A reader, Denis Ian, left the following comment, which is a thought that has often occurred to me. If our public schools are as terrible as the reformers say, how did we get to be a great world power? If our kids are as dumb as Arne Duncan says, why does our nation produce so many Nobel Prize winners? Why do reformers sound like they live in a failed state? Why don’t they move to France or Bermuda?
Denis Ian writes:
“If some lonesome alien just floated into this nation … and had only the Common Core pronouncements as a guide … they’d immediately assume that they were now stuck in some bottom-of-the-barrel country populated by a species that was about an inch beyond bacteria on the evolutionary scale.
“This is their tiresome ploy. Failure is all around … and we’re all too, too oblivious to see all of this with our very own eyes … because near-bacteria hasn’t that sort of sophistication. If all of this were true, we’d all be packing our trunks and marching off to blissful lives in Guatemala or Mali or Nepal. I guess we’re too stupid to even move. That must be it, right?
“What’s so stunning to me is the fact that so many of us are still here … and that our miserable, failing nation is the most desired destination on the planet. All of which begs certain questions that are never, ever addressed by the Common Core corps.
“Here’s the real mystery … How has America maintained its premier economic circumstances when we are populated by such uneducated dolts? How is that this nation is ground zero for all sorts of medical innovations … and that people from the Arab world and Asia and Europe zoom here for medical treatment? Oh! And why are our universities the most desired in the world? And can they explain the happy accident why we have the best standard of living the world has ever experienced? Help me out here, will ya?
“How is it that our military is the most technologically advanced? And what explains the fact that we produce enough food-stuffs to feed ourselves … and vast portions of the world? I’m stumped why we’re the first to offer emergency services when disaster strikes around the globe … and folks seem numb to the USA insignia on replacement equipment, food, and supplies. Did I fail to mention the doctors, engineers, and EMT professionals we send as well?
“That’s a lot of very dumb folks doing some miraculous things.
“Now, to our schools. Something’s wrong, alright. Our schools don’t behave according to the Common Core observations. Our public school faculties are some of the most credentialed on the planet.These public schools lay the foundation that has made America the most recognized Nobel prize producing nation of all-time. No country has ever been so inventive as America. None. We lead in medical inventions and innovations … the same for computer technologies … as well as for mechanical innovations of all sorts. Man, those dumb Americans are the luckiest folks the world’s ever seen!
“These failing public schools have produced world-renown playwrights, artists, actors, musicians, vocalists, and authors of all sorts. These dreadful public schools have given rise to admired engineers and architects and urban planners. They’ve yielded ship designers and astronauts … and the vessels they use to speed around space. We accidentally put men on the moon and recently bumped into Pluto. Ooops! Hope that mistake doesn’t happen again! … some folks will be very embarrassed.
“I hate to mention our political maturity, but I have to. I know we’re supposed to be extremely basic thinkers according to those gifted Common Core pushers, but what explains the relative historical, non-violent political experience in America? We don’t lop off the noggins of lousy rulers. We don’t have a coup every other full moon. And we have dozens of nations world-wide that have modeled themselves after our political foundations. We’d better call them with the bad news that we’re not worth emulating. We’re failures.
“Apologies for the over-the-top sarcasm, but lots and lots of very fine people have had their reputations battered by these frauds who premise that American schools are huge disasters. It’s time to get in their faces …
“It’s ironic that even these asinine Common Core critics cannot give credit to the very experience that allowed their fertile minds to crank out such a creative and embellishing litany of lies. What ungrateful failures!”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Two reasons Diane:
1. The best universities in the world that finally challenge our best and brightest
2. A lot of extremely intelligent immigrants to the universities in #1
And where did all of these professors in our “best” universities come from? Foreign countries??????
Did you hear the gong that says you are WRONG?
Virgina, before you make an ignorant assumption you should do your homework. What hate radio program do you listen to—Rush Limbaugh?
You said, “The best universities in the world that finally challenge our best and brightest” and “A lot of extremely intelligent immigrants to the universities in #1”
“There are 1.13 million foreign students in the U.S., the vast majority in college-degree programs, according to a report to be released Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security. That represents a 14% increase over last year, nearly 50% more than in 2010 and 85% more than in 2005.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/international-students-stream-into-u-s-colleges-1427248801
“In fall 2015, some 20.2 million students are expected to attend American colleges and universities, constituting an increase of about 4.9 million since fall 2000.”
Not taking into account the 85% increase in foreign students since 2005 and only focusing on 2015, only 5.62% of college students in the U.S. are here on student Visas.
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
AND THEN THERE IS THIS:
But while universities roll out the welcome mat for international students, U.S. immigration law ushers them out soon after they graduate. International students who want to work permanently in America after graduation have to navigate a Kafka-esque maze of immigration law that demands incredible amounts of money, time, and uncertainty. There is no direct path from graduating at an American university to gaining permanent residence, according to Neil Ruiz, a senior policy analyst at The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. In fact, even before they are handed F-1 student visas, international students must prove that they intend to return to their home countries upon finishing their degrees.“We want them for their tuition, but don’t we want them for their talent,” Briggs asked me.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120463/immigration-law-discourages-international-students-working
In addition to this:
Nearly 40 percent of working-aged Americans now hold a college degree, according to a new report from the Lumina Foundation.
In 2012, 39.4 percent of Americans between 25 and 64 had at least a two-year college degree. That was up from 38.7 percent in 2011, the largest single year gain since 2008. But Lumina is promoting a college degree attainment goal of 60 percent by 2025 and the current upward trend isn’t happening fast enough to get us there.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/percentage-americans-college-degrees-rises-paying-degrees-tops-financial-challenges/
My public high school was so challenging that college didn’t shock me in the least. I was more than ready and prepared graduating summa cum laude from both high school and college. Thanks to my alma mater, Philadelphia High School for Girls, for making me college and life ready. I went on to be one the many “incompetent” public school teachers in America inflicting ELLs with my own personal brand of “failure.”
Vgsp, I’m always amazed at the anti-teacher crowd. We do indeed have the best universities. But to paint such a blanket statement implying K-12 students are not challenged is odd. I see the opposite everyday – students that want a challenge in high school can get it in our own schools. That freedom for teachers to go off script and enhance learning is being replaced by test and punish and over-reliance on data.
Remember too that a 16 year old is much different from a 20 year old. Where K-12 public schools try to educate all, universities work to filter kids out. A very different mission.
But it plays out in other ways. My college cohorts always insisted that if you flunked out of engineering, you could join the military, say the navy. I found that view insulting even if I didn’t pay the patriotic card as politicians do. Coming from a long lineage of those that served from all branches, perhaps it is time to start valuing respect again. Try it.
Well, that kind of depends. In public schools completely dominated by “movement” reformers they say the opposite- public schools are improving by the minute- as long as it’s “reform approved” policy.
You saw it during Common Core “testing season” last year. The same public schools that can’t manage to do anything right somehow magically transformed and got all kinds of credit for efficient and compliant management of data collection. That only lasted as long as the testing lasted though. They’re failing again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
To the Milton Friedman greed-is-good worshiping neo-liberal Obama administration, that I foolishly and ignorantly voted for twice, our public schools are failing because the are not turning a profit for a few corporations and even fewer individuals in the private sector—a profit that will allow someone like Eva Moskowitz to pay herself more than $500,000 or more annually in addition to all of those lavish donations from Hedge Funds that she spends so she can pretend she is the leader of the Hitler Youth or Mao’s Little Red Guard when she buses her victims, the uniformed children who attend her so-called Success Academies, to rallies that look like they were straight of of Germany before World War II or China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
I wonder if anyone really knows the real meaning behind Eva calling her corporate Charters schools Success Academies—that the title of her schools means she was successful at finding a way to make a lot of money using children.
Well, we can’t be very bright if we keep doing the same “dumb” things like TEST, TEST, TEST! Remember the definition of stupid = doing same things over & over, & expecting a different response!
It isn’t WE. It’s them—the oligarchs and the greedy quisling fools who work for them in the corporate education reform movement.
Right on Dennis:
You said “Apologies for the over-the-top sarcasm, but lots and lots of very fine people have had their reputations battered by these frauds who premise that American schools are huge disasters. It’s time to get in their faces …”
THAT was the fraudulent line from the get-go, the big lie that was designed to allow the legislatures to defund the schools and give the money to private charters.
The media invented failure and used the Duncan narrative about those “Bad teachers” to evaluate the cream of our experienced educators OUT THE DOOR… SO THE SCHOOLS would fail, as hospitals would.’
Krugman talked about how they do this on the subject of health reform to maintain the illusion of failure so they could hand our health care over to the privateers, in this case the insurance industry and Big Pharma.
It was SOOOO easy to play this ‘failure card’ to an ignorant public who understand so little about how the human mind learns —just rid the schools of the very teachers that YOU pointed out made our people so capable.
I put this crucial essay of mine in many of my comments,
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
but I wrote it int 2004, because I had experienced it and saw how this would end our schools as the places of education that the had been when teachers had the authority to facilitate the acquisition of KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS… BOTH… which made us great as you point out.
OUT WE WENT as the unions looked the other way and Ducna shouted VAM, and gates gave us the magic elixir Common Core.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
Here is the clue in this Bill Moyers show–while not about schools, but aboutTHE MEDIA for THEY ARE THE CUPLRIT… the propaganda machine.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/john-nichols-and-robert-mcchesney-on-big-money-big-media/
Bill predicted the end of it all because of big money:
http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/22/5-signs-dark-money-apocalypse-upon-us/?utm_source=General+Interest&utm_campaign=94370722aa-Midweek_0924149_24_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4ebbe6839f-94370722aa-168347829
Lenny Isenberg put the finger on the lies hiding the mess in LAUSD http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/have-reporters-become-poli-ticks–the-media-parasites-of-the-body-politic.html
Inventing failure was a piece by Krugman, not about schools, but offering the process.
Dennis, you describe the past —It will indeed be a different place America when only the wealthy get to educate their scions
As Bernie Sanders points out, and Moyers said,
http://billmoyers.com/2015/02/25/end-big-moneys-chokehold-democracy-amend-constitution/?utm_source=General+Interest&utm_campaign=3e81ce4555-Midweek12171412_17_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4ebbe6839f-3e81ce4555-168347829
We have to end the chokehold on democracy and amend the Constitution, something Bil lMaher also spoke about on his show, airing this week.
The people have to grasp that the PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION establishes a government to promote the common good, and that is PUBLIC EDUCATION, and health care, and good roads and infrastructure… NOT the wealth of kings and barons like these guys
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924
If they have their way, the America you describe will cease to exist, because people who earn over 1.5 million dollars and HOUR, cannot be allowed to control our destiny!
We need tend CITIZENS UNITED!
It seems Mr. Sanders missed the “memo”. He’s going on and on about wealth
concentration, prison population, medical care, family leave, vulture capitalists,
discrimination, bloodshed, military spending…
How do you reach a guy like that? Send him a lapel flag pin?
Just a thought. Those who won Nobel prizes are not a product of the educational system of the last thirty years. So it might be a little too soon to use that as a comparison, I would think.
The sliding discussed is over the past three decades.
So if you look at it from an historical perspective it’s too soon.
Yeah. Perhaps my experience is very different, but the urban schools I worked in were failing schools, and I’m not speaking from a test score perspective.
The schools I, and many of friends, work/ed for were failing because of funding. The system isn’t providing our schools enough resources to be world class. Teacher and principal turnover is extremely high, schools are out of control, truancy and vandalism is high, curriculum is watered down, students with special needs don’t have services (some of these folks aren’t knowledgeable enough to support their students), classrooms are 35+ students, some schools have classes of 60, teaching to the test is becoming the norm. It is completely dysfunctional. When you have good, strong teachers with a vision to teach (and teach very well in these environments) who are reprimanded by administration for doing the right thing and challenge the “reform”-minded staid quo, you lose faith in the schools.
Also, the lack of budget means schools are not hiring counselors, secretaries, and other staff that are vital to the successful running of a school. In many of the inner city schools here, teachers are required to teach a “seminar”, where these teachers act as counselors for a certain number of kids, conduct transcript evaluations, assist in college application process, etc. It’s absurd – and this is in addition to the teaching duties (which is increasing due to budget constraints).
In my experience, I personally believe we have many failing public schools (especially in the Detroit area). Why are the schools failing? Well, it’s mostly due to funding, lack of adequate resources, and turnover.
Are we the dumbest nation in the world? Absolutely not. Are our schools failing? I would say many of them are not, but we have a number of them that are.
Whoops! I meant to reply to the main post!
Former Teacher: You have pointed out a very valid criticism in public education. All schools are not equal or even fair. Many states are choosing to starve public schools, and some urban districts have had to share resources with the burgeoning charter market. We need more mandates to ensure that democratic public education is adequately funded and supported to meet the needs of all students.
Rudy,
What changed in the past 30 years?
In the 1970s, desegregation of our public schools (but so much backsliding that they are now almost as segregated as they were 40 years ago).
The inclusion of children with special needs and disabilities.
The influx of a large number of non-English-speaking children in public schools.
Our public schools have a Constitutional obligation (as defined by the Supreme Court) to educate all children, not some.
Which part of these changes would you eliminate?
From a historical perspective, which is my field of specialization, I would say our public schools are doing an amazing job of coping with ever-increasing challenges, amid a barrage of ignorant complaints about them.
That is because Nobel prizes are usually awarded after a lifetime of work. We send more kids to college than thirty years ago. While getting a diploma was usually the end of a person’s education then, now most students attend post secondary. Calculus and even trig was rarely taught in high school in the past – most students had to go to a local college. Now, AP calc classes are full. Drop outs 30 years ago were simply hired on to jobs that existed in industries and paid a living wage. Now, drop out means poverty. Top police departments today want at least a bachelors degree with world language skills a plus. The military recruits like heck for graduates qualified to navigate a more complex defense force (my daughter’s phone calls are constant). Today’s 20 something’s in college are smart, serious, and motivated compared to my beer swilling, basket weaving college days.
Now, where exactly is that sliding you are seeing?
I would add this. Our universities to which the nations of the world send their students because of the quality are STAFFED BY PROFESSORS EDUCATED IN THE U. S.
Dumb? Indeed; Not only in the horrendous denigration of our public schools but remember back when the newspapers in the U. K. printed, editorialized if memory is correct when George W. Bush was elected
“How could … people be so dumb?” [Forget the exact number but it was at least approximately the number of U. S. citizens.
My BIG concern too: How can any reasonable person not understand the humongous implications of climate change but people are elected who disdain the abundant evidence.
Bernie Sanders was the only Democratic debater who put this as the most important item to be addressed. AND if not addressed soon it may be too late. Already our military and insurance companies are making plans for the inevitable if something is not done AND SOON.
Thanks Gordon…so true. And in LA, China sent many elementary school teachers to observe in the Hobart classroom of Rafe Esquith. At UCLA, stats show that about 40% of the student population, including undergrad and grad, are Asian.
“How Dumb are we?”
Dumbest people on the earth
Dumb enough to keep in power
Those who steal our right of birth
Downgrade country by the hour
Reblogged this on stopcommoncorenys and commented:
Denis Ian has graciously blogged here on the Stop Common Core NYS team, and we welcome again his words of truth.
Posturing about Nobel prizes and parents should be tempered with some rarely cited facts. Machismo is part of the posturing and arguably part of the problem.
Nobel prizes:
The number of US Nobel Laureates soared after WWII, and “govment” infrastructure played a big role in that.
The Nobel website has many fascinating facts. For example, about 30% of the US winners were born in the US. About 30% of who received an award had moved from their country of origin. Mobility to the US was greatest among the prize-winners in medicine. The average age of winners is 59, except for literature, where it is 65.
The US leads in prizewinners—336. It is at the top of the heap in awards for economics and in all other categories except literature. Among the 112 literature prizes, most have been for prose (77), followed by poetry (33), drama (14), philosophy (3), and history (2).
Only 5% of all Noble prize awardees have been women, with the majority of these since 1980.
Marie Curie was honored twice, once for her work in physics (1903) and once for chemistry (1911).
Of the 48 other women awarded the Nobel Prize, between 1901 and 2015 the major categories for awards where: peace (16), literature (14), medicine/physiology (11), chemistry (4), and physics (2).
Patents:
A study from 2012 shows that only 7.5 percent of regular patent and 5.5 percent of commercial patent holders in the US are female.
“The most important determinants of the gender gap among science and engineering (S&E) degree holders are women’s under representation in patent-intensive fields of study, especially electrical and mechanical engineering, and in patent-intensive job tasks, especially development and design.
Women’s lower share of doctoral degrees plays a minor role, reducing their probability of patenting at all, while women’s younger age plays a minor role by reducing the number of patents for those who have any.
Hunt (2010) finds that pay and promotion issues cause women to be more likely than men to leave engineering (compared to other fields). As similar patterns are found in other male-dominated fields, she recommends improving women engineers’ mentoring and networks, and addressing possible discrimination by managers and co-workers. Such measures might also encourage more women to enter engineering.”
Source for this study and some others of possible interest: PDF (306 K)
Link to study of patents is http://www.nber.org/papers/w17888.pdf
Just one minor correction.
The prize in economics is not a real Nobel prize, though that is how the media portray it.
It’s a public relations coup (very successful) that, from the getgo, was intended to boost the respect accorded to economists.
“One of the Federal Reserve banks explained it succinctly, “Few realize, especially outside of economists, that the prize in economics is not an “official” Nobel. . . . The award for economics came almost 70 years later—bootstrapped to the Nobel in 1968 as a bit of a marketing ploy to celebrate the Bank of Sweden’s 300th anniversary.”
— from
There Is No Nobel Prize in Economics
“It’s awarded by Sweden’s central bank, foisted among the five real prizewinners, often to economists for the 1% — and the surviving Nobel family is strongly against it.”
Economist William Black has referred to it as a “near beer variant” (Economics could be a science if more economists were scientists)
“Raj Chetty has written an op ed in the New York Times designed to counter the abuse the Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden’s central bank) rightly received for its latest embarrassment. Economics does not have a true Nobel Prize, so a central bank decided to create a near-beer variant. The central bankers have frequently made a hash of it, often awarding economists who got it disastrously wrong and inflicted policies that caused immense suffering. This year, not for the first time, the central bankers decided to hedge their bets – awarding their prize to economists who contradict each other (Eugene Fama and Robert Shiller). The hedge strategy might be thought to ensure that the central bank’s prize winners were right at least half the time (which would be an improvement over the central bankers’ batting average in their awards), but that is a logical error. It is perfectly possible for both of the prize winners to be wrong.”
/////end quotes
Of course, Chetty believes he deserves a “Nobel” for his crappy, Chetty picked claims about VAM and future earnings that anyone who has had an intro stats course would cringe at. And he may very well get one, if the garbage that has been awarded in the past is any indication.
Chetty is a perfect example of someone who would be laughed right out of the profession if he were in any legitimate scientific discipline. But in economics, he is held up as some sort of guru, is asked to testify as an “expert” witness at trial (Vergara) and even has the ear of the President o f the United States, who has based policy on Chetty’s claims.
I should have said “most anyone who has had an intro stats course would cringe” because there are undoubtedly some who have had intro to stats who did not learn anything.
“Stupid is as stupid does”
Stupid is as stupid does
Fire teachers just because
Students didn’t have a rest
Night before they took a test
Cut the funds and close the schools
Just because the testing rules
Set the cut-score oh so high
That it nearly touched the sky
Stupid is as stupid does
Drop the recess just because
Billy Gates says “That is best
Way to boost the score on test”
This is nice and concise:
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/opinion/guest-column/2015/10/17/abandon-common-core-standards-start/74047302/
Denis Ian. If I may add, YOU were educated in the ‘not college ready’ old school way of learning. What you’ve written here is a no-brainer to all us dumb adults.
“They” keep chasing some imaginary goal instead of embracing the talents we already exhibit – like a parent whose child is never good enough.
This op ed from two years ago says it all–destroying the argument of “failing public schools” in one of the places that started the trend (Utah):
http://www.sltrib.com/57185377
Threatened Out West, I think that op-ed shows why many of our schools are so bad (not all mind you). The Nobel winner had an independent streak in him and resisted authority. Thus, the teachers appeared to ignore his brilliance and his guidance counselor even told him he’d be a “mediocre student”. Sounds like a 3rd grader I know whose teacher told the parents that she “was just a middle-of-the-pack, average student” who didn’t need more enrichment. Turns out that teacher also chose not to view the aptitude tests of the 3rd grader who had scored above 99% on both tests given.
When the Nobel winner reached college, his wings begin to spread. He was challenged and as the op-ed author says “It was at USU that Lars grew intellectually and emotionally”. How is this an advertisement for the (implied) suffocating environment that was his high school?
We all agree that we have brilliant students in the US. The Nobel and other data show that we also are fortunate to receive a lot of brilliant immigrants to the US. But while we do have some great teachers, more often it’s a case of those brilliant students on the right of this chart being suppressed by the mediocre education majors from the left of this chart. Allegretti, the great professors came from the right of that chart after escaping their K-12 teachers on the left.
MathVale, yes more is taught in school than 50 years ago but that occurs everywhere around the world. If we fall behind other nations, it will show up in our standard of living. I’m not saying that all students are not challenged. I’m saying there are many students who are not being appropriately challenged and inspired (both at top and bottom of the curve). Test prep is a choice of the teachers and admins. Effective teaching is what kids need. That shows up on the test results, not test prep.
Laura Chapman, yes, we want more women in the sciences. No, the reason that more women don’t achieve that ultimate success is not because of discrimination by men. Men are just more variable than women. Shows up in negative traits too (serial killers). Women are more tightly bunched (“stable”?) in a whole host of areas. And according to lots of data (admittedly controversial), males clearly have a larger right tail of the distribution. Of course, this shouldn’t inform your opinion of any random person you ever meet. But it does help explain the trends and overall proportions of winners.
Lloyd, I don’t quite understand your point and sorry for my sloppy grammar (getting pretty lazy these days). My point was that there is a near limitless supply of intelligent immigrants willing to come to the US. I would steal, oops I mean welcome, the most intelligent citizens of all other countries to the US. They should all get visas. The reason they do not is because Democrats insist on expanding immigration for unskilled immigrants in return for reforms in the highly skilled sector. D’s know that highly skilled immigrants are likely to vote R (or maybe an even split) whereas unskilled will eventually vote 70%+ for the D’s. See Orrin Hatch’s proposal to greatly increase the number of highly skilled, college students allowed to immigrate.
Virginiasgp,
proposal
> a plan or suggestion, especially a formal or written one, put forward for consideration or discussion by others.
In fact, it doesn’t matter what all the political factions want and what the often lying talking heads in hate radio claim, because a proposal isn’t a done deal. A proposal is a work in progress. Again, I suggest you do your homework and study the history of immigration starting with the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, when President Obama was four years old.
http://www.history.com/topics/us-immigration-since-1965
In addition, How the United States Immigration System Works: A Fact Sheet
“U.S. immigration law is very complex, and there is much confusion as to how it works. The Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), the body of law governing current immigration policy, provides for an annual worldwide limit of 675,000 permanent immigrants, with certain exceptions for close family members. Congress and the President determine a separate number for refugee admissions. Immigration to the United States is based upon the following principles: the reunification of families, admitting immigrants with skills that are valuable to the U.S. economy, protecting refugees, and promoting diversity. This fact sheet provides basic information about how the U.S. legal immigration system is designed. …
“The United States provides various ways for immigrants with valuable skills to come to the United States on either a permanent or a temporary basis.
The United States provides various ways for immigrants with valuable skills to come to the United States on either a permanent or a temporary basis.
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/how-united-states-immigration-system-works-fact-sheet
Fact-checking immigration: A year-end report
Throughout the debate about immigration reform, politicians made claims about President Barack Obama’s record on deportations and his executive power.
Mostly False
Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said that “President Obama has the most border patrols and border security deployed at the border of any previous president.”
Mostly True
We also rated Wasserman Schultz’s claim that Obama shifted away from Bush’s strategy of workplace raids and turned the focus on employers.
Half True
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/jan/02/fact-checking-immigration-year-end-report/
In response to Threatened Out West’s comment:
Gifted children can be a challenge and they don’t always work to their potential even in a challenging school environment. That brilliant child who won the Nobel Prize probably was told that he wouldn’t make anything of himself if he didn’t get his act together.
I’ve seen kids like that, many who were the bane of the teacher’s life (especially when they were in middle school) who blossomed in high school or college. There are many others who did well in high school, but who, for various reasons, couldn’t cut the mustard in college despite their intelligence.
That is why schools should not be a one size fits all experience. Each child has their own issues which effect the learning process and being a member of Mensa doesn’t necessarily equate to a high paying, successful career. There is more to life than intelligence.
Excellent post.
To non-Americans, the frantic flag-waving in this post looks very silly. The USA is an admirable country in many ways, but it’s not the sole beacon of light in a world of darkness, as Denis Ian seems to believe.
The post also contains a major logical fallacy: If a country has successful elite universities (as the USA clearly does), it doesn’t follow that the education system is performing well at all levels. Taking the UK as an example, the existence of Oxford and Cambridge universities does not mean all is well for inner-city schools in London or Manchester.
Take it further. “If a country has successful elite universities (as the USA clearly does), it doesn’t follow that the education system is performing well at all levels.”
The United States was ranked by Time magazine as the 4th most educated country in the world. More than 40% of its citizens (not counting foreign students who come to the U.S. to study in one of our more than 3,000 colleges) age 25 and over have earned a college degree. The high school graduation rate by age 25 is more than 90%. More than sixty million American citizens are tagged as avid readers who read 10 or more books annually by the U.S. publishing industry.
The Magazine Industry in the U.S. took in more than $14 billion in subscriptions and sales revenue.
The book publishing industry took in more than $2k9 billion in revenues.
When using test scores as a way to make public schools look bad, look closer and the odds favor that you will discover a high rate of childhood poverty in those schools that have been rated failures.
The U.S. has the highest rate of childhood poverty among the developed nations tested by PISA, and a study out of Stanford that looked MUCH closer at the PISA tests found:
If the United States had a social class composition similar to that of top-ranking nations: U.S. rankings would rise to SIXTH from 14th in reading and to 13th from 25th in math. The gap between U.S. students and those from the highest-achieving countries would be cut in half in reading and by at least a third in math.
>There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.
>Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.
>U.S. PISA scores are depressed partly because of a sampling flaw resulting in a disproportionate number of students from high-poverty schools among the test-takers. About 40 percent of the PISA sample in the United States was drawn from schools where half or more of the students are eligible for the free lunch program, though only 32 percent of students nationwide attend such schools.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html