Reply #95: I'm with you on many of these issues.

[longship]

I'll add another. State Boards of Education who, scared by the Feds and NCLB, impose stupid, ridiculous rulings on the local schools.

Consider the following:

State high school exit exams which make no allowances for differences between students mode and pace of learning. Mainstreaming all ninth graders into a rigorous, academic algegra course, regardless of whether they speak english as a native language and regardless of whether they even understand how to multiply two numbers together. When over 3/4 of the students inevitably fail, the school system runs them right back through the same old meat grinder. More fail the second time. So what does the school system do then? That's right, they run them through the grinder again. Even more fail the third time. And they just do it again, until their senior year when they have to beg waivers from the state BOE for the math requirements.

Meanwhile, they let go all the bright, new mathematics teachers, six professionals in total. Why? Because having hired them without full credentials, and having promised to support them while they go through the other meat grinder of state teacher credentialling, they drop their side of the bargain and let the whole bunch go.

The result is inevitable. With a now hopelessly overworked staff, and with proportionally larger classes--now over 40 in each classroom--the failure rate increases to 94% of incoming freshmen.

This is what No Child Left Behind has done to California education.

I don't pretend to have a solution to this mess. But one thing is for sure. Something is seriously broken.

BTW, student life sucks. The students prey on each other like preditors in the wild. The staff are hopelessly outnumbered in holding the students in check. Theft and other crime is rampant. Teasing and bullying is rampant, too.

It all has to stop. We are the ones who have to put an end to it. We have to hold Chimp accountable for this and more. We have to put an new Congress in and then run the rest of these bums out of town on a rail.
:rant: