Change the tests, haha.
But Chicago is not unusual in this--the NY Regents did the same, as did the college boards.
Harvard had to institute a remedial and writing course for up to %25 of their incoming Freshman classes.
This is Kucinich's one major naivete--he has no idea how bad public and private education are in the US.
No wonder the country is flooded by Hindu professsionals, haha.
When I first taught at the University I was very naive. Twenty percent of my freshman seminar was functionally illiterate.
I went to the head of the department.
He said--that's just the way it is--"What can you do about it?".
I thought for a moment and said, that's easy, "Teach them to read."
He said--and I could not make this up if I tried--"That's not what you were hired to do."
Think about it.
Gene Costa
L'observation consiste simplement
en l'intérêt jubilant montré par l'enfant
à la vue de sa propre image dans un miroir....
--- On Fri, 1/23/09, Geraldine Perry <healthadvantage@comcast.net> wrote:
From: Geraldine Perry <healthadvantage@comcast.net>
Subject: [PDI] The "Duncan Doctrine" - or Will Public education be militarized (more than it already is?)
To: "Gene Costa" <costaeugene@yahoo.com>
Date: Friday, January 23, 2009, 3:54 PM
FYI:
You may be interested in the full scoop on Obama's choice for Secretary of
Education (maybe this is a good indication as to why we need to scale back big
government?):
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/tomdispatch/2009/01/wil-public-educatio-be-militarized.html
<SNIP> [Duncan] was described
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/us/politics/16educ.html> as /the/
compromise candidate between powerful teachers' unions and the advocates of
charter schools and merit pay. He was also regularly hailed
<http://cbs2chicago.com/video/?id=52587@wbbm.dayport.com&cid=28> as a
"reformer,"
<http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2008532391_edit18educa.html>
fearless when it came to challenging the educational /status quo/ and more than
willing to shake up hidebound, moribund public school systems.
Yet a closer investigation of Duncan's record in Chicago casts doubt on
that label. As he packs up for Washington, Duncan leaves behind a Windy City
legacy that's hardly cause for optimism, emphasizing as it does a
business-minded, market-driven model for education. If he is a
"reformer," his style of management is distinctly top-down, corporate,
and privatizing. It views teachers as expendable, unions as unnecessary, and
students as customers.
Disturbing as well is the prominence of Duncan's belief in offering a key
role in public education to the military. Chicago's school system is
currently the most militarized
<http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2007/oct/15/news/chi-military_15oct15>
in the country, boasting five military academies, nearly three dozen smaller
Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs within existing high schools, and
numerous middle school Junior ROTC programs. More troubling yet, the military
academies he's started are nearly all located in low-income, minority
neighborhoods. This merging of military training and education naturally raises
concerns about whether such academies will be not just education centers, but
recruitment centers as well.<END SNIP>
_______________________________________________
PDI mailing list
PDI@illinoisprogressives.org
http://illinoisprogressives.org/mailman/listinfo/pdi_illinoisprogressives.org
This message was sent to costaeugene@yahoo.com.
To unsubscribe, visit the URL above, or email
webmaster@illinoisprogressives.org for assistance.
_______________________________________________
PDI mailing list
PDI@illinoisprogressives.org
http://illinoisprogressives.org/mailman/listinfo/pdi_illinoisprogressives.org
This message was sent to aquarianm.pd-il@blogger.com.
To unsubscribe, visit the URL above, or email webmaster@illinoisprogressives.org for assistance.
No comments:
Post a Comment