more of their guardian/provider than their biological parents.
Public schools are apparently offering breakfast in addition to lunch. How many parents are so lacking in time and the care for their children to fix them a breakfast? Maybe they don't get a hot meal but is it so hard to set out some fruit, boiled eggs, maybe a slice of bologna on a slice of bread, and a glass of milk? What I described should be a decent breakfast by most standard
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Dude, you'd have to put your phone AND your vape down to do that much work. Ain't no one got time for that. /sigh
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Ain't no one got time for that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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My wife was making breakfast for the whole family when she was 8 years old.
Standards were a little different in the Soviet Union.
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Most of us have no basis for evaluating the quality of kids education.
I grew up under the (basically) Soviet education system. I can tell that it's waaaaay better than the average K-12.
One easy fix? Have a high stakes gaokao-style exam for the US students. SAT/ACT are about as tough as a wad of toilet paper.
Actually, I'd argue many of us DO have a basis (Score:3)
Anybody who has been in business, particularly in a technical field, for a number of years and has dealt with wave after wave of new employees over the years has probably seen the results of the education system up-close-and-personal.
It ain't pretty.
Over the past 20 years in particular, I have come to dread having to bring in a new young employee; it's like each year brings a new level of stupid. I've had junior people in the past several years hunkering down in their work areas, thinking they're not being
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My 9 year old plays with a home schooled 10 year old who lives down the street. I have a lot of exposure to him (he is at our house now, playing).
I can tell you what. In terms of social skills and maturity, he is very impressive. I wish I was getting those kinds of results.
Ironically, I randomly learned recently that they are way into Jesus and their family votes Democrat. Go figure.
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Most of us have no basis for evaluating the quality of kids education.
"My kid can't do math.", I dunno man. That speaks reams of information about the quality of education.
( I doubt you appreciated the mixed metaphors there, but I enjoyed them)
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Want to blow their mind? Buy something for $4.60 and give them $5.10, and then watch the look of confusion on their face. The majority will never figure out that you want two quarters for change, even if you tell them that.
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Actually, what I wanted was a half-dollar, but your point is made.
Just take the best ideas (Score:2)
You can do some obvious reforms and also look at what other nations succeed at adapt it your country.
Some obvious changes to me
- Stop linking property taxes to schools, this creates death loops and other issues, just do per-child per-state funding.
- Air conditioning
- Free lunch and probably breakfast too. This is no brainer and I cannot believe it is not the case everywhere.
- Start every kid on a language early, like per-k to kindergarten early. I think it's just a good skill and I wish my schooling had s
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Start every kid on a language early, like per-k to kindergarten early. I think it's just a good skill and I wish my schooling had started it earlier, my assumption is there some brain plasticity effects in there that pay off over your life. Same with learning a musical instrument.
That is really too simplistic. For example, I am a person with high math skills and high language skills (and was told that "this does not happen" back when). But I have zero interest in music and playing an instrument. That requirement would simply have wasted my time and probably alienated me. Hence what should be done early is to explore talents and interests and then give people opportunities in those areas. Using the same approach for anybody is simply a failed idea beyond a very low level (reading, wr
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Sorry I mean to compare the brain plasticity of learning an instrument early to the language learning not that an instrument should be mandatory, poor sentence structure there.
The language learning I think should be mandatory but the music thing would not although for kids who are interested I think it should be part of their work and not solely an after school thing.
I think something akin to that should be a part of curricula for every kid, effectively a hobby becomes part of your schooling but have some v
Or just study different states (Score:2)
Or just study which states are successful, which are failing, and why. Let’s look at California, Florida, and Louisiana.
California has been at the forefront of adopting modern pedological science for the last twenty years. But there’s a puzzle: its DOE NAEP test score national rank concurrently fell to the middle of the pack. Is it possible that “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and other lead pedagogy books are a garden path? Perhaps their recommendations are reducing disparity between gr
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linking property taxes to schools
The system was deliberately set up this way, to ensure that people who lived in rich districts got better schools, better teachers, and better facilities. They didn't even pretend it was something else. It's still working as designed, the schools in Benton Harbor, MI haven't been painted in well over two decades and the roofs are leaking in winter. Four hours away the high school in Gross Pointe Shores has a heated indoor pool and they go on field trips to Washington, DC.
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- Free lunch and probably breakfast too. This is no brainer and I cannot believe it is not the case everywhere.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. You haven't heard that before?
Children need to learn that their parents are the providers and educators, not the schools. Parents cooking a breakfast for their children teaches a lot of important lessons to their children. One important lesson in this is that family is where they should turn to for food when hungry, not the government. Then is lessons on self reliance as they get older, as in learning to prepare their own breakfast.
School lunches should not be free
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Nobody chooses their parents, not everyone gets your dad, some kids don't get any dads. Well fed kids do better, there is a ton of evidence to that. The school isn't there to make an ideological point about the nuclear family their job is to educate children.
The language requirement can be anything to me, I think it's pretty well proven if you can learn a second language it's way easier to learn more, more about the method of having to process that in your brain. Spanish is the obvious choice especially b
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Nobody chooses their parents, not everyone gets your dad, some kids don't get any dads. Well fed kids do better, there is a ton of evidence to that. The school isn't there to make an ideological point about the nuclear family their job is to educate children.
An education system that is seeing students perform badly because they show up to school hungry should be looking to educate the parents on the importance of a proper breakfast than providing breakfast at schools.
Once we get to a point that public schools are proving breakfast then that is not only educating the children that the schools are to provide food it is also educating the parents that while school is in session they don't need to prepare breakfast for their children. Is that the kind of lesson we
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An education system that is seeing students perform badly because they show up to school hungry should be looking to educate the parents on the importance of a proper breakfast than providing breakfast at schools.
No, just no. That's something an individual teacher can do with an individual parents but as a broad policy it fails, across the board and is also cruel to the kid whose parents don't care.
I recognize that not every parent will bother reading this stuff
Great, so you do understand my point. You would rather some kids be hungry, spend money and time on pamphlets (that wont work) instead of food and if it doesn't work, well, fuck that kid right?
I am not interested in making the hungry kid my ideological warrior against slights I have with the culture. We are talking pen
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No, just no. That's something an individual teacher can do with an individual parents but as a broad policy it fails, across the board and is also cruel to the kid whose parents don't care.
If we have "across the board" failures on parents taking the time and effort to feed their own children breakfast then we have a societal problem that cannot be resolved with breakfast served at schools. It is cruel to the children for society to teach them that when they have their own children that they should expect someone else to feed their children breakfast and lunch. How much longer before the schools feed the children supper too?
If there are parents so disconnected from the lives of their childre
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My brother in christ there's a difference between "across the board problem" and across the board policy of the school. This is obtuse and bad faith.
No the student doesn't need perceived value to be interested. If that's true then it's also true there is not perceived value to playing sports for 99.9% of students but they do it anyway and it's good that they do.
No chance of finding someone speaking Mandarin? Ok chief.
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No chance of finding someone speaking Mandarin? Ok chief.
Is that what I wrote? I didn't claim zero, I said small.
While I recognize the value in learning a second language in high school the problem I'm seeing is finding a language to teach that would maintain enough interest among the students, and among the parents that send their children to these schools, that the language program would be sustainable.
I don't see how you believe students (and parents) don't see value in sports. That is a way for young men to show off their strength and agility, and with that
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Ah, but how many Spanish and Mandarin speakers are there in the U.S.? Speakers, you know, a U.S. student is actually likely to encounter?
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One google search: 45 million Spanish speakers, so 15% and it's also all over TV. 500K for Mandarin which is less but considering it's the primary language of the second largest economy in the world it would also have economic value to a student who can converse in it. So many industries have to interface with China.
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Only if one had such need (concerning Mandarin).
I venture a guess, most Americans don't.
I remember a guy putting Mandarin on his resume for a job for which I was hiring. My only thought was "who the fuck cares?"
Same guy claimed he knew 10,000 software applications. I flirted with inviting him for an interview just to ask him to name all 10,000. I decided I had better things to do that day.
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Who cares that someone could could communicate directly with the worlds 2nd largest economy? Maybe your job doesn't but we can go anecdote to anecdote, in my industry we interface with China all the time, sometimes even having to visit factories where having an American translator yourself is quite valuable.
Again, I have already said Spanish is #1 for USA obviously but seriously, what besides Mandarin would be #2? Japanese maybe? French? German? Portuguese? Maybe but it's hardly clearcut.
Could that guy actu
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Who cares that someone could could communicate directly with the worlds 2nd largest economy?
Yes. When I am hiring for a job where use for that skill will never, under any possible circumstances that could ever arise. Absolutely yes.
That is really not a helpful number (Score:2)
For example, are they dissatisfied with too much indoctrination or too little? Are they dissatisfied with a too rational outlook on things or too little of it? And does skills and insights acquired even play a role for that dissatisfaction or not, i.e. is this even about education quality?
US has always had bad schools (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the crazy things about the US economy being one of the most successful economies in the world is that our schools have always been kind of bad, at least at the non collegiate level. I would hope that something like this was a sign we were actually acknowledging our crappy schools but I think this poll's results have far more to do with conservative culture war shit.
We've got conservatives freaking out because schools are encouraging their kids to respect LGBTQ people and are being made to "feel bad about being white" by learning accurate accounts of our nation's history while pushing for anti academic shit like creationism (yes, this is still happening), religious crap in schools, and historic revisionism which turns the left off. My money is on the bulk of this shift in public opinion being driven by all this nonsense and not on a sudden realization of our school's actual problems.
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Dems didn't campaign on LGBTQ+, GOP did! Dems barely mentioned it during the campaign. GOP knows how to mouth wedge issues loud and wide, it's how we ended up with Moutholini.
Stupidity snowballs (Score:3, Insightful)
GOP successfully spooked parents with LGBTQ+ bullshit. They cherry-picked a few bad apples and painted it as common-place. Plus, school content is controlled at the state level, not national, and was thus moot for th
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GOP successfully spooked parents with LGBTQ+ bullshit. They cherry-picked a few bad apples and painted it as common-place. Plus, school content is controlled at the state level, not national, and was thus moot for the election.*
If the issue on LGBTQ+ is "bullshit" then why even bother with separate boys and girls locker rooms? Why not have the boys and girls share a shower after PE class or track practice if there's to be no keeping boys that believe they are girls from going to the girls locker room?
It turns out that parents aren't exactly on board with the idea of boys getting naked in the vicinity of their daughters. There's also boys not exactly comfortable with sharing a shower with girls.
How do we resolve this? I have an
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If the issue on LGBTQ+ is "bullshit" then why even bother with separate boys and girls locker rooms? Why not have the boys and girls share a shower after PE class or track practice if there's to be no keeping boys that believe they are girls from going to the girls locker room?
It turns out that parents aren't exactly on board with the idea of boys getting naked in the vicinity of their daughters. There's also boys not exactly comfortable with sharing a shower with girls.
After such a dishonest characterization of what's going on I'm not going to waste my time reading the rest of your post but I will take the time to tell you that no one is advocating for all boys and girls to shower together. I will also add, blue states somehow have not had any of the problems conservatives have been crying about by giving trans people the right to use the facilities for the gender they identify with. It's all fake drama to demonize the new "other" and it makes for great political point sc
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Apples and oranges. In the military one has to learn to STFU or the enemy can hear where you are.
Don't be an ass, I'm quite certain you knew I was referring to actions in uniform while not in combat.
No analogy is perfect so your nitpick on this is you just being difficult. You know that as a government employee there's no 1st Amendment right to speak as they please while in a time and place that implies they speak for the government. While I was in uniform and my sergeant was in uniform there was an expectation for us both to speak and act like soldier, with him as my superior in the chain of command
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> There is no exception here. Teachers are to teach what is in the published curriculum
If the curriculum limits answers to certain questions for religious reasons than it's in violation of the separation clause.
> It can be a matter of health,
I'm sure the evil GOP will try to twist their argument into being about health or the like, but underlying it's religion trying to camouflage itself, like how Intelligent Design tried to disguise creationism as science. It's bearing False Witness and thus should
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Conservatives always have a villain though. Someone who's different that you have to hate. Not all conservatives but a very observable number of them and it's always been the case. If it wasn't this group it'd be another.
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One of the crazy things about the US economy being one of the most successful economies in the world is that our schools have always been kind of bad, at least at the non collegiate level.
ROFLMAO.... so says the person who didn't grow up in a wealthy neighborhood.
Wut? (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean electing completely unqualified Religious Nutjobs that do nothing but push 100% religious agendas into Education Leadership positions (from local to federal) is a bad idea when it comes to preparing American kids for the global job market - gosh I'm shocked.
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That doesn't explain school systems like Baltimore.
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Almost like a century or two of treating people as property has led to some negative outcomes. Then you have things like white flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] making a bad situation worse
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Excuses excuses. That officially ended over a hundred years ago, and numerous well-meaning parties have fallen all over themselves in the last 4-6 decades to rectify this problem. Regardless of all that, such failures have nothing to do with moralizing Christians pushing their modern agenda against public schools. Absolutely nothing. Especially not in a place like Baltimore where they have no power. Kindly address the raised point - that social conservatives are somehow responsible for the failure of s
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Don't worry. The private schools that the wealthy send their kids too are still quite rigorous and produce excellent results. America will be fine. It's slav... erm, I mean citizens are the only ones who will suffer. Who cares?
I'm Not Worried (Score:1)
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She doesn't know Artificial Intelligence from A1 steak sauce. https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
US schools have a 76% satisfacton rating (Score:1)
"The current satisfaction reading [for parents of k-12 students] is in line with the average of 76% over the 26-year trend."
Uninformed opinions are of little value (Score:2)
Parents being satisfied that the schools are good babysitters while they're away at work is no indicator of the quality of the teaching or the curriculum. The fact that the parents have a brief encounter with the teacher, perhaps once, and the teacher seems friendly and the facilities look nice is also not a meaningful gage of anything.
This is why parents approve of THEIR schools while the test results show worse results. Of course, by THIS point, the current generation of parents were, themselves, dumbed-d
Wrong problem (Score:2)
The knowledge is free.
The skilled professionals to persuade the pupil whose civil rights include refusing to learn to absorb it are not.
You can lock a kid in a library but you can't make her think. When ignorance is virtue we have lost.
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It's been coming since Ronald "Facts are stupid things" Reagan became our first president with dementia.
I have 5 kids (Score:2)
Misleading Statistic (Score:2, Troll)
While this reports that 35% of people are satisfied with K-12 education, remember that the front cover of Time Magazine in ~2004 highlighted that ~30% of high school graduates couldn't read or write.
They could - however - reproduce. They have kids now.
It's more likely that 35% of people responding to the poll didn't understand the questions, and that 95% of people are dissatisfied with K-12 education.
Hope (Score:2)
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Translation: the schools are obligated to waste time on things other than teaching.
Public school teachers answer to their unions than the schools. We need another Reagan to kill the unions. Reagan was willing to see the air travel industry brought to a stop to see an end to union coercion. We need the teacher unions killed in a similar manner in order to see children educated in facts than the opinions of the unions. If teachers face no punishment for wasting time in the calassroom then we will get wasted time in the classroom.
Private schools might have their corporate masters but th