<p>^This must show that those states have really good scores. I’ll bet Wisconsin is the WORST.</p>
<p>According to this report, in 2009 the most recent year data is available, Wisconsin has the highest graduation rate.
[Building</a> a Grad Nation 2011-2012 Update | Everyone Graduates Center](<a href=“http://new.every1graduates.org/building-a-grad-nation-2011-2012-update/]Building”>http://new.every1graduates.org/building-a-grad-nation-2011-2012-update/)
However, I do not know what their requirements are.</p>
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<p>Well, the French like to repeat the sage words of a certain Destouches"La critique est ais</p>
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<p>Couldn’t have said it better myself! </p>
<p>Now, back to charter schools. Should taxpayer money go towards educating students with courses that do not teach generally accepted scientific knowledge or who are able to kick out students at whim?</p>
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<p>There is data that non-union states do not fire teachers any more often than union states. South Carolina has one of the lowest union membership rates in the country and I don’t think anyone envies their public schools.</p>
<p>Schools are a tremendous success story. They prepare students for the jobs of the future. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the fastest growing job in America is Wal-Mart clerk. Second is burger flipper.</p>
<p>If you were designing an education system for the jobs of the future, it would look very much like the successful one we’ve got.</p>
<p><a href=“http://homeedmag.com/HEM/192/magatto.php[/url]”>Home - Home Education Magazine;
<p>But is that how we want to keep our education delivery system?
To prepare workers for predictable paychecks?
Or do we want to educate students for fields that haven’t been imagined yet?</p>
<p>We are set up to prepare workers for predictable paychecks. That’s the whole point, and why the system is so successful, and doesn’t need to change.</p>
<p>Educating students for fields that haven’t been imagined yet is an oxymoron. They won’t require schools, which will simply get in the way.</p>
<p>Well CCers should be happy with this, so much less competition for the Ivy league! I wonder if any public school kids get into top 20 universities? Or maybe they just admit them to work in the on campus fast food places.</p>
<p>The number of students at all the Ivies combined is maybe a half a percent of all U.S. college students. They could disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow, and the loss would barely be noticed.</p>
<p>Uhm…OK.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s not just disdain for teachers that spawns America’s clearly documented failure in academic performance when compared to other nations on concrete objective testing like the PISA.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s just plain old anti-intellectualism at large ;)</p>
<p>I mean, within the last few pages here, pedagogy as a discipline of study has been denigrated, and the suggestion has been made that the high performing institutions that in fact are held in high esteem worldwide somehow don’t make a contribution to the world we live in (even if that contribution means investment banking/IB. ;)</p>
<p>In the ever-unpopular book The Bell Curve, the authors discuss how intellectual partitioning in the US will bring us to a point where we cannot discuss or create meaningful public policy and when I see these kinds of attitudes expressed I’m wholly inclined to agree.</p>
<p>The next time someone’s up in a plane or on a table having open heart surgery, I’m gonna say a little prayer that the burger-flipper in charge somehow developed a love for learning somewhere along the way ;)</p>
<p>You’re going to have your open heart surgery in India, whether there in person, or by robotic proxy.</p>
<p>Number of Nobel Laureates who graduated from:</p>
<pre><code> Harvard 58
</code></pre>
<p>Columbia 38
Un of Chicago 30
MIT 29
Berkeley 29
Yale 18
Cal. Inst. Tech. 17
Johns Hopkins 15
Cornell 13
Princeton 13
Un of Wisc- Madison 11
City College of NY 10
Stanford 8
Un of Mich 7
Un of Penn 7</p>
<p>When ranked by “affilated with” Nobel Laureates, Columbia, Un of Chicago, MIT and Berkeley ALL outrank Harvard.</p>
<p>What European and other countries have accepted (or actually never questioned) is that individual talents and abilities are DIFFERENT. And, as such, the overwhelming push to have EVERYONE go to college is not part of the culture of those countries. The idea that every student is entitled to a college education would strike them as ludicrous as do our gun laws. In the process of total equalization, fairness, and political correctness we have arrived at the point where in the US the goal is not equal access but equal outcome. And, since a large preponderance of our population is ultimately qualified for the position of WalMart greeter and since our colleges now consider remedial math and English a reasonable thing to offer (and accept that accepted students are indeed in need of such courses)…you are right Mini, we are exactly where we need to be. Oh, and let’s not even get into the absurdity of professional sports being an accepted and vital part of a University system - try running that by any of our international counterparts!</p>
<p>As for the heart surgery in India…well…those that can($$) have already provided a solid basis for international medical tourism. And with the upcoming addition of 30M people to the healthcare system coupled with the decreased Medicare payment rates to providers…medical tourism is an interesting investment opportunity :o But…that is really of thread topic and probably into dangerous dialogue area.</p>
<p>While getting a paycheck is nice, and getting some training that enables you to get a paycheck is a good idea, the primary purpose of schools is to educate. I mean, I have not heard anyone proposing the kids who intend to grow up to be housewives or househusbands be let off from mandatory schooling. Education is especially important in a democracy, where the public elects the policymakers.</p>
<p>I don’t have a “silver bullet” for this problem. I think a good first step would be acknowledging that what’s best for one individual may NOT be what’s best for the community as a whole. (A good second step might be acknowledging the hopelessness of establishing local policy at the national level … but let’s focus on one issue at a time.)</p>
<p>Does kicking pregnant teens out of public schools have merit? We could debate that. Is there merit in forcing 15-year-olds to take pregnancy tests? Pregnancy tests but not drug tests? Surely drug use is disruptive. Along with student drug testing you’d want to do locker inspections. And you wouldn’t want kids carrying drugs around, so regular strip searches make sense. (I’ve even got a slogan “Every student, every day!”) Daily searches of cars in the parking lot would be important … you certainly don’t want drugs stored there. And you’d also want a comprehensive monitoring program of student computers and cell phones outside of school … because drugs taken outside of school are no better than drugs taken in the schools.</p>
<p>Of course I’m a mere novice at this. What we really need is a TSA-type bureaucracy with the mission of keeping “disruptive stuff” out of schools. </p>
<p>Or instead, we could apply some common sense.</p>
<p>Naturally–</p>
<p>Amish do not have to obey state compulsory education laws after 8th grade. I have been in cases with fundamentalist parents who do not believe that females need education at least past secondary school.</p>
<p>It is interesting that it was not until 1916 that all states in the Unites States enacted compulsory education laws. I have read and my father (born in 1912, now deceased)confirmed that the compulsory education laws did not get stringently enforced until the 1930s and then enforcement was less stringent in rural area.</p>
<p>[State</a> Compulsory School Attendance Laws — Infoplease.com](<a href=“Columbia Encyclopedia | Infoplease”>State Compulsory School Attendance Laws)</p>
<p>Compulsory education “with teeth” was to provide a pool of urban workers.</p>
<p>Congress in 1944 passed the GI Bill limiting assistence to those who had served in the military in wartime. This resulted in skewing college attendence male until about 2000. It is interesting that part of the argument for the GI Bill apparently had to do with trying to delay some of the massive numbers of returning soldiers from immediate entry into the job market since there weren’t enough jobs for everyone especially since females had entered into the job market in record numbers during the war.</p>
<p>I was born in 1950 and we had required “shop” – wood shop and metal shop in public junior high. The girls took required home economics. I worked in the summer as a casual at a freight company in the late 1960s to earn money for college. There were plenty of young guys who had joined the Teamsters and had no interest in college. I know they gave me grief about “college boy.” At $4.29 an hour in 1969, they were grossing over $160 a week. Adjusted for inflation that was $27.10 an hour or approximately $55,000 a year (more than the average US teacher makes now).</p>
<p>It wasn’t until LBJ’s Great Society (approx. 1964-65) that federal funds for lower income (read also minority) students to attend colleges and universities came into being. College was pretty much white, male and mid-middle class and up in the late 1960s and even the early 1970s.</p>
<p>Harvard 58
Columbia 38
Un of Chicago 30
MIT 29
Berkeley 29
Yale 18
Cal. Inst. Tech. 17
Johns Hopkins 15
Cornell 13
Princeton 13
Un of Wisc- Madison 11
City College of NY 10
Stanford 8
Un of Mich 7
Un of Penn 7</p>
<p>When ranked by “affilated with” Nobel Laureates, Columbia, Un of Chicago, MIT and Berkeley ALL outrank Harvard.****</p>
<p>Had all those schools disappeared, the Nobel Laureates simply would have come from somewhere else. In fact, there is particular reason that most of them had to be working at a school at all.</p>
<p>NewHope–My small rural white high school has drug testing, locker searches and car searches. It’s only “mandatory” for those in ANY ec, club, or driving to school.</p>