Our education system could get a boost by copying Finland

I'm that segregated class.... and that's fine. I actually like this kind of class, but there aren't that many that do. "teaching" is a relative term. When teachers go to college, the type of class and student they picture is polar opposite of what I teach.

I will echo what you say about the population that is represented with the caveat that I don't think it has to do with RACE, it has more to do with family money. Schools in areas that are poor have families... tend to have schools with higher populations of 'problem kids'


so, while inner city schools do, indeed, have a higher percentage of ESE classes, so do poor rural schools with lots of whites.

I have 1 black kid, (the 68 IQ)
but I have also taught in an inner city school with the same kind of class that had only 1 white kid.

 

copying schools that don't have the same issues that we do will do nothing to improve anything in our situation. The US has huge underlying issues that other countries don't.


I will add, in my class of 18..... I have one 4th grader from an unbroken home. one 5th grader from an unbroken home (the 68 IQ)

2 out of 18 have only have a mother raising them.... 2 have grandmothers raising them, and the foster kid has no parents raising him.

That's an issue that no teacher can fix, and no school can fix.

 

we wouldn't be copying Finland, we'd be copying 1950.

 

this.....

 

whoa there! if you have special needs kids, aren't those tested against other special needs kids?

 

1950 wasn't that great, but kids learned to read, write and think...and besides the Jets and Sharks going at it, there was little violence.

 

including indentured servants? every one with two shillings to rub together.

 

The only way inner city wastelands will get their student's scores to be as good as Finland's is to replace all the students with Scandinavians.

 

Back atcha. I can't believe you're accusing an entire demographic of having low IQs. That's wassiss.. and false. There does however exist a cultural problem that Finland probably doesn't share.

 

no.


the autistic 6th grade girl and the 68 IQ boy are on alternative track diploma (basically a completion certificate) so they do alternative testing not compared to other 'normal' kids in the state and country.

However, the other 16 are tested on the same levels as others in their grade level.

and despite being 14 in the 5th grade..... that kid STILL doesn't even compare to 5th graders, he's working on a 3rd grade level.

 

It was great if you like smaller government. My dad paid a total tax burden of less than 25% in 1955. That's Fed, state, local, fees, every freeeeekin thing, and was middle class and rising.

 

25% got them by when 1 out of 8 workers didn't get their paycheck from Uncle Sam. last i heard, total tax burden was 42%..and that was sometime ago.

 

Read The Bell Curve......its not "cultural" so much as it is genetic........black IQ levels are pretty much consistently low worldwide, no matter what "culture" they are raised in......

 

This.....but instead we keep trying to make the dog jump the fence......the dog that can't jump the fence no matter how many times you beat him.....no matter how much steak you put on the other side. There's a reason you don't see Clydessdales in the Kentucky Derby......just sayin'

 

good luck. you weren't counting on that merit pay, eh?

 

My son is ESE. His class is segregated, taught by specialists. He simply couldn't be in a normal class, because he can't express himself besides a yes or no, at 3. In time he'll be fine once he learns how to speak, but for now he has to be where he is. I'd love to see how Finland deals with it. If they actually put him in a normal class for 3's, he'd be completely frustrated and lost.

 

That's not enough to conclude that it's genetic. You're jumping to a conclusion. There are plenty of visibly highly intelligent and accomplished Africans, which tells me that they're just as capable as anyone else.

Not that I'm saying a basic genetic difference is impossible and should be ruled out, either. Given the other visible differences between Africans, Asians and Caucasians, there could conceivably be mental differences. However, I'm not aware of any formal scientific investigation turning up such differences. And again, given how people from different ethnic backgrounds perform when you factor out things like culture and home life, I think it's reasonable to conclude low scholastic performance is due primarily to those things.

 

What's ESE? I hate it when people use jargon without explaining it at least once.

Whatever it is, though, I expect that even Finland will have its share of them. Google might even turn up the answer to your question.

 

There's the other component, which many countries do much better at, than we: paid or heavily subsidized higher education. Thus public schools can do what only private schools do by design, here in the US: prepare kids for college. Make our entire school system preparatory, and we'll have better educated and financially contributing members of our society.

But public schools, in the US, have a greater burden: preparing kids for life after K-12, since college is not choice for nearly enough of the student body; but it is an assumed choice for children in private schools, whose parents have the resources to pay for any college, just about.

And we can see its effect on inequality of opportunity. If opportunity we as equal as we'd like to think, the children of the top 10% in earners, would themselves have a 10% chance of being a top 10% earner. But they're doing better; way, way better: over a 70% chance of being a 10% earner, if coming from a family that is in the top 10%. That means that the bottom 90% of households, based on income, have children vying for very few remaining top 10%-paying jobs, creating a near permanent upper class in our society; and of course, a near permanent middle and lower class -- BY BIRTHRIGHT. We're perhaps now even more stark than the UK, which was previously the poster child for a caste / class system.

 

Aye, in a modern western society, college is almost always a necessity. We in the US have been moving away from an industrial economy to an information-based one, more or less, yet we are failing miserably to prepare our youth for it, hence we suffer economically and have to keep importing big brains from abroad.

 

ESE is the gifted kids. Thus a special curriculum is developed in support of them (exceptional student education).

 

The biggest problem with education in the US is not the schools, but rather the parents. If you are a parent and you are not making sure your children are applying themselves at school then you have nobody but yourself to blame when you child ends up flipping burgers as a career. That is not to say that there isn't anything wrong with the schools. I dated a teacher for a while and went to a few parties with her. One thing was for certain, when you are in a room full of teachers, you are surrounded by underachievers.

 

Regarding our higher education failure, I happen to have a highly relevant email sitting in my inbox right now:

Dear Durandal:

As you may recall, last summer, Congress and President Obama struck a deal to prevent interest rates on certain federal student loans from doubling, from 3.4% to 6.8%. What you might not remember is that this deal was for only 1 year. As such, on July 1st of this year, interest rates on Federally Subsidized Stafford Loans are, once again, set to DOUBLE.

Don't let this happen! Sign the Petition to Prevent Interest Rates on Student Loans from Doubling!
At a time when the big banks and the government can borrow money at historically low rates, near 0%, what sense does it make to charge students 6.8% just to obtain an education? Why should educational loans be treated so differently than any other type of loan in America? Is it not enough that there are no bankruptcy protections or statutes of limitations on the collection of student loan debt?

If Congress and the President do absolutely nothing, the costs to students will increase by approximately $1000 per student, per loan. That's on top of the already skyrocketing costs of tuition.

Enough is enough! Tell Congress and the President: #DontDoubleMyRates!

If you agree that interest rates on federal Stafford Loans should remain low, then please sign this new petition to that effect.

Thank you for your continued help and support!

Sincerely,

Rob, Kyle, Natalia, Aaron & The Student Debt Crisis Team

---

It costs a freaking fortune to get what is increasingly a basic education, and the cost of it continues to rise in various ways. It's also yet another way that we the little people get to pay back what idiots in Washington borrow from the banksters.

 

Make college a choice, removing financial barriers, and more of our society's kids will go to college. In fact, I'd make free school k-PhD, for any thus inspired, without regard for financial ability. Then equality of opportunity becomes more real, in the USA.

And the payback to the market, and society, is many fold. We spend a huge amount of money for something that has little impact on lifetime earnings / taxes paid / spending into the economy. The average lifetime earnings for a High School Grad, is only a tiny bit better than a non-High School Grad. And we invest in that very costly education for 12.5 years, for almost zero pay-back. Just educate that High School Grad 4 more years, and now their average lifetime earnings spikes over a Million Dollars, about 300 grand of which comes back to the Treasury, and the over 700 grand is spent into the economy. Countries pay for college because it makes the country money, and does not cost it, in the long run. They being economically smart; we're being economically stupid.

Simple as that.

 

Very interesting.. That also seems to be quite common for the public sector on the whole. For some reason, those jobs seem to draw a lot of people like that, and the unions even end up encouraging people to sink to a low standard by various means. They don't reward excellence, but they do find ways to punish it, I think, whether it comes from the top or from jealous colleagues. And it goes full circle, of course, since the system we have will only produce a bunch more underachievers to later occupy the same positions..