Teachers and Politics

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
61

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

A family member of mine moved from the North to “the” Georgia backwoods to “give back” in her later years. Part of her job was to…I kid you not… explain to schools that if they continued to beat students the would no longer receive federal funds. “But you (northerners) just can’t understand our culture” she was told.

…

Why did I support NCLB? Why do I still support it? Because now you have to actually account for the students you “don’t really” want to account for (and who weren’t being accounted for in previous years).

There’s plenty of problems with the current system. It’s hard for me to see how removing the DOE from the equation would help though.

…I’m half asleep, so maybe this doesn’t make any sense, or maybe I write more clearly when I’m half gone…[/quote]

I was raised in rural Georgia and this was unheard of even 20 years ago - when did she move to Georgia - 1890’s?[/quote]

I can say the same thing.[/quote]

Early 2000s. If memory serves it was west of Rome. I can’t say if things got worse since you left or if we’re talking of different schools here. But her job was–at that time–a child abuse investigator. So perhaps she was more aware of the extreme cases? Regardless, the school “stuck up” for the right to strike children.

To the larger point, the stick she used was federal funding.

62

[quote]dmaddox wrote:

How can Granny “give back” and work for the government at the same time?[/quote]

I can certainly see why some would have that opinion. Her job, as mentioned in the post above, was to investigate cases of child abuse.

Part of the reason she quit after a year (or so) was because of the huge number of cases and legal obligations surrounding the job (also, she was paid poorly compared to what she was used to).

63

[quote]BBriere wrote:
I work with teachers that have literally not taught the kids anything new in 2 months. They began reviewing for the state wide test 2 to 3 weeks before the kids took it and have been reviewing for district exams since. On top of that the math curriculum changes very little from 5th through 8th grade. So basically the kids effectively stop learning any real math after 5th grade since most flunk the high school exams. [/quote]

Is the math curriculum set by the state or local community? I think this is one of the reasons standardized tests are (one of the) necessary components to school reform. And also one of the reasons I can’t understand the argument that the DOE should be taken down.

64

Meh. You can’t teach feral children. DOE, or not.