We have followed the continuing failure of the public school systems in cities like Detroit and Washington D.C. where students are graduating without basic skills or ability to compete in the new economy for valuable jobs. Instead, they are left without any meaningful chance to break the cycle of poverty that often holds them in a stagnant social strata. The most recent review of Detroit demonstrates just how badly we have failed these children. The 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress tests published by the Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics shows that 96 percent of eighth graders are not proficient in mathematics and 93 percent are not proficient in reading. This is the result despite spending approximately $14,743 per student in the school system.
The situation nationwide is not particularly gratifying with only 33 percent of public-school eighth graders scored proficient or better in reading in 2015 and only 32 percent scored proficient or better in mathematics. However, that is still an astonishing contrast to Detroit.
With only 4 percent of students proficient in math and 7 percent proficient in reading, the Detroit school officials have utterly failed in managing the system. Moreover, the dismal performance of the schools matches the a long history of corruption and incompetence in other areas of government in Detroit. On every level, public officials have failed the voters of the city to deliver the most basic services. Yet, there is no move to remove these leaders and officials in gross for what they have done to this once great American city.
The next lowest city was Cleveland where officials only achieved an 11 percent scoring proficiency in reading and 8 percent in math Among the rogue’s gallery were also Baltimore and Fresno (tied for third worst with only 13 percent scoring proficient or better in reading and 12 percent in math) and Philadelphia ranked fifth worst with only 16 percent scoring proficient or better in reading while Los Angeles ranked fifth with 15 percent in math.
What is equally depressing is that Detroit is failing a current population of 48,905 students. That is roughly 50,000 students who are being released into a world without the skills needed for success. As I have said before, this is the real crisis in our country. We will continue to see a downward spiral in the economy and crime unless we overhaul our public educational system. Otherwise, these children will be trapped in a poverty cycle that they cannot realistically escape.
I understand that many of these kids are coming from broken homes or extreme poverty that makes the task far more challenging for the schools. However, these statistics are still an utter disgrace for any system and show massive budgets being spent without minimal and measurable success. I am not one who looks to public voucher systems as the solution. I still believe in public education and I have sent my kids to public schools. I believe these schools play an important role in our democratic systems in raising future citizens. We cannot fail in this basic task as a nation and remain a viable and successful country in the increasing challenging global economy. These scores reflect a permanent underclass where these children are finished before they even start to make their way in life.
Randyjet,
The problem is not capitalism or our system of government. The problem is the lack of scruples. The landlord was a thief.
No system of government is going to make people be good, honest,or fair.
Lincoln’s mother died when he was nine.
Reblogged this on Scoop Feed.
@Prairie Rose.
Exactly as I described.
It ain’t a problem of money.
“The basic problem is capitalism..”
Yeah, the impoverished communist Venezuelans and Cubans are sure singing Marx’s praises.
Lots of Nobel prize winners from their socialist education systems, too.
There is a hidden agenda in our Educational System by the Elites (Here is an excerpt):
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/09/designed-to-fail-education-in-america.html
Designed to Fail – Education in America: Part One
“Schools should be factories in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products. . . manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.” – Elwood Cubberley’s dissertation 1905, Teachers College, Columbia University
“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” – Woodrow Wilson
In a time when our experts in education range from the operator of a software company, to a talk show host, to a Chicago businessman of no great success, to a woman from a wealthy family who went to an Ivy League school and met powerful friends, it is important to understand what the educational system in the United States was designed to do, and why it was designed to do that.
In the beginning there were two voices. As the 1840s began, a period when information and communications would revolutionize American society (the railroad, the telegraph, the steam-powered rotary printing press, machine made paper, penny newspapers with mass circulations, steamships), William Alcott and Horace Mann were the two people talking to the young United States about school.
To read more, please click on the link…..
That was KCF’s point!!
KC,
Abraham Lincoln ate fresh, real food. He had two, stable parents who were never high on drugs.
His family did value education. It seems too many inner city families do not see the value of learning and do not emphasize the importance of a good education.
His poverty and inner city kids’ poverty is not the same.
I like black people. Successful black people will tell you it gets more difficult every year for black kids to get an education because the mentality is being book smart is being white. A traitor to your race. FLOTUS speaks eloquently about this, having experienced it when it first started while she was growing up. Black kids can’t read. Here’s the irony, slave masters did not allow slaves to read. So, when slavery ended there was a pent up desire to read and black folk became voracious readers. That started changing in the 60’s. As Chris Rock poignantly says, “If you live in the ghetto and want to hide your money from a burglar, put it in a book. A nigger ain’t never gonna open a book!”
I’m with KCFleming. First, one has to have a race that loves learning. Obviously, education is not high on certain minorities values. One must have a love of learning.
Shut down MTV. This is how thug culture on the dole is propagated.
And bring back prayer into school. There is not education without the grace and help of God. As this society dishonors God, God will dishonor this society.
None of this is likely to happen, so America turns into an idiocracy–but that is the plan after all. Liberalism is only a death ideology.
Like the aforementioned Wayne State University study predicting this disaster in Detroit, Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted back in the 60’s, while working for LBJ, the welfare state would create a culture crisis that KCF speaks about. Moynihan was, and still is, vilified for having the temerity to speak the truth.
The WORLD CHAMPION KC Royals had a great owner, Ewing Kauffmann. Kauffmann gave hundreds of millions of dollars to KC Public Schools. He bought all schools computers, before even wealthy suburban school districts had them. Kauffmann paid the college tuition for ALL grads of Westport HS, his alma mater. Like JT, Kauffmann believed in public education. Kauffmann saw his money flushed down a toilet. Just before he died, the KC Schools were so bad they lost their accreditation. The problem is not money.
Randyjet,
Why did you stop tutoring, if I may ask? It sounds like you were really doing some good in your students’ lives.
What do you think of the idea of schools with lots of troubled kids having anger management and trauma counseling for kids showing the greatest signs of needing it? What about mentoring programs?
“..the main problem is poverty”
That is completely and utterly wrong.
Vast sums of money have been spent on schools over the past 50 years.
Greater sums of money have been spent on welfare programs.
All to no effect.
The problem is culture.
Abraham Lincoln grew up far poorer than any of these students.
If poverty causes ignorance, explain Lincoln.
Most of the US population was in in greater poverty in the 1920s and1930s compared to today.
Nevertheless, they were able to become educated.
The problem is is not money, but culture.
“…but given the poor pay and other factors, teachers will not want to teach in the inner city.”
‘Other factors’ being violent, entitled, and recalcitrant students in a single parent thug culture on the dole.
The basic problem is capitalism which explains why money spent on poverty programs or federal spending goes astray. I was dating a welfare mom who was a single parent who was also going to college, and I found out how welfare works for the landlords. When the welfare payments were raised, her rent went up the exact same amount. Not surprisingly, her landlord was a legislator and owned the apartments. So he just voted for a raise for himself, not the recipients. Then we have the situation of aid in Afghanistan where all the money went to private contractors who stole millions with the assistance of the US military personnel who undoubtedly got a good job after they retired. If you rely on private enterprise to do government projects, then you should not be surprised when they take advantage of the government. This has gone on ever since the US was founded. Seems like we need a new model since we have gotten little for our money and effort.
I’m about halfway through David Maraniss’ book, Once in a great city. He does an in depth analysis of Detroit @ its peak, in the early 60’s. He looks @ the auto business, Motown Records, sports gambling, UAW, black activists. I’m about halfway through. You can see the tide starting to recede. Maraniss points out a study, done back in the salad days, that predicted exactly what would happen to Detroit. It was, of course, ignored.
Our duopoly is a failure. But, big cities in this country are a Dem monopoly and abject failures. I blame Bush.
The fact is that there is NO solution until we restructure society as a whole. I used to tutor in the black inner city and the main problem is poverty. A child cannot study in a two bedroom apartment with five siblings and two adults. It takes a leader and parents at home to even begin to create the conditions for study. I decided to take my student to the library to do some research and find a quiet place, and he told me he was afraid to go because of the other kids in gangs. I am bigger than most folks, so we had no problem, but without me, he wouldn’t stand a chance. The model of teaching used in suburban schools is not effective in the inner city and to think otherwise is absurd. Money for teachers will be effective only if the teachers put more time in after school in creating study halls and extra help. Also reducing class size is a necessity, which means hiring more teachers, but given the poor pay and other factors, teachers will not want to teach in the inner city.
Then we have the lawyers to thank for teachers losing their authority and power. I gave a presentation to a class of a co-worker at UPS who had to work there because he could get no health insurance through his school system. He told me that he gave an assignment for all his students to copy by hand the Declaration of Independence, and he heard from many parents complaining about it. My parents would never have done such a thing and would have backed the teacher 100%. The same holds true for discipline in the classroom where the teachers and schools are so afraid of lawsuits, that they do nothing to control bad behavior. Many on this site were over the top in denouncing the cop who took the student out of class in a rather hard way. They do not offer any alternative to physically removing the student when she refused to comply with an order to leave. Had this been on private property, we would have applauded his actions. The police DO have to use force on occasion and force isn’t always illegitimate.
Barbarians can’t do math.
This is what you get when you lose Western Civilization.
Enjoy the decline into Idiocracy.
One of these kids is likely to become President Comacho..
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/6c/e5/68/6ce568bbbd6087fcff93a52500312120.jpg
The school problems are a reflection of the communities’ problems. The kids are from, too often, divorced or single-parent families where there is too often also violence, neglect, abuse, drugs and alcohol. The kids typically eat processed food, so their brains and bodies are screaming for good nutrition. It is pretty hard to concentrate, remember information, or study if your brain and body are inflamed from stress, poor sleep, and lack of good nutrition.
Teachers cannot easily change the shattered environments of their students.
The Youth Advocate Program I have read about
In How Children Succeed by Paul Tough intrigues me. It aims to help highly at risk kids get on a healthier path by pairing them with a mentor. This can only go so far to helping end the cycle of poverty. Another program called an Ounce of Prevention Fund seeks to improve the parenting of at risk young mothers, so that they will be better able to insulate their children from the traumas that can perpetuate the cycles of poverty.
What is Detroit doing to address the issues at home? Are the churches involved in mentoring families?
I guess I’d have to disagree with JT here. I think the public schools are a complete success. The public education monopoly is churning out exactly what it wants. Dependent dumb lemmings who will vote for liberal progressives that will steal our property and give it to them. Teachers are happy with the product since it will be shouted from their failing mouths that they just need more money. And still, with the stats in front of him, JT still falls in line and writes that he supports the failing monopoly. The definition of insanity is what?……
What happened with the $100 million that Newark, NJ schools got from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg? Not much:
Almost $50 million went to the teachers’ contract. The idea was to make teachers more accountable for student performance and to shed the teachers who were ineffective.
I’m sure that the reformers feel that money helped kids, but if you look at the classroom level, it’s hard to see an effect yet.
And $25 million went to expanding charter schools in Newark. Some of those charter schools are excellent, which is good for kids.
There was $20 million that went to consultants who received, in general, a thousand dollars a day for carrying out various management reform efforts.
There was this notion that consultants had the answers, and you could hire expertise, and pay for it at enormous prices, on the assumption that this was going to bring the magic answer,
the silver bullet to Newark. And it was an enormous amount of money that went towards something that really didn’t have a lot of returns. I don’t think you could find any way that consultant money helped children.
There is an old but relevant saying:
Those who can: do.
Those who can’t: teach.
Those who can’t teach: teach teachers.
Obviously there is a solution which is easy. If a teacher or a staff of teachers teaching math for instance have a 93 percent failure rate then deduct 93 percent of their monthly pay. Same with science, reading and sex education. Close all physical education studies and shut down the competitive sports in not only the high schools but the colleges and universities which are state funded. We do not care if Penn State beats Ohio State in football, basketball, wrestling, or track.