Yet Another Misdirected Roanoke Times Rant About Schools

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New Additional Item:
For a realistic documentary addressing the educational crisis in the US see
the NetFlix Video: Waiting for Superman
This hard-hitting film validates the many education items covered in this blog over the past 5 years.
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http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Waiting-for-Superman/70129364
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See a sample video at:
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http://film.waitingforsuperman.com/videos
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Roanoke Times: Mar 14, 2011; The state spends less per-pupil on education than Mississippi, leaving localities to pick up the tab for quality schools.
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Every State has their own unique division of responsibility and funding between the State and local governments and school boards. The more centralized the funding and control at the State level, the less control and management options there are at the local level.
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Which of course highlights the issue of why there is any Department of Education at the Federal level at all? Certainly the founders viewed public education as state responsibilities and limited the Federal government to establishment of the Land Grant Colleges as a “jump-start” for state development of college level agricultural education.
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$11,000 per year for K-12 results in each high school graduate receiving $143,000 of tax-payer supported public education. It is clear from comparisons of school results and performance that money is not the primary issue in why our schools are not performing as well as needed in our current world competition.
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The primary issues are:
1. Parent-student indifference and or hostility to the teaching-learning process.
2. School administrator’s reluctance or inability to manage bad student behavior.
3. Teacher skills and knowledge and motivation for their assigned classes.
4. Over reliance on technology at the expense of mastering fundamentals.
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In too many school districts unions and courts have directed the hiring and assignment of unqualified or unsuited teachers with little or no management flexibility to hire or fire or even reassign under-performers.
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In many cases our teacher’s colleges are so focused on “feel-good and politically correct” courses that the core subjects are not mastered. New teacher qualification in Virginia no longer requires math mastery for non-math teachers yet every course and our culture demand at least 8th grade math mastery. And stop using calculators until every student can add one-forth plus five-eights!
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The liberal media have had unlimited opportunities to highlight and focus attention on the real educational issues, however, they continue their pattern of supporting broken systems and demanding that all will be OK if we just raise taxes to increase funding.
Their misdirected focus adds to our educational issues. They could be part of the solution, but instead they choose to be part of the problem.
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Some prior items:
http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2010/12/too-dumb-to-serve.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2011/03/whose-working-rights-are-they-anyway.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2011/02/yet-more-roanoke-times-bias-against.html
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