bald_eagle said:

As in the jealousy of a C-student?

coyotemike said:
It seems like each level of education expects the next level to fill in the blanks left by the previous level. By the time some students get to college, they are wholly unprepared for the experiance. I've had students come in, writing at a 4th grade level. I've had many that have never written anything longer than a paragraph. I've had many come in who find the newspaper difficult to read. Who knows where they are in math and science skills, but I wouldn't expect much.

This is the end result of the "teach to the test" style of education.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

and thanks for the congrats on my first real article

SockPuppet said:

I doubt it; I don't think W actually cares about people he doesn't know. My suspicion is that this is (again) aimed at cementing American class structure. Knowledge-based economy? Well, yes. So, how best to ensure that the people at the top of the heap stay there? Hmmmm...

coyotemike said:

I think you may be onto something there. This only applies to public schools, that recieve gov't funding. Private and parochial schools, since they are funded through tuitions, don't have to follow these rules and are able to, if done correctly, give a quality education. Which would then mean that only those people who can afford such schools are getting the best education out there.

When it comes to high school graduation rates, Mississippi keeps two sets of books.

One team of statisticians working at the state education headquarters here recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent, which Mississippi reported to Washington. But in another office piled with computer printouts, a second team of number crunchers came up with a different rate: a more sobering 63 percent.

California, for example, sends to Washington an official graduation rate of 83 percent but reports an estimated 67 percent on a state Web site. Delaware reported 84 percent to the federal government but publicized four lower rates at home.

The multiple rates have many causes. Some states have long obscured their real numbers to avoid embarrassment. Others have only recently developed data-tracking systems that allow them to follow dropouts accurately.

The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals.

Still, Congress did not make dropouts a central focus of the law. And when states negotiated their plans to carry it out, the Bush administration allowed them to use dozens of different ways to report graduation rates.

As an example, New Mexico defined its rate as the percentage of enrolled 12th graders who received a diploma. That method grossly undercounts dropouts by ignoring all students who leave before the 12th grade.

The law also allowed states to establish their own goals for improving graduation rates. Many set them low. Nevada, for instance, pledged to get just 50 percent of its students to graduate on time. And since the law required no annual measures of progress, California proposed that even a one-tenth of 1 percent annual improvement in its graduation rate should suffice.

Daniel J. Losen, who has studied dropout reporting ...said he once pointed out to a state official that, at that pace, it would take California 500 years to meet its graduation goal.

"In California, we're patient," Mr. Losen recalled the official saying.

SergeantPsycho said:
I agree on the problem, but I have a solution that some might not agree with: School Vouchers. If parents are able to choose schools (with public funding following the child to the parent's school of choice), then schools would have to compete to get the most attendees, and in so doing improving their classes, the services they provide, etc. Now before you call me a crazy a-hole for suggesting such a thing, consider that this is basically what colleges and universities have to do to attract students, and look how well it's worked out for them.

cockzombie said:
I guess I dont understand how school vouchers is a good idea for the poor inner city kids, because there wouldn't be a bus to take them to school or bring them home, so the single moms and other single parent families would have a harder time getting their kid to and from school. It makes the kids who can teach other kids in that classroom who are slightly better off leave instead of fixing the problem, which means the poorest and least well off kids would still be in that disaster of a school, right?

coyotemike said:

Actually, school vouchers are a good idea, as far as I understand the program. I remember watching a news program of some sort that compared the U.S. system to the Belgian system of vouchers/school competitions. Over there, since money is based on how many students decide to go to a particular school, the schools do their best to excell in the quality of education offered. The 16 year old students they interviewed were doing math and science projects on the level of U.S. college graduates. I can't remember which program I was watching, but it did make sense at the time.